Reflections on 9/11, Nineteen Years Later

I hardly remember September 11^th, 2001. As a kindergartener, nobody would tell me anything, and outside of my being taken out of school for a few days, my life didn’t really change. People like to say that 9/11 was a momentous occasion, a turning point, the moment America was jolted awake. But from my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. My life continued as normal, and, judging from the media at the time, it seemed as though life in America continued as normal.

Of course, I was five years old at the time. How could I have grasped the idea that thousands of many of my fellow countrymen had died at the hands of nineteen fanatical terrorists because some rich guy half a world away didn’t appreciate America’s foreign policy? Most of the adults at the time couldn’t comprehend it. It seemed like everyone was in a haze back then. The people in charge acted like the problem with the terrorists was that they hated freedom. All we had to do was bomb them into submission. Go back to shopping, maybe wave an American flag in your backyard, and be on your way.

The apathy of the American public to this day still amazes me. If you’d have told someone thirty years ago that America was going to build a massive apparatus that spied on the activities of all of its citizens in the name of their safety, images from dystopian fiction would fill their minds and outrage would fill their hearts. But even after Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the surveillance state that was built up post-9/11 – a surveillance state revealed to be illegal, no less – nobody really cared. You would think they would, but they were like kindergarten me.

Osama bin Laden wasn’t the mindless devil that the popular media made him out to be. Rather, he was acting in a similar manner to how Satan acted in the Book of Job – challenging the goodness of America and its people with a bet while he attacked them. He believed that the United States was decadent and that its impressive military might was built on hollow foundations. He didn’t hate us because of our “freedoms.” He hated us because we were sinners, and he had taken it upon himself to be our self-righteous accuser in God’s court. He was undoubtedly despicable, at least as despicable as the devil that took away Job’s riches, family, and health. But Bin Laden was testing us.

In hindsight, it seems as though many of America’s smartest people agree with Bin Laden: America was founded on corruption and oligarchy, on economic exploitation. They may have come from different places, but their conclusion was the same: the American dream was a lie, and hypocrisy is as American as apple pie. And, in many ways, I think these people are right; America is a nation of sinners with a rap sheet a mile wide. But just as you don’t hate your family members for not being perfect, you shouldn’t hate your nation for being imperfect. Because, like it or not, America belongs to us. You shouldn’t throw away your country for the mistakes it’s made in the past or the mistakes it’s making now. Rather, you should try and fix them. And part of that is defending it from bad faith critics. I mean, let’s be honest, do you think Bin Laden and others banging on about America’s dark past really want to improve things? It doesn’t seem like it.

I think a lot of people are as apathetic now as they were all those years ago because a lot of the evils people complain about seem so far away from us, so distant from the everyday lives of the ordinary person. I mean, it’s not like America’s surveillance state really affects anybody’s daily life. But there are things you can do in your daily life to make your community better. Doing charity for your local church, offering to help your family, friends, and neighbors, forgiving your debtors… these are all things one can do to help America. And if you can do that, you will help America get better. Because it’s the people who live here that make our country great.