Opinion & Comment

Let Us Never Forget Lessons Taught By 9/11

A News Analysis By Independent Herald Editor Ben Garrett

Like any American, I remember well where I was when news reached me that our nation was under attack on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I made it to the television shortly before the first tower collapsed. We watched in horror as people jumped to their deaths to avoid being burned alive in the fiery towers. We watched in shock as the seemingly indestructible tower came tumbling down. And then, slowly, sadness set in as we realized that potentially tens of thousands of innocent Americans had lost their lives in an unspeakable act of hatred and cowardice.

Shortly thereafter, the second tower came tumbling down. Throughout the remainder of that day and for the next several, we sat glued to our television sets, watching again and again as the footage of a plane - a plane loaded with innocent American men, women and children - being flown into the second tower at World Trade Plaza. We watched repeatedly as the images following the attacks were replayed. The sounds that came across the airwaves of terrified screams, and some woman who could be heard yelling, "People are jumping, oh my God, people are jumping out of the windows!" will forever be etched in our minds.

Over the next several days, sadness slowly turned to anger. And then to a bitter sense of determination and resolve. And America - this nation that on September 10, 2001, had seemed so helplessly divided - truly became one nation; truly became the UNITED States. Those days immediately following the attacks were almost surreal as a sense of patriotism began to abound from every hometown across this nation. On the Friday following that Tuesday, I made the trek from Cookeville - where I was living at that time - to Sunbright to cover the Oneida High School football game for the Independent Herald, and seemingly every vehicle that passed on the interstate was flying an American flag. Instead of the normal cursing and finger-flipping as traffic crawled slowly up Monterey Mountain behind slow-moving tractor-trailer rigs, truckers were waving at other cars who, like every truck on the road, had the stars-and-stripes waving in the wind.

Passing through the tiny town of Monterey and later through Clarkrange, as I set stopped at traffic lights, the sounds of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA" drifted through open car windows from the stereos of other cars stopped at the lights. The usual Friday quitting-time banter was gone. Replacing it was a look of somberness on the face of most motorists.

America had truly come together.

But along with this sense of patriotism and resolve was also a sense of fear. A sense of fear because we now knew that our country wasn't as secure and invincible as we had once believed. We felt this fear shortly after it became evident that the plane crash at the WTC had been an act of terror, when initial news accounts on television reported that at least four planes were still unaccounted for and could be out there, anywhere, preparing to strike.

Those fears were heightened weeks later, when the first anthrax-contaminated letter showed up in Florida. Several other anthrax-laced letters over the next several weeks held our nation hostage as we speculated the source of the letters and how far-reaching this scheme might prove to be.

After two-and-one-half years of relative peace here at home, most of that fear has passed. But our generation will never be the same again. We will awaken every morning with a color code informing us of the day's "threat level." We will never be able to see a group of Middle Eastern men huddled together without wondering just exactly what it is that they might be up to. And although we seldom think about it, that fear is ever-present in the very backs of our minds.

Before the dust and smoke had even settled at World Trade Plaza in Manhattan and at The Pentagon in D.c., our men and women of the armed forces were preparing to leave the homeland and travel abroad to work to squelch those who had committed these acts against us, those who would have us to live in fear for our safety here at home.

In the days immediately following the attack, just before war broke out in Afghanistan, talks and speculation of the return of the draft ran rampant among young Americans. The entire country - indeed, the entire world - now knew that war was immanent. But instead of running from the threat, America collectively responded. Enrollment numbers at recruiting offices for the various branches of the armed forces actually increased as Americans hoping to serve their country willingly placed their futures on hold and their lives on the line to fight to preseve our freedoms.

Three years have now passed since September 11 and some 1,300 American soldiers have given their lives in the fight to preserve our freedom; to ensure that that lingering fear in the back of our minds never becomes reality. There are widows, fatherless children and mourning mothers and fathers in every state in this nation today whose loved one will never return from the battlefields of the Middle East.

Thankfully, no Scott Countian has paid the ultimate sacrifice to date. But several of our men and women have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and continue to fight there today. And dozens more of our men, members of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Tennessee Army National Guard - men who never thought they would be called upon to fight abroad - were forced to leave their jobs and their families and assume active duty. They will soon land in Kuwait and prepare to begin duty in Iraq.

Sadly, the war on terrorism has become a political quagmire. Political ambitions have overridden the sense of patriotism and bipartisanship that followed in the days immediately after 9/11. One presidential candidate uses the September 11 attacks to tout his qualifications for re-election. The other all but says that our troops are failing at their duties and uses the war on terrorism's slow progress to tout his qualifications for the job. Indeed, it almost seems as if the lessons taught us by September 11 have all but been forgotten.

But lest we forget September 11 and what happened, let's look to Afghanistan and Iraq, where American soldiers continue to fight. They continue to fight, and they continue to give their lives every single day, as a direct result of what happened on that Tuesday morning three years ago. Much like Pearl Harbor, we did not seek out this fight. But much like Pearl Harbor and World War II, we will finish it.

To date, we have ended the Taliban's regime in Afghanistan and stopped their funding of terrorism. We have overthrown a dictatorship in Iraq and ended a mounting threat there. We have liberated two countries and killed hundreds of al Quaida operatives. Our actions have persuaded another country (Lybia) to give up its nuclear weapons program. But there is more to do. A United Nations Security Council issued a report last week stating that Iran is attempting to enrich tons of uranium that will likely be used in an attempt to build nuclear weapons.

It looks as if the war against the hatred shown towards America by much of the Middle East will not end anytime soon. More Americans will die. Statistics say that not every Scott Countian who has left home to fight this fight will return. If we can't put politics behind us and give them our support, shame on us. It's unfortunate that talk of war has become a mainstay on the evening news and on the front page of every day's national newspapers, but that is the America in which we now live. And if two collapsed towers and nearly 3,000 dead isn't enough to convince us to throw our full support behind what needs doing, how many 9/11's will it take to convince us?

Take a moment Saturday to remember the innocent Americans who lost their lives on the morning of September 11, 2001. And to pray for the Americans, Tennesseans and Scott Countians who have put, are putting and will put their lives on the line to protect our nation as a direct result of that Tuesday morning. And may our leaders, whoever they be after November 2, continue to put America's security and defense at the front of our nation's policy to ensure that terrorists are never able to carry out an attack such as September 11 ever again.