Eighteen years later we still suffer from what we lost. If you need any proof, look at who is in the White House.
Trump was elected by offering up a cocktail of racist fear (with Muslims singled out for a “ban” during his campaign), alienation of our allies (including those who stood with us after 9/11) and declaring that we will go it alone, and bullying and similar nonsense about how “tough” he is. In his mind, toughness is demonstrated by threats to tariff or bomb other countries,
So eighteen years later, 35% of the country still sees a racist buffoon pretending to be a tough guy as their answer. The scars have not yet healed.
82
Exit 9/11, It is by their own hand that they have caused their own destruction.
5
Thanks Roger, sometimes we just need some poetry with our prose.
25
One of the purposes of terrorism is to provoke those attacked to disproportionately respond. The disproportionate response causes some to support the terrorists. And the cycle continues.
We are still trying to get out of Afghanistan.
21
Journalists are reviled by some but they have been my heroes over my long lifetime, especially those who write for the New York Times. Mr. Cohen, over the decades you and your colleagues have earned my trust, a rare commodity these days. The quality of writing is unsurpassed. One has only to look at the list of Pulitzers. I am grateful to have been enlightened, and even entertained, by people like Tom Wicker, Max Frankel, James Reston and Russell Baker, the humorist who took the time to send a lovely handwritten response to my elderly mother many years ago.
18
As horrible and tragic and visually stunning as the attack on September 11, 2001 was, it is important to remember that it was carried out by 19 fanatics and a handful of collaborators, not an army at the gates.
It is also important to remember that it was made possible by a confluence of circumstances, from the refusal of airlines to secure the cockpit doors of their large planes to the ease with which some perpetrators entered the country illegally at staffed border crossings to the lack of coordination between federal policing agencies and to the negligence of the government to give appropriate attention to its own internal warnings.
Once corrective actions were taken did it require invasions of two countries, the militarization of domestic police forces the endless physical barriers to free movement and the expense of billions of dollars to ameliorate the fear that is promoted almost daily?
The acts of fanatics, particularly those who are suicidal, are mostly unpreventable. Their motives may vary, but their success, other than in provoking fear, is minuscule compared to the death and destruction brought by wars.
27
When I visited the memorial sites, I was also struck by the resilience and capacity for acceptance, welcoming, empathy, and care for one another on display. The memorial is not about patriotism, nor conquest. It’s is about love.
I am glad you wrote about it. I think it’s why Donald Trump will not be re-elected. He has no capacity for love of his fellow human beings, and that is going to be where he is separated from the American Electorate.
15
Two thoughts:
1) “It is beyond our imaginations, as the attack itself was.”
Every time I hear/read this sort of thing about 9/11, I remember reading Tom Clancy’s “Debt of Honor” in 1994 (it debuted at #1 on The NY Times bestseller list) which ends with the President and most of Congress dead in a terrorist attack by Torajiro Sato, who flys a 747 into the Capitol building. The events of 9/11 were definitely not beyond our imagination. Ever since I read the book in 1994, I worried about when it would happen in reality.
2). It is good to hear and think about people in the government who actually are working to walk the line between acquiesce and defiance to make our government work as well as it can with someone way beyond the pale as president.
15
Mr. Cohen begins this column on his remembrance of 9/11 beautifully, dare I say poetically. Then he seems to lose all train of thought and is in his usual vitriolic complaint about the president. The commemoration of this sacred day in America’s history is then forgotten, and he is talking about the immigration crisis on our border. He just doesn’t seem to be able to get President Trump out of his mind, though it can be forcibly argued that this administration is finally dealing with a problem that has plagued our nation for decades. Of course, Cohen would never mention that the Obama admin deported almost three million illegal aliens — more than all the previous admins combined. It might have been more fitting to conclude his remembrance of that awful day with some reference to how poorly the Bush admin responded in tearing apart Iraq and sticking the U.S. into the quicksand of Afghanistan.
6
Your essay had a calming affect on me. Next my thoughts drifted to Joe Biden. Perhaps we do need Joe to be the next president. His presidency would surely have a calming affect on all of us. Slow, steady, sane and calm. I think that's what we need now.
13
A friend shocked me by saying, "We could have forgiven them," but it altered my perception. The tragedy was greatly magnified by our response.
It's beyond human, perhaps, to not seek vengeance. Yet my friend's point was the people who did it were pathetic. Anyway, look where our vengeance took us. So much more suffering here and across the globe.
39
@Richard Gilbert, I remember a thought coming unbidden after it was known bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks: what if he was captured, but instead of being executed, as he surely would be, he was released into a life sentence of experiencing America, day by day, for the rest of his existence. The albatross of his crimes clearly visible to every citizen. What a mad thought that was...
8
I suppose it's necessary to preface my opinion by concurring that 9/11 was an acutely horrific event. But beyond what happened in that locale, I could not for the life of me understand why my country reacted to this event as severely and ultimately self-destructively as it did. The collective cortisol dredged up was more than enough to fully wreck our body politic. We must have already been ill to have been so lacking in resilience. And we've become both histrionic and irrational ever since, so intensely that it's spread to the far areas of the globe. At age 31, 9/11 was the day that I ceased feeling like I knew my own country.
116
@corvid. That's what you get when rich people are allowed to appoint their children to office through money, status and connections, regardless of their lackluster history, achievements or intellectual curiosity.
Yet another reason for a 75% progressive income tax rate and a monster inheritance tax. Otherwise, some day the Waltons will run the country, or perhaps a Bezos.
27
For me the "day the music died" was the day after the 2000 election, when it appeared a coup had occurred, by an illegal swarm of electoral mishaps in Florida. That was soon amplified when SCOTUS made the unprecedented decision to annoit Bush as president. I don't think 9/11 would have occurred under a President Gore; even if it had, our collective response would not have been the mad rush into two wars and a domestic police state. Someone "won" this attack, not sure who. I do know who and what was lost-- our shared sense of pride and unity.
41
Subsuming emotion in the quest for lucidity...
I don't revile journalists. I married one. However, this statement goes a little far. The day-to-day brass tacks of journalism are far less romantic. I can't think of another public tragedy on the scale of 9/11 in my entire life. Subsuming emotion is not standard practice in most journalistic walks of life. I've answered enough GRAMA requests to recognize a grind when I see one.
Thank you for your service but don't put lipstick on a pig.
1
In a world brimming with weapons of mass destruction they used airplanes as missiles and mostly hit their targets. That demonstrates the depth of the revenge factor and a willingness to sacrifice one's life for strongly held belief.
When will we and the rest of the world reason together to avoid such disasters in the future?
War for mineral riches inevitably stirs hatred in those whose homeland is being invaded. And the world has seen enough of hate. America must stop making treacherous enemies and partner with the other countries for mutual prosperity and fervently hoped for peace.
10
It goes without saying that this vile act was not "beyond imaginations." Maybe it could have been said that it was not a matter of "if", but only "when." Do we have only naive geniuses? Did we lack the will to prepare? It is certainly difficult to understand but not unthinkable.
2
@Sam Song
Especially since it was the plot of a Tom Clancy book in the 90s. Jumbo jet crashing into White House.
4
It may be 18 years, but when the other day I glimpsed a photo of the World Trade Center buildings burning, I needed to quickly change the screen, I couldn't bear to look at it. We build structures of all kinds, some magnificent, some meh, some totally out of place, some perfect for the place, all creations of human imagination. We marvel still at the Roman aqueduct, the Aztec pyramids, Macchu Pichu, the Great Wall of China, and are inspired by them, these stone works, to do good for the environment and for our community.
4
I was living in New England when 9/11 occurred. I knew some of the people who died, a college classmate and a distant cousin. I felt the pain physically. It was the sorrow from all the death and destruction. It was also from hearing the beating of the drums of war and the hatred from my fellow Americans directed towards Muslims.
I volunteered at a small diversified and organic farm in October, helping harvest winter squash. As I worked with the farmer, the pain drained from me. From that moment, I've been committed more to the earth herself than any nation. I only owe allegiance to mother earth. My kinship is to all humans and other species as well.
As Virginia Woolf said: as a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.
102
'...“...a journalist’s actual responsibility is far greater than the scholar’s.” Certainly, this actual responsibility, even before the unthinkable, is overlooked in this White House.'
The current White House seems to think a journalist's responsibility is to himself, Trump, solely and was baffled at the outrage over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. I hope this is another event that will not be forgotten.
7
Great article! Thank you!
7
If only Mr. Cohen would spend more time writing like this, beautifully, about things he knows, than about those he clearly does not.
4
Belated Happy Birthday to Mr Cohen's daughter. A minor quibble with the content of his fine op ed: even on his worst days Mr Cohen shouldn't allow himself to imagine he and his fellow journalists are reviled. Conscientious journalists make powerful enemies, but this is to their credit so hardly anything to complain about, and certainly nothing to be lamented.
7
Maybe I don't believe it is always darkest before the dawn. 9/11 was a perfect day in Kansas City. I was a tourist and I had the city to myself. I heard the news I understood what was happening .
I thought America would wake up but it went back to sleep so it could continue the nightmare.
I still await the fulfilment of Leonard Cohen's prophecy in Anthem. Everyday I await the light coming through the crack.
It is 100 anniversary of the end of the Creel Committee or is it the 100th anniversary of the committee on Public Information.
I don't know if America is ready to say we know the truth will hurt but nothing hurts more than complete cynicism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wRYjtvIYK0
5
I hope you haven’t condemned McAleenan with this. He better hope Trump doesn’t see this.
14
Our dignity is so diminished that I'm embarrassed to be here. The loathsome condition of our once great and elegant cities, the slothful leaders, the inability to pass sensible healthcare law and the grotesque president of the moment just make me want to throw a bag over my head.
22
When I read this column I think about what a deeply divisive act it was to both elect the current president and for the counry to experience his actions in office. It was out of hatred, meanness, fear and magical thinking that this president got in.
It was hatred of the "elites" who had the gall to elect an intelligent, thoughtful and eloquent black man.
It was the meanness of wanting to punish the Democrats for their sins of wanting internationalism as a means to world peace, multi-culturalism to sanctify the individual, an effective government that can actually make lives better, and a probing and skeptical press that, annoying as it can be, serves a vital and protective role in our democracy.
It was the fear of an ever-changing capitalism that by its very nature can cannibalize its own people, and the intense belief that too many livelihoods would be lost. But it was just that - a belief - an anti-Randian fomenting of fear based partly on reality and mainly on weakness.
And it was the magical thinking that a New York real estate developer would take that savvy to the WH, and the added bonus of demonstrating Reagan's dictum that "government is the problem, not the solution," to somehow straighten out Washington by throwing Molotov cocktails into it. To call, it magical thinking is putting it kindly. It is more aligned with hatred, fear, dumbness and meanness.
Thank you, America, for the huge mess you created in electing Donald Trump.
29
"The antidote to the brutality and xenophobia that have stained America’s conscience is not throwing America’s doors wide open." Extraordinary! I never thought I would hear these words come out of Roger Cohen's mouth, as he has been pontificating for what seems like forever about how the European nations, especially Italy, should do just that! What happened on the road to Damascus, Roger?
5
@Lotzapappa Roger has always been a moderate. He may even argue that the antidote may be to open the doors partially but that's a non sequitur anyway.
As I was telling my wife, Bin Laden won. On 9/11 I went to my office and a coworker said it was sad, and I agreed and I said I was equally sad about the reaction that will follow.
“And when a man feels small, he’s gonna do things to make himself feel big,”
8
Good essay, Roger, but I object to the "whataboutism" you engage in where you write of "howling political factions."
The howling is, and always was, right-wing howling--or more specifically right-wing-white-male howling.
Howling over the freedoms brought to women by contraception and abortion rights, which gave them ability to freely enjoy sex without requiring decades of pregnancy-childbirth-nursing-pregnancy-childbirth-nursing, repeat.
Howling over being told they can no long use foul language to describe people of color (thus allowing themselves to feel more powerful). Howling at being told they would no longer be the only beneficiaries of affirmative action (a program that was in place to promote white males over others for centuries, regardless of the ability level of the white man in question).
The howling began on talk radio and then entered politics. It's no coincidence that our current VP is a talk radio host.
There hasn't been anything close to such howling from the left--unless you call the protests of women about being constantly groped howling. Unless you call the protests of black people, who for so long have been told their lives don't matter in comparison to those of whites and who dare to mention that "black lives matter," howling. But of course, neither of those two things qualify as "howling." They are just calls for justice.
The character of America has indeed been damaged by howling, but all of it came from the right. Don't pretend otherwise.
34
Has the separation of children from their parents actually stopped, or was there only an announcement that it had?
13
It is understandable given the intense, perhaps ever-lasting sadness of that day. But currently, at least, Roger's thoughts on the topic of wonder don't hold together. Parts of this piece are elegant, such as on what the U.S. has lost. I'll have to hope and take his word there can be a high-level appointee, even an "Acting," trying to make the best of a horrible situation. But wonder is special! We need ideas on how to get back to it, not some almost token hope at the end. Part of it is reflecting on what's unique about it, what might help us find it, and what gets in the way. Look at some of the key words used. I doubt wonder is going to be catalyzed by simplistic praising of someone's qualities like "no-nonsense" and "energy." These efficiency-oriented qualities may sometimes be good tools, but when searching for a re-emergence of "wonder?" "Candor," on the other hand, is probably helpful, although still situation-dependent. Seeking "order?" Another mixed bag. How do we know that "least-bad solutions" are the best we can do? Maybe if we decide to aim for an "OK, What can we all live with?" solution. That's not terrible and better than what we've got. A restored "middle-ground" is somewhat better. But neither are wonder-inspired. Roger was on the right track with "wonder." Restoring it truly is a worthwhile goal. I'm not sure how to do that, but remembering what it is, how it makes us feel, and how not to get there could start us off. Roger: hope you return to this, later.
2
Thank you, Roger Cohen, for your memoir of your time in Manhattan, working as the acting foreign editor of the New York Times on September 11. 2001. All the workers in the Twin Towers doomed to unimaginable death that ordinary beautiful fall Tuesday were, and still are, blessed in America's and the world's memory.
Irrevocable change came to America on that clear day on 9/11. Al Qaeda hijackers obliterated our iconic Twin Towers in New York City, attacked The Pentagon in Washington, DC, and were fought to the death by Americans in the 4th Boeing jet UAFlt 93 in the real battlefield between good and evil in that Pennsylvania field in 2001. 2,996 people were murdered on 9/11.
9/11 was the Pearl Harbor of this 21st century. The people trapped in that Hawaiian harbor on that tropical morning in 1941 must have felt as the people trapped high in the Twin Towers who chose to leap into their deaths rather than die by fire. We can't imagine the horror people faced that beautiful fall morning in New York. But America's real wonders and capacity for hope still inspire the entire world.
2
I am sorry, Roger. I always appreciate your experience and your humane voice, but the USA as we knew it is over.
It was killed in the official deceptions after 9/11, among them hiding Saudi official support for the hijackers while simultaneously inventing stories about Iraqi government support. On those deceptions wars were started but never ended.
It was killed in the transition from an imperfect country standing for human rights to a country which formalized approval for torture and continues to expand government and private institutional cruelty.
31
The crisis Roger Cohen is experiencing is the one Thomas Kuhn wrote about in his, Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). When the old paradigms by which science--or society--begin to disintegrate under intransigent anomalies, people enter a crisis period where the old world view no longer works. We become, in Max Weber's words, "disenchanted" because our world order appears to be falling apart. The old truths no longer hold. The old gods, like Ozymandias, begin to crumble back into dessert sand.
All of the old paradigms that once held America together are now in disarray--economomic, political, religious, and cultural. One need only consider the corruption now sitting in the White House, the ranks of pedophilic priests and huckster TV evangelists, a Wall Street that survives by passing risk to society, and a family based culture that has fragmented.
More than anything else, America is in need of a new story that will take us forward into a more gentle and integrated future.
16
There's always a good reason for quoting parts of Gatsby.
Here is a part that's been sticking in my mind lately.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
69
"Acting is Trump's thing."
Has anyone stopped to consider that Trump is our "Acting President"?
20
9/11 gave the US a nervous breakdown. What followed was a confluence of exceptionalism, poor decisions, overreactions, opportunism and obsession. There's no doubt the country is permanently changed. It's not difficult to join the dots between 9/11 and the abhorrence that is Trump and his ghastly administration. In short, Bin Laden won.
The correct question is not what happened at 9/11 but what was 9/11 midwife to, that was already in the incubator? What we are witnessing need not have happened but it did because there were forces at work, waiting for an opportunity. The lies of the Bush-Cheney Junta in prosecuting the failed Iraq war (which will continue to damage American's psyche for generations) were the mouth piece to the Israeli-supporting Neocons behind Richard Perle's "A Clean break" document advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein in Israel's interest. And look how quickly the US threw its own alleged values under a bus.. advocating torture, extraordinary rendition, domestic spying, FBI entrapment (which still goes on), the lauding of a failed military approach to just about every foreign policy issue... the list goes on..
The problem is not what 9/11 did to America but why did America choose to self-harm in such an extreme way in response to 9/11? The fact is, American press, media and its much vaunted journalists all played a key role in enabling the disaster to unfold. And let's not go into the foreign policy experts and stupidity of the generals.
29
@Jacques
Yeah, it's surprising that no one has brought up Ms. Clinton's emails.
2
Great essay, and it spurs two entirely different concepts for me. One is that I have Trump to thank for reducing the impact of 9/11 on me. I witnessed it, I lost friends that day, it put a metaphorical knife in my chest that still hasn't worked its way out. But Trump is so much more of a threat to America and democracy, that 9/11 recedes into the distance, like Pearl Harbor, as a tragic event that is no longer as relevant. Nobody expects Japan to launch a surprise attack on the U.S. these days, and likewise I see Trump as far more of a problem than Islamist terrorists.
But at the same time, thinking back on the actual day, that was when I realized that for humanity to succeed and prosper, fundamentalist religion must be exterminated. Like smallpox, it must be vaccinated against and hunted down until it is no longer in existence, although it's far more dangerous than smallpox. That notion has never left me, and I never shed a tear when fundamentalists of any stripe of religion expire.
So for me, we are actually better off now than we were in 2000, for our awareness of the problems confronting humanity. But we'll be far better off as a species once Trump, and his xenophobic notions, and all of fundamentalist religion, are no longer in existence.
19
Sometimes, all we can do is look to the sky, ask "why?" and cry.
3
I was recently retired and living in Hawaii when 9/11 occurred.
As newly arrived haoles, my wife and I soon got a dose of rejection from the locals who don’t like people from the mainland moving to the Big Island.
Then Bush took the opportunity to exploit America’s grief and start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The ugliness of 9/11 turned into the ugliness of unnecessary wars.
That was enough for my wife and I to decide to try a retired life in a less militant country that was concentrating on quality of life instead of on ending life.
We have lived in Provence, the sun kissed region of France covered with vineyards and olive groves, for seventeen years now.
It was the best decision we’ve made in many years!
21
@Michael Kittle Bravo! We moved in 2008, an excellent choice for us. It just keeps getting better.
10
Roger, from one Westminster boy to another for the past three years, I've stopped feeling anything about 9/11, but your last paragraph has softened things a little. I'll be reading Samantha Power's book as soon as I'm finished with the Richard Holbrooke one. I'm struggling mightily not to lose hope in America. It's almost a Sissphean task. I have a framed photo from the New Yorker of President Johnson and Martin Luther King in the Oval Office. Each morning before making coffee, I glance at it. We shall overcome one day!
12
The sixth paragraph of this column provides a list of the much greater disaster of 9-ll, although America wasn't forced to watch the untold number of Iraqi civilian deaths and never quite wrapped their minds around the victimized American soldiers, many of whom only signed up to the National Guard- essentially volunteering to defend U.S. borders.
There will be no day of national memorial for the much greater number of victims of Bush's response to the 9-ll disaster. We far prefer the narrative that makes the U.S. the clear victim of villains. We try to forget our own villainy as quickly as possible.
Too bad, we have the power to control our own terrible behavior, but only if we admit our sins and try to understand their consequences.
If we were a more introspective nation, Trump wouldn't have come within 100 electoral votes of the presidency.
45
@alan haigh
Thank you. Well said.
6
9/11 killed the joy in the mundane, and it has never come back. We stare up at a blue sky and wonder. We stare at our screens, and all they seem to indicate is that time is drifting away, along with life. We fear for our children, not just as all parents once feared, at the back of the mind, but front and centre, because who knows what will happen next. No one any longer even tries to offer comfort. We are in no-man's land, the compass no longer works, and there is threat everywhere.
7
The capacity for wonder. I wonder if America and the West are finished. I wonder if we are doomed to perpetual partisan identity politics. Seems inevitable and not necessarily undesirable. I wonder if the right and to a lesser extent the left have the stomach for such a future. The hope lies with the millennials because the boomers took us to this sorry state.
1
@Peter
I want to clarify that partisan identity politics seem inevitable and not necessarily undesirable not the decline of the West.
@Peter
Hope will arise again if enough believers cast ballots for Bernie Sanders, a man "on the side of the angels" his entire life. His love for humanity shoots in a straight line from his arrest picketing during college for equal housing to his second campaign for the Presidency. Older now, he still "has the capacity for wonder" as he produces plan after plan to lift his fellow Americans up from pits into which unfettered capitalism has cast them.
Reading "The Lucifer Effect: Why Good People Turn to Evil," I ponder the problems:
"Whence cometh Stephen Miller's misanthropy?" "Is he a-once-good guy? or was he always a mangled misanthrope, now attracted existentially to Trump's evil orbit ?"
"Is Warren playing the pundits for fools, a plant of the nefarious DNC again to steal success from Sanders?".
"Will the oligarchs prevail in pushing Warren as a Progressive?
Please blink, then refocus on the tried AND true Senator Sanders.
@marjorie trifon
I prefer Bernie as a man but Biden is more electable. The Trumpist former Dems aren't going to go for Bernie and as you say the DNC will surely sabotage him.
1
America and the capacity for wonder?
The more powerful, intellectual, capable humanity becomes the more it's tasked with being wonderful or risks compromising the wonder that already exists. Take for example a small population of people with relatively ineffective means of mastering the environment in a magnificent natural environment. Wonder is obviously already given to such a population, it's apart, and the price of this wonder is both its apartness and its capacity for making humanity seem small.
Now the more capable humanity becomes the more capable it becomes of wonder, and historically this was often noticed in great architectural feats, first magnificent step in replication of nature's/God's wonderful act. And so on, ever since say, the great pyramid humanity has been striving to become more wonderful, to take the universe's wonder to itself, to rival, become as wonderful as the universe.
But this process opens up some serious questioning: Are we really becoming wonderful, and how much of our acts are destructive of wonder, or sham wonder, mere phony displays of magic, largeness, the overblown by which we fool ourselves that we are succeeding in taking wonder to ourselves. For all art and science has humanity really charted a viable path toward becoming wonderful or do we not understand that this is what art and science ultimately ask of us?
America has a wonderful natural environment, and has accomplished wonders, but how much is corrosive illusion?
3
I barely escaped the disaster as my company was set to move into the South Tower Sept. 1st but it was delayed due to construction not completed on the space. As a boy I watched the towers rise from my Queens bedroom. Then, 30 years later I watched them fall from Jersey City.
It set the US on a disastrous course in response to the attacks, in the hands of yet another GOP bright light.
44
@Plennie Wingo My cousin, Kieran Gorman had just returned from a visit home to Ireland and was not scheduled to work until Friday the 14th but was called in to finish work on construction. He was working on the 97th floor when he was killed. He left a pregnant wife and two young children. Everyone who knew Kieran, loved him.
I've always thought about how unfortunate Kieran's circumstances were. I never thought of the flip side. That there were those who lived because construction hadn't been completed.
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/911-memorial-remembering-the-irish-killed-in-the-trade-center-129320163-237410271
12
What a beautifully written and thoughtful essay.
21
When all is said and done, the fires of 9/11 will be understood as having been the event, ultimately responsible for bringing about our liberation.
3
@Joe Gilkey
Huh? How so considering how it has played out thus far and liberation from what exactly?
3
This is pure grace and compassion. I will not sully it with comparisons of today and what-ifs.
Thank you.
45
Thank you, Roger Cohen, for this heart-splitting open spot on article, and thank you thwright for your comment. As I, on Sept 11, in California, watched the burning falling inferno these words raced through my tears..."this changes everything" ... and Cohen caught it perfectly.
9
Another 9/11 and more personal reflections on the attack to pile on top of those of countless others. Compare it to Hiroshima and you see clearly the difference in perspective from the attackers and the victims.
Hiroshima is viewed by many of us as a successful way of ending the war. To the Japanese it was all about unspeakable carnage. And so it is with 9/11.
Americans are mostly oblivious to Bin Laden’s thinking. For him America was the devil. And he sought to make a statement that would shake the devil to its knees. Targeting the World Trade Towers in the way he did was demonically brilliant. The collapse of the Towers may be the most effective metaphor in the history of warfare.
Understanding the two sides of the coin, both as to 9/11 and Hiroshima, broadens your understanding of a complex world. I suggest that, on 9/11, you reflect on both the carnage and Bin Laden, and remember that the great conflagrations, throughout history, were set in motion by conflicts viewed in different parts of the world from opposite perspectives. Reality is complicated.
31
@michjas
The problem is that for many Americans, holding those two thoughts simultaneously...is impossible. Their America is a fable, and they refuse to see any linkage between any events. This is manifested in the view of BLM and the Football players that silently kneel during the Anthem, that they are somehow unpatriotic.
Patriotism is not a flag or a song or a fireworks display...but a set of ideals.
The interesting part about 911, as with the southern border crisis, is that the further people are physically from the events, the more extreme their indignation, as though the the sense of grievance with a commensurate disproportionate response is magnified and justified.
As long as humans remain tribal, and cannot see the others perspective...we are doomed. To me, that is the most disheartening part of this entire mess we have today. No human connections and bonds...just edicts, tweeted down from above, with no connection to facts, logic or humanity.
18
@michjas
Also demonically brilliant was the Iraq War. Using our troops as a human shield against several generations of jihadists has kept the West much safer no matter what you think about the carnage inflicted on the mostly Arab world. There are always going to be jihadists and this is perhaps a perpetual war. In a sense we are the double of Bin Laden since this is a fight to the death. I don’t think Bin Laden represented civilization needless to say. Certainly not even Islamic when compared to say Islamic Spain.
2
"McAleenan has traveled several times to Central America, where the root of the problem lies."
The root of the problem is the cold warriors of the DC Bubble who originally wrecked those little countries, and keep them wrecked. Any hint of internal reforms is crushed by a right wing coup, backed every time by the US.
123
@Mark Thomason. True. MS-13 was a gang in LA, transported back to Central America during deportations, where civil structures could not battle it. Those original Central Americans came in the 80's to escape the Generals (supported and trained by the US) who were killing and torturing people. We had many of them in our town, staying in a church basement, receiving sanctuary. And mostly it was because the US was afraid of Daniel Ortega and "the communists". Just go back and see Pat Buchanan's speeches and hysteria. People in CA knew what was going on and many protests were held. Now, the bitter harvest. But, no accountability for those policies and the men who advanced them. Never accountability, or even memory really.
19
There is no reason to worry about the attractiveness of the US. Relative to the rest of the world, it still has a uniquely forward-looking vitality that makes it a magnet for eager immigrants. The post 9/11 shrinking of Western nations self-confidence is still ongoing - actually exacerbated by the Trump interlude (operetta?). All these nations are now openly unhappy with themselves and uncertain about their survival as liberal democracies. Let's hope that instead of a defeatist nihilism in front of all that Trump symbolizes, young people will wake up and see that the Western democratic dream is actually very potent and well worth the fight.
18
@SA All these nations are now openly unhappy with themselves and uncertain about their survival as liberal democracies.
They seem to be pulling themselves together. Witness recent events in Italy and GB.
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We still have our dignity, I still have mine. From sea to shining sea we are a different land. There was a time right after 9/11 when Pittsburgh sent us their statue of a fireman. It stood not far from Times Square. There was a time when our mayor spent his days attending funerals. I hugged policemen and firefighters. I endured the sirens on Second Avenue. I hoped more than prayed that perhaps God would take pity on us. Now, we take consolation from the men and women who personify dignity. Thank you for your column.
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Call me biased but this is one of the very best countries in the world. I go for optimism for our future, it's the everyday little things that keep me believing better days are ahead. My new immigrant and refugee patients still are coming here even with our current political situation. I wonder why in the world they would want to be here and sometimes I ask that question. They usually answer it's because we are the best country in the world. They believe it and it gives me hope.
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So grateful for Roger Cohen's unique, profoundly illuminating, perspective on our national situation. It is truly remarkable that he - that anyone - could (can in his case) combine the points of view of a life lived largely outside the U.S., with a deep understanding and love of the best that this country's history reflects and that we still can represent (again at our best). His wonderful and rare combination of lines of vision creates, as it were, a binocular depth of perception - which provides teaching and learning, and indeed wisdom. Thank you.
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After 12/7/41 the United States, not without moral failures (Japanese Relocation, bombing civilians), under determined and enlightened leaders, yearned for and fought for a better world (freedom from fear, freedom from want, etc.). And, because the world is complicated and we are merely human, only partially achieved those ends. After 9/11/01, under lesser leaders, certainly during the first eight years of the new century, and flagrantly so in the past several years, we sent our brave service men and women to fight for ill-defined and often squalid ends. And have reaped the predictable results. And have diminished our capacity to wonder to, perhaps, an all time low.
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@wide awake
Thank you Wide Awake.
I do not like it one bit that I consider our national response to 9/11 soon after and ever since to be terribly disheartening. It was our leaders that raged into Afghanistan. But it was all of us that allowed it. It was our leaders who turned the "others" into demons. Yet it was all of us that allowed it. It was our leaders that shamelessly cultivated a culture of fear in order to gain advantages they desired. Yet it was all of us that allowed it.
Viet Nam forever bleached out the rose tinted image I carried of my country. Our national reaction to 9/11 took me on to despair.
And then came Trump and Republicanism.
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@operadog "Raged into Afghanistan." As I recall, we provided air support to indigenous rebels (the Northern Alliance) in their efforts to overthrow the Taliban. That was the right thing to do and it was done well.
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@operadog. Thank you operadog.
Afghanistan was not Iraq. We invaded because al Qaeda was there at the invitation of the Taliban. Al qaeda had declared war on us, not vice versa. And
the Taliban were inflicting unspeakable harms on countless Afghans, especially women. While the war is fairly debatable, it has helped keep you and me safe from another 9/11.
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Compare, if you will, the similarities as well as the differences between 9/11/2001 and 12/07/41. Both were days of infamy, yet we were different Americans then, in a different world. Who are we today? Who is the world today? That's what these memorials should always be about. To think.
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@Guido Malsh We just have to watch the democrat debate to see and hear where the country is at.
Nowhere.
And let's not talk about the other reactionary side.
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I, Like many, wonder too at the resilience of a people, a nation, to heal, but at the same time am a pragmatist. - even though I try and put a positive spin on things too.
Aye, the twin towers became one soaring one that encapsulates again a people, and nation. (coupled with serenity at the bottom) Aye, as well, the nation has moved forward Progressively on many issues.
However, the impetus for war from those days rages on still some couple of decades later. (with no real end in sight) Some of the ''masterminds'' are still locked up offshore suspended of their rights in the process. We have an administration that may have stopped (proven?) separating babies and children from their parents, but what about the thousands that are still displaced from their families?
There is a massive political chasm, but that is only because there is the continuous pull to the right which leads to even more trampling on human rights and inequality. Essentially large majorities are standing up and demanding it to stop and there to be an end to such disparity. Hence the chasm.
We WILL come together, of that I am no doubt, but it is going to take massive majorities on one side to implement change for all, and not just for one kind. However, we need to have that happen in relation to climate change NOW, and not incrementally down the road.
There is still time, and I am hopeful. I told you I am a pragmatist with a positive spin. We all need to be in these dark times.
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I don't begrudge Roger, or anyone else, their optimism . . .
But I am also reminded that all empires, eventually, fall.
That doesn't mean they always completely dissipate as did Rome or the Ottoman--the British are still around, though they don't seem particularly healthy right now. But there has been no unchecked rise for any civilization; all eventually fall.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is a gradual, graceful recession, hopefully without a plethora of violence along the way.
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@Glenn Ribotsky
Given the extreme wealth gap...I don't think the fall will be peaceful.
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@Glenn Ribotsky
China.
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