On Sunday, our nation will commemorate the tragic terrorist attacks on our nation. In some ways, the now infamous "9/11" seems like yesterday. I flew into New York that morning and called my husband Mark to tell him that the "small commuter plane" that had hit the World Trade Center was not MY plane. I assured him that I was fine and on my way into the city. Just before entering the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan, my taxi pulled onto the breakdown lane to let pass the emergency vehicles already headed to the site. I could see into the hole the first plane made, now engulfed in billowing flames. And while sitting there, with my naked eye, I watched the second plane hit and explode.
When my taxi emerged on the other side, into the borough of Manhattan, the police closed all tunnels to traffic. I would be in New York for the next four days, separated from family, assisting dazed victims as they traveled north, and comforting a friend whose husband's parish was fully two-thirds composed of people who worked in those towers. We watched together on TV as the towers collapsed. I still, 10 years later, have not been able to bring myself to visit the Ground Zero site.
In other ways, considering all that has happened in the past 10 years, 9/11 seems like the distant past. The United States invaded Afghanistan in response to the attacks. Our government used the now-proven-bogus claim that the attacks were somehow tied to Iraq and its dictator as an excuse to invade that country as well. Meanwhile, banks aggressively shopped around high-risk loans to people who really could not afford to repay them -- all in pursuit of short-term profits for the lenders. And then, when these and other high-stakes financial shenanigans were found out, we plunged into the Great Recession from which we are still trying to recover. Indeed, in some ways, 9/11 seems so long ago.
Now, marking the 10th anniversary of these events that scarred our nation's soul, it is time to reflect on what we have learned from all this trauma. I fear that the answer is "not much."
Some of us learned to distrust, fear, and even hate other Americans of Middle Eastern descent, not mention entire countries that have large Arab or Muslim populations. Some of us have added that fear to the ongoing immigration issues our country faces and have concluded that we should circle the wagons against the onslaught of "people like us." The words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," now seem like a quaint lyric from a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, rather than the living hope and dream that brought us ALL to these shores (never mind those pesky native Americans whom we had to exterminate once we got here).
At the time of the 9/11 crisis, our president wondered aloud, "I can't imagine why anyone could hate America like this?" I was astounded that the president of the United States, while loving this country with all his heart, was unable or unwilling to consider the nuance of U.S. foreign policy and how it could negatively affect the way some people think about our nation. While I believe ours to be the greatest country on earth, one that has done so much to improve the world, I also believe we have much for which we should repent.
It is sometimes said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." I fear that we have not learned from this national crisis what we could have learned about ourselves and our interactions with the people of the world -- who are, Scripture tells us, also children of God.
I don't know how you will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11. But as for me, I want to spend part of that day catching up on the learnings I may have missed. I want to think of my attitudes toward "the other," -- however defined -- and examine the ways I persistently divide the world into "us" and "them," whether it be liberals and conservatives, whites and people of color, rich and poor, Republicans and Democrats. The terrorist acts of 9/11 are the logical and extreme conclusion of that unchecked fear and hatred of "the other."
Perhaps, on this 10th anniversary, while we are celebrating the heroism of so many in the face of disaster, and remembering the lives lost on that terrible day, we might also want to spend some time searching our own souls and asking, "What have I learned?" Perhaps there is no more fitting way to commemorate this tragic event in the life of our nation.
Bishop Robinson is the Ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire and a visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C.
Gene, you really need to stop dropping the words "Roman Catholic households" into your generalist attacks on what you deem to be the arch-conservative elements of western life. I grew up Irish-Catholic and I knew nothing but catholicism throughout my life until university. I went to seminary a few years back, for two years.
I have NEVER in my life met or known a single gay Catholic from my generationwho felt traumatised by growing up in a Catholic household. I have gay cousins in my gigantic family, I know dozens of gay Catholic priests, and I must know several hundred Catholics in total on a personal basis. You lump the one denomination which really doesn't give a hoot about sex into the same weird set of Mormonism and Evangelicalism because it suits your purposes.
Catholics drink, smoke, play poker, and for the vast majority of us being Catholic is no big deal.
You can condemn Church teaching all you want, and attack the leadership, but don't pretend ordinary Catholics of my generation are the victims of conservatism because we just aren't.
http://todayfreedom.blogspot.com/
9/11 was a tragedy, by any sense of the word. The reaction by our leaders in Washington to it, were in many ways worse. They showed us to be less than we represent ourselves to be.
How many people in the US know why we were attacked? How many care?
Can you even possibly imagine the response of the American people, if they saw Iraqi companies, taking OUR oil, and shipping it over seas for THEIR profit?
How many people would applaud Afghanistan if IT'S government legalized torture?
How many Christians can say they actually respect Muslims?
Adversity brings out the best, and the worst in us.
Those much maligned public servants who rushed into danger to help their fellow man..........that's about as good as it gets.
Our elected leaders who used this event for their own political profit and to further their own goals? Many now openly criticize those who work for "Government" as the underlying problem of our economy and the enemy of capitalism.
How low can you go?
Reading the constitution objectively revealed this nation has never had a constitutional government, no president nor congressman are elected according to the reading of the document. Very few of the laws are passed with the preamble in mind, few functions of government is designed to fulfill it yet, everyone in official positions have taken an oath to ensure its fulfillment. I've discovered that a third of US history is classified preventing the people from know the actual US history.
However, being objective has taught me I can't hate those responsible for the misdirection of this nation, what they are doing has been repeated more times than living entities on earth and will happen that many times hence. It's the fulfillment of prophecy for the times in which we are in which causes me to ask who will be alive when these times are fulfilled.
I am a lifelong Episcopalian and of course familiar with your great courage and fortitude. I think our response to 9/11 was as tragic as the event itself. How did we let this get to a place where it became alright to torture people and lock them up in some remote island without due process.
I just wish more of my Episcopal clergy- whom I've always known and loved, had spoken up with stronger voices against this; as this was certainly not the Christian response and did nothing to honor the victims of 9/11.
My family had put our hearts and souls into building that church from one that met in a community college auditorium with maybe 300 members to one that had a huge campus and around 1500 members, and we'd done the best we could to retain its original flavor of inclusion and acceptance, but we (and others like us) found that we could reverse the ocean's tide easier than we could reverse the slide into the fundamenatlist abyss, so we left. The pastor of that church was my best friend, almost all of my wife's friends were there, but the church lost its way after 911 and we left it behind.
I was horrified at what happened on 9/11, but have been almost as horrified since as I watch so many of our nation's "best" and "brightest" subvert what took place for selfish ends. A measured and calculated response might have been appropriate, but looking back, I now see that this war without end, which consumes so many innocent lives and wastes so many resources is not.
It's time to stop destroying more innocent lives. It's time to stop throwing trillions more down the war-rathole. Bring the troops home now.
The problem is that people are driven by self benefit, instead of caring for others, as part of one big global family.
The world is on the tipping point of an attitude change and we can either decide to tip toward a mutual caring society, or get pushed toward one through transpiring of global events . The current global financial state as well as the evermoreso frequent natural disasters are showing us that what happens somewhere in the world is no longer an isolated incident. We are part of an integral global community, and no space can be immune from that. We need to want to help each other. If not willingly, then through a push from another global incident. The bottom line is that we need to wake up and start working together for the global good of everyone, while we still have a world to share.
The blood will always be on their hands.
--Mo Rage
the blog
After all, RELIGION caused 9/11.
That is the really legacy of 9/11. None of the mawkish, teary-eyed speeches nor everyone holding and hands and singing "Kumbayah" can hide what an abjectly self-destructive policy our "leaders" have pursued in Afghanistan since that fateful day.
Thank you for this thoughtful article.