Twenty-one years have passed since that horrific day when the planes crashed into the World Trade towers, but the pain remains the same for the hundreds of families that lost loved ones; not as intense perhaps, but equally unforgettable, for the thousands of those who were caught in the carnage but survived. Some still suffer from PTSS and some from many of the physical effects of having breathed the polluted air. The tragedy is present with us every day, as are the consequences of how life changed on a daily basis. ”Security,” both as a psychological concept and as a way of going about our business, changed forever.
This Sept. 11 should be a point for reflection on the attack that killed nearly 3,000 people, spurred a U.S. “war on terror” worldwide and forever changed our sense of national security and how we look at each other.
On Sunday, President Joe Biden plans to speak and lay a wreath at the Pentagon, while first lady Jill Biden is scheduled to speak in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked planes went down after passengers and crew members tried to storm the cockpit as the hijackers headed for Washington. Al-Qaida conspirators had seized control of the jets to use them as passenger-filled missiles.
Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff are due at the National Sept. 11 Memorial in New York, but by tradition, no political figures speak at the ground zero ceremony. It centers instead on victims’ relatives reading aloud the names of the dead.
If there was any iota of positivity to take away from that horrendous day, it was the sense of unity that reigned in the hearts of Americans. For a time, displaying a flag became not a partisan political act, but one of solidarity with our neighbors, a statement that we were all Americans. And there was an outpouring of love that arrived from all corners of the globe for grieving New Yorkers. Today the US is a nation at war with itself, urban versus rural, race against race, liberal versus conservatives. And hatred against the very institutions that are meant to keep us safe from another such terrorist attack. This in itself should be an additional cause for reflection and grief.
