What 9/11 felt like right after it happened

 

This column --- which I wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, and which was published Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001, in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA --- was headlined “A taste of what our parents felt with Pearl Harbor.”
I’m posting it today on my blog, not only to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the terror attacks, but also to give people a sense of what people were thinking at the time of the attacks.
What we couldn't foresee then was that 20 years later, after trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost in a war fought by American soldiers who had to in many cases serve several tours of duty in Afghanistan, the war would end with the Taliban --- the same militant-terrorists who had harbored Osama bin Laden for years --- returning to power.
Twenty years later, our unity in the days after the attacks proved ephemeral, with the result that now, at the 20^th anniversary of the attacks, the country is more polarized, divided and on the verge of civil war than it’s been since the days of the Vietnam War.
Our divisions have made this 20^th anniversary of 9/11 bittersweet at best as we worry about self-destructing due to our divisions and refusal to unite to defeat this pandemic.
At this point it seems that if the pandemic doesn’t kill us, our divisions will result in another hot Civil War and years of bloodshed.
Let us hope and pray that the memory of the 9/11 victims and the meaning of that day will be enough to prevent us from self-destructing as a nation.

The column from Sept. 12, 2001, follows:

Sept. 11, 2001 — a day that will live in infamy.
As soon as I heard about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, my thoughts immediately went to Dec. 7, 1941.
“Now I know how my father felt when he first heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor,” I said about my Dad. Ike was 23 in 1941, and he would subsequently spend a good chunk of World War II as a Navy radioman, prowling the North Atlantic on a destroyer escort.
I would soon learn that I was not alone in my comparison to Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack on the United States' Naval base in Hawaii, which triggered the United States' entry into World War II, was on a lot of people's minds.
“Now I appreciate the feeling people had at Pearl Harbor, the outrage,” state Rep. Frank Hynes, D-Marshfield, told the Associated Press as his staff was evacuating the Statehouse in Boston after the attacks.
“I'm devastated beyond belief. I mean, in many respects this is significantly worse than Pearl Harbor,” said Lewis Eisenberg, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
In some respects, the Pearl Harbor comparison was right on.
Like Pearl Harbor, the attacks dealt a damaging psychological blow to a nation that still likes to think of itself as immune from devastating attacks, even though in recent years, in the wake of a string of terrorist bombings, notably the World Trade Center attack on Feb. 26, 1993, and Oklahoma City's federal building on April 19, 1995, that self-image is no longer accurate.
Pearl Harbor left Americans of the “Greatest Generation” numb and reeling, and later, the slogan “ Remember Pearl Harbor” would provide inspiration in the fight against the Axis Powers. Now, Americans are numb and angry beyond belief.
“I can't believe it; it hasn't sunk in yet,” Bob Withers of the Attleboro YMCA said late Tuesday afternoon, hours after the attacks — a sentiment that was echoed across the Attleboros.
Also like Pearl Harbor, Tuesday's numerous attacks brought the country to a screeching halt. Many federal and state office buildings were closed, as well as prominent tourist attractions — Disney World in Florida, Seattle's Space Needle, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Knott's Berry Farm in southern California. Evacuations were also ordered at the United Nations building in New York, and at the tallest skyscrapers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Cleveland and Minneapolis.
Hope for unity
The nation became united beyond belief against a common enemy after Pearl Harbor, and it can be hoped that Tuesday's attacks will galvanize the nation, which is often bitterly divided along political and cultural lines.
Hope for unity in the aftermath of the attacks has been buoyed by the spread of church services across the nation, including many in the Attleboro area.
Locally, there will be a special service at 7 tonight at the Second Congregational Church on Park Street in Attleboro and an ecumenical church service at 7 p.m. Thursday at St. John the Evangelist Church at the corner of North Main and Peck streets in Attleboro sponsored by the Attleboro Area Council of Churches. Those will follow services held Tuesday night, including separate services at North Attleboro's First United Methodist and Grace Episcopal churches.
Unlike Pearl Harbor
But — and this is a big but — unlike Pearl Harbor — America is not poised to go to war against three countries in a worldwide conflict — Japan, Germany and Italy. In that respect, as a colleague reminded me, the comparisons to Pearl Harbor appear to be either out of line or a rush to judgment, depending on your viewpoint.
For one thing, the response to this Day of Infamy will not — cannot — be immediate.
This time, unlike President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the days following the Day of Infamy, we can't simply find a convenient target and respond by declaring, fighting — and eventually winning — a war because the fight against terrorism is not a question of defeating several nations.
We must first of all identify those responsible, and it will require a Herculean effort to track down the terrorists before they are brought to justice.
Yet, long after the United States has punished the terrorists, make no mistake that life as we've known it in the United States will never again be the same. Our feeling of security has been replaced by a nagging — and constant — feeling of vulnerability.
Unlike Pearl Harbor, which led to the ultimate victory over Italy, Germany and Japan, there will be no ultimate “Victory over Terror Day” to celebrate. There will be no embraces in Times Square to signal the end to this 30-plus-year undeclared war on the United States by foes who can't be readily identified.
Instead, the ultimate fallout from Tuesday's Day of Infamy will be lingering fear — and unbelievably heightened security measures across the United States.
The one sure thing that might come from this latest Day of Infamy might be to teach all Americans to never again take our precious freedom for granted — if we ever again have the same level of freedom.