Home > Insight

Still safer after all these years?
By Matthew Quane
mquane@mscd.edu

The fifth anniversary of the most pivotal event of this century has come and gone, and the United States remains as exposed as ever to a terrorist attack.

Rather than preparing for action on the home front, a large chunk of our National Guard is attempting to quell the constant uprisings in the newly founded democratic Iraq.

But there was a time when Sept. 11 represented more than fear and terror.

One act was able to pull our nation apart, sunder the visceral from the intellectual.

Emotion ruled that day, led in large part by the spawn of fear and terror: hate. Hate for those who plotted, hate for those who acted, hate for those seen cheering from the Mideast on CNN.

But as the hate passed and (mostly) cooler heads prevailed, the attacks gave us insight. They gave us a glimpse of ourselves that we don’t usually get.

They allowed us to see ourselves in a light that rarely illuminates the dark, intimate gallows of our souls. This glimpse into ourselves revealed, profoundly and personally, our most essential components.

But like most of life’s important lessons, our glimpse was easily forgotten. The hate that remains has fueled two wars and could cause a third.

Sir Isaac Newton almost had it right with his third law of motion: in this conflict, to each action, there seems to be a more powerful reaction.

As Gary Hart said on Monday, “We will go to war for oil and all we will get is war, and not oil.”
We have interjected ourselves into what our leaders consider an “unconventional war,” as if our military expected something other than urban guerilla warfare in Iraq. And our executive leaders have portrayed themselves as the last line of defense against terrorism.

President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld crack their propagandist whips across America’s backside, interjecting comparisons of “Islamo-facists” to Hitler and Lenin, in a time when 40 percent of high school graduates believe that the United States fought with Germany against Russia in World War II.

But the real problem does not lie in the intellect of the American public. If I have learned anything from Stephen Colbert, it is that our problems lie in our collective gut.

The problem is the intestinal churning that erupts when we are force-fed scenes of planes crashing into buildings over and over. The problem is the glitzy “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad from which the public could not avert its gaze.

The problem is that our violent solution has been inherently empty and unfulfilling.

We were faced that day with the extraordinary and we responded with anything but. Because of this, Sept. 11 will always remain a sad, sad day.