When I awoke on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, it seemed to be the start of just another day – the weather was nice enough, with the light of morning flowing in, and I was sort of gearing up for another Tuesday, with whatever challenges, disappointments and rewards that another day in the life would bring forth. The headlines on the local morning paper proclaimed the bankruptcy of a prominent local business, which I guess happens occasionally, but there was no mention of war, as we are about 6 hours behind East Coast time in my locale. Then a family member told me that there was “big news” on the television, and so I tuned in, and saw the chaotic scenes that were happening in New York City, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. At first I did not fully realize the scope of the events that were unfolding, but as I watched, it soon became clear that these events were of monumental significance, which would have repercussions that would echo far into the future.
It’s been 10 years since that fateful day which ultimately changed much of our once placid assumptions that war could never really come to our shores, for this was America, after all, and those kinds of things almost never happen to us, or so we thought.
How have things changed since September 11, 2001?
For one, we as Americans no doubt feel more vulnerable, as war actually came to our own soil, in among the larger cities and institutions in the nation. While these kinds of things happen quite often in other nations, this nation has historically seen very little of it, comparatively speaking, and so this was like a kind of wakeup call for us. Yes, war always seems to be happening somewhere in the world “over there”, but now we are reminded that it can also happen “over here”, and there certainly is a different feeling between the two. Also disturbing was how the terrorists were able to somehow slip past national security, which many of us felt at the time to be almost impenetrable.
I remember the near incessant coverage of war on the news, and the heightened security measures at the airports, certain public places, and in the mail. Whenever a plane seemed to be flying too low or something, we tended to take notice, and a feeling of concern would rise within. Where was the next target for terrorism going to be? A kind of pessimistic pall seemed to hang over the nation for a while, offset by a revival in patriotic feelings among many. There was constant talk of things concerning the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Islamic religion, and there was also an apparent revival in interest in becoming more dedicated to one’s own religion, at least for a little while after the 9 11 attacks.
There was also the rise of a number of “conspiracy theories”, in which there was doubt cast on the actual “authenticity” of the terroristic nature of the attacks. Video footage of, say, the collapse of some of the buildings in New York, was analyzed, and the way in which the buildings collapsed was questioned – some felt that there may have been some intentionality therein. Was it all some kind of front to justify waging war on some of the nations in the Middle East? And so the some of the theories seemed to go.
The deaths of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden are seen as being significant in the war on terror, but it is of course far from over.
Things may have slowly gotten back to “normal” since those times, but the events of that fateful day certainly affected our psyche for a while, and the memory of them will forever linger in our minds, and will surely leave their mark in the history of the nation, and perhaps even the world. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost some of our innocence, some of our “virginity”, so to speak. Somehow, America seems to have been rudely awakened to the realities of the world in the Twenty First century…