I realize this is a day late, but not having Internet access at the new place makes getting online a bit of a hassle. We’re working on it.
I posted the following on September 11, 2003, in my now-unused Livejournal account, and I think a lot of it still applies today.
“So many things have happened to me in the past two years that it makes it difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the attacks on September 11, 2001. I remember, and will always remember, the moment I found out the attacks had occured: I had just de-boarded the plane at Edinburgh Airport, arriving in Scotland for the first time. I was a naïve, restless new graduate, desperate to escape from the shackles that - I felt - had bound me for my years in Virginia. Just seeing the disbelief on my friends’ faces when I told them where I was going to attend university was enough to prove to me that I had made the right decision; one friend in particular, for example, had not been farther away from home than West Virginia, and others simply could not fathom the prospect of leaving everything they knew. I craved change as though it were a drug, doubtless the result of being a military brat and experiencing so many different cultures over the years.
Stepping off the plane, I immediately felt a sense of exhilaration - perhaps even ‘perfect exhilaration,’ as Mrs. Fay, my two-time high school English teacher, would often screech. It was as though I had stepped into an alternate universe wherein I was free to become the person I had always desired to be, though the dynamics of that person were yet to be seen. My mother did not seem to notice this instant change in my demeanor, but instead shooed me through customs and the baggage claim, before we arrived at the window to receive our rental car. Almost instantly, upon hearing our unmistakeable accents, the man behind the counter looked at us rather somberly and said, “Have ye heard what’s happening in New York?”
My mom thought it was a joke, something along the lines of that event back around the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century that involved The War of the Worlds being read over the radio and creating mass hysteria. I’ll admit, I too was skeptical at first. However, as the events began to unfold - the second plane hitting the tower, the towers falling, the Pentagon being hit, rumours of bombs in both the Capital Building and the Lincoln Memorial, et cetera, et cetera - I began to realise that this was the dawning of a new era. The United States was vulnerable. To any American, that realisation comes hand in hand with shock and dismay. We have been raised from an early age to believe that America is the strongest nation in the world, one which will reign over the world (though not so explicitly) for generations to come. How, then, could a small group of terrorists manage to create such distruction to every facet of American life?
Bush declared his ‘war on terror,’ promising to rid the world of terrorism - an empty promise, one which will never be fulfilled regardless of how many countries we bomb or invade. Indeed, the fact that America is bombing and invading, say, Afghanistan and Iraq merely increases the risk of terrorist attack. One cannot fight a war against a concept; without a direct target, we are bound to find ourselves lost and … vulnerable.
I was not at home during the months following the attacks, thereby missing the wave of patriotism, the public outcry, the grief and hysteria. As my college friend Sarah so aptly put it, “You could call me lucky but I sort of feel like I missed out on all the solidarity and patriotic fervor. It makes me feel un-American.” I am hardly able to label myself American anymore, that is true, and it’s not simply because I’ve been studying overseas; I do come home for Christmas and for the summer, so I’m not completely out of touch with this nation. But I’m lacking much of the patriotism, the ‘proud to be an American’ syndrome that is hereby drilled into the American people. September 11, 2001, upset me, dismayed me, and angered me, but it did not affect me the way it did to those on American soil.
We are now at war with Iraq because of an apparent (or unapparent, to most) threat of weapons of mass destruction. Bush’s war on terrorism has become one for oil, for spreading Western ideologies that, though they may seem ‘right,’ simply do not apply to the Middle East. One cannot expect the United States to simply step into a non-Western country and set up a democracy, or Westernise it in any way, without serious repercutions.
My heart goes out to the families and friends of those lost on September 11, and in the war on terrorism, and in the current war in Iraq. No one who lived through the attacks will ever forget them, and no one ever should. It is, quite simply, the end of our age of innocence ignorance.”
