September 11, 2008
I’d just poured the morning’s second cup of coffee when I heard a powerful shriek that rattled the windows of my Duane Street loft apartment. Seconds later came the explosion that literally changed the world, when American Airlines flight 11 pierced the World Trade Center’s North Tower and disintegrated in a fireball of jet fuel, setting in motion a chain of events that continues even today, with the issue of security ever-present in how we travel, how our government monitors our activities, and what presidential candidates say to assure us they are the best choice to protect us.
Minutes after the explosion, I found myself on my network’s morning show via telephone, trying to describe the indescribable to a horrified nation.
A second jetliner slams into the South Tower.
Panic in the streets.
The desperate efforts to save people.
Then one slow-motion collapse, and another.
The enormous white ball of smoke and debris rolling up Church Street, enveloping all who flee before it, leaving them coated with a fine powder, choking and confused.
My first thought when I heard American 11 screaming southward over lower Manhattan was, “That sounded like a military missile,” a sound I was familiar with having covered wars and military operations for many years. And looking out the windows facing Church Street which gave clear view of most of the Twin Towers, the flames roiling from the top of the 110-story building presented a scene not unlike the damage a large missile could cause. In those first few minutes, while attempting to be as clear and accurate about what I was witnessing, that’s what I said on national television. That description has, unfortunately, been seized upon by conspiracy theorists to bolster their claims that the attack on the WTC was orchestrated by our own government, and even that no passenger plane was actually involved.
Explain that to the thousands of people whose family members and friends suddenly disappeared from this earth. Explain that to the thousands of others who actually witnessed the American jet crash into the tower, and the thousands more eyewitnesses on the ground, and millions more eyewitnesses watching on television around the world, when United Airlines flight 175 wheeled sharply and dove into the South Tower.
It’s our nature, I guess, to reach for anything and everything to understand something so enormous, so unfathomable. Superstitions arise in the gaps of rational knowledge. It must have been the work of a nefarious government to justify a war. To gain advantage in the Middle East. To take the pressure off Israel to make peace. The theories were endless. Because, they posit, how could such a small group of men inflict so much damage on the greatest nation on earth?
Simple, actually. We weren’t looking.
We were leading our lives, going about the business of America which, as Calvin Coolidge famously said, is business.
The attacks of September 11th succeeded in disrupting the business of our nation for a time, eventually costing America trillions in security upgrades, new more stringent screening methods, and the War on Terror. But they did not succeed in what is by definition the main purpose of terrorism; that of inflicting terror. New Yorkers refused to be cowed. We filled our sports arenas. We boarded planes for trips abroad. We sat in crowded theaters and walked on crowded streets and gave a communal Bronx cheer to all those who would try to impose their world view on our world.
So here, now, are we. Seven years hence. Have our memories of that day dimmed? I think not. We to this day see the events of 9/11 in very human terms. Even now, who can listen to the reading of the names without emotion?
Maybe one of the most important lessons we learned on that September morning is that, to be a truly free nation, is to be a vulnerable one. Ideals like ours carry inherent risk that people who wish us ill can find a way to hurt us. The fact that no attack has taken place since 2001 is faint comfort: Al Qaeda waited eight years after failing to bring the towers down in 1993 before trying again.
Ours is not a perfect nation of perfect people guided by a perfect government. But the idea of America is perfect.
And as long as we hold strongly to that idea, of freedom, of compassion, of opportunity, then no matter what murderous minds dream up, they will never win.
The anniversary of 9/11 is a time to remember and mourn. But to me, it also marks a victory. Our nation did not fold. Our city did not fold. We did not succumb to terror.
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