What September 11, 2001 Means To Me
It’s amazing to see what September 11th, 2001 means to the United States seven years later. We politicize it, exploit it, and look for every way possible to capitalize it. Seven years ago today, for the first time in my life, I witnessed our country as one united body. Everyone slapped the “United We Stand” bumper sticker on their car, hung their flag in their yard, and spoke about the future our country without partisanship. We fast forward to September 11th, 2008 and it is politics as usual. Both candidates are guilty of negative political campaigning, smearing each other’s identity rather than fighting over the issues, and the left-wing and right-wing blogs argue over who is a bigger idiot. The division is back, and no one remembers how we came together on one of the darkest days in American history. Our children will learn about September 11th, 2008 not as a time when America came together, but as an event with tremendous controversy. Was the government behind it? Should Bush have gone into Iraq? Who really orchestrated the attacks? They will get all of the conspiracy theories, but none of the essence of what happened.
Our children will never get the feeling that ran through our bodies when the evening news anchors shed a tear, when we watched two airplanes strike the World Trade Centers in real time, and when we watched the hysteria of New York citizens flee out of harm’s way. They will never get to experience the closeness that Americans felt after the attack. The fear that another attack could be imminent. The fear of those who had friends and family in the Pentagon and in New York City at the time of the attacks. They won’t know what that’s like. They will be fed all of the speculation and controversy surrounding 9/11, but they will never learn about what it meant to us.
I was in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains tucked away in a small college in Northeast Georgia when I first heard about the attacks. I thought I was in a movie, but it was more real than I ever knew. President Bush’s address to the nation sounded like something out of a major motion picture, but the quiver in his lips made me realize that this was for real. For the first time, I realized that terrorism is real, and that there are people out there that hate the United States. I never contemplated the fact that other countries and organizations hated our what we stand for. September 11th is a time for me to reflect about how fortunate I am to live in a country that does everything it can to protect my freedom to choose religion, speak my mind, make as much money as possible, and do whatever I want, when I want, as long as it doesn’t negatively affect the people around me. The men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are not fighting in vein. They are not fighting for a corrupt war and a corrupt administration. Whether you agree with the war or not, you cannot deny that they are over there fighting for our freedom and fighting for all individuals to experience the democracy that we experience every day. The United States is not the problem to this world. It is the solution to this world. We must defend the ideals of freedom.
Don’t let today become a day that you try to figure out why we invaded Iraq. Don’t let it become a day that makes you angry about the Middle East. Let it become a day that never lets you take for granted the freedoms we experience every day.
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