September 12 2001

September 7 2007

 It’s my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast.. You unspeakable bastard.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward’s attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.

Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.

Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We’re frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae — a singer’s revealing dress, a ball team’s misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We’re wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though — peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.

Some people — you, perhaps — think that any or all of this makes us weak. You’re mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.

Yes, we’re in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We’re still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn’t a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn’t the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You’ve bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before. But there’s a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.

In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We’ll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don’t know us well. On this day, the family’s bickering is put on hold.

As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.

So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that’s the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don’t know my people. You don’t know what we’re capable of. You don’t know what you just started.

But you’re about to learn.

Sept. 11 falls on a Tuesday this year. It will be the first time since that other Sept. 11, six years ago.

Do you remember? Can you recall how difficult it was to even conceive of going forward from that moment? The events of that day had so thoroughly lacerated us that it seemed as if, in some small corner of our collective soul, the clock had stopped. In that corner, it would forever be 8:46 EDT on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Do you remember? If so, then the world as it stands six years later must come as something of a shock.

Six years ago, we saw people rushing to the World Trade Center site to search for survivors and recover bodies. Heroes, we said. Six years later, largely removed from public attention, many of those same heroes are sick and even dying, poisoned by the soot and dirt they breathed.

Six years ago, appalled and infuriated, the world rallied to our side. Candles and cards were left at our embassies. The French newspaper Le Monde declared “We Are All Americans Now.” The Masai, a tribe in rural Kenya, sent us 14 cows, a gift regarded by their culture as sacred. Six years later, our president is trailed by angry demonstrators wherever he travels, and it is headline news when he is cheered in Albania.

Six years ago, we vowed revenge on Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi who masterminded the attacks. We would bring him in, said the president, “dead or alive.” Six years later, bin Laden is still free, and the president has said he is not particularly concerned about that.

Do you remember? The terrorist attacks of six years ago this week are sometimes compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 66 years ago this Dec. 7. That is, of course, a reference to the shock, disbelief and anger Americans felt. But there is a telling difference between Dec. 7 and Sept. 11. From the 1941 attack, there was forged a sense of national mission and purpose.

Those feelings of shock, disbelief and anger became the building blocks of a consensus that we would do whatever, spend whatever, sacrifice whatever, until victory was won. After the attacks of 2001, by contrast, we talked national mission and purpose, but it soon became apparent that it was only talk.

Those feelings of shock, disbelief and anger became instead the building blocks of a political machine that duped the nation into a war of choice that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks, eroded American civil liberties under the guise of protecting American lives and branded as traitors those who said, “Hey, wait a minute.” Worst of all, it squandered the moment, threw away a historic chance to build a national — and international — consensus that could have marginalized the architects of terror, maybe even reshaped the world, more effectively than all the bombs and bullets used to date in Iraq.

This anniversary, then, laments not simply the loss of life, but of opportunity. And perhaps the worst thing is, one senses most Americans are like their president: We don’t think about bin Laden that much these days. He is not front-of-mind anymore.

So it is worth pausing here to remember that just six years ago, we were attacked.

Six years ago, people leaped from flaming skyscrapers.

Six years ago, flaming skyscrapers fell.

Six years ago, dust-caked people wandered the streets of New York City.

Six years ago, an airplane tore a hole in the Pentagon.

Six years ago, a hijacked plane crashed.

Six years ago, searing, airless shock was followed by resolve. Cold, iron-fisted resolve.

Six years later, the shock is gone, and it seems like the resolve is, too.

Do we remember? You couldn’t prove it by me.