The lessons and losses of Sept. 11

One decade ago, on Sept. 11 Americans woke up in one world and went to bed in another.

The dreadful terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which turned passenger jets into homicidal missiles, were something unthinkable prior to Sept. 11. But since then, we have kept one eye looking backward, waiting for the next attack, the next challenge to our freedom, the next sacrifice of innocent lives.

Just as we wrote that day 10 years ago about what Sen. Chuck Hagel called “the second Pearl Harbor” ... “it will forever change our country in ways we do not yet begin to understand.”

We were right about that. Our increased national security has come about at the cost of our decreased privacy. Our mission to fight terrorism and its allies and to ultimately kill Osama bin Laden has led us into two long-drawn-out wars that still continue. Our national will is at times seemingly paralyed, as represented in concrete terms by the continuing inability to complete a 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero.

Perhaps it is still too soon to assess all the long-term impacts of bin Laden’s murderous scheme, but, yes, we have to acknowledge that not all of the changes have been for the good.

For a short time, the tragedy of 9/11 brought us together as a nation — making partisan agendas seem small and irrelevant. But once it became clear that national survival was assured, those fault lines came back and were larger than ever. Today it seems like we cannot agree about anything.

A remarkable example of this came from an unexpected source this year. Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided there was no room in the official memorial service in New York City for clergy or prayer. Even “first responders” could barely find a place on the stage.

How different is that from the national day of prayer held on Sept. 14, 2001, when Americans recognized that healing is helped by acknowledging the role of a higher power in our destinies? As we wrote that week, “prayer will not only give strength, it will temper that strength with humility and love and compassion. Those are qualities we absolutely must have in abundance so that we do not become like our enemy.”

Yet today, prayer is considered inappropriate. We must ask whether this is one of those unforeseen consequences of 9/11 and whether there is any way for America to prosper or prevail without a public acknowledgment that we are great only because of the gifts we have been given.

But what happens in New York today will not reflect what is felt in the hearts of millions of Americans. Here in Northwest Montana, the tragedy of Sept. 11 is still alive, still felt as a personal loss, as demonstrated by the many memorials being held from morning until night.

Let us remember the innocent victims afresh, both those who died quickly and those who died in panic. Let us honor the spirit of the first responders who went up the stairs of the World Trade Center to help their fellow man when simple self-preservation would argue they should have gone the other way. Let us measure ourselves against their example and their spirit and vow to be more like them in our daily lives, and less like our pitiless enemy who was and is consumed by hate.