Have You Forgotten

By sheer chance, I was unpacking an old moving box that I had not unpacked since 2003 when we moved from Texas. Inside it were four magazines from the week of September 11, 2001. They were Time (Special Issue), Newsweek (Extra Edition), People, and a photographic special edition of Time.

I opened the one on top - Time, Special Issue - and glanced at the cover title "One Nation, Indivisible". How ironic. I flipped through the to the big main spread with the extra fold-out showing the workers at Ground Zero rescuing (or maybe recovering?) a victim. The article was written by Nancy Gibbs..."So while it was up to the President and his generals to plot the response, for the rest of us who are not soldiers and have no cruise missiles, we had candles, and we lit them on Friday night in an act of mourning, and an act of war.

That is because we are fighting not one enemy but two: one unseen, the other inside. Terror on this scale is meant to wreck the way we live our lives...If we falter, they win, even if they never plant another bomb."

Within the same pages of the same edition were results of a poll taken by Harris Interactive by telephone of 1,082 adult Americans on Sept. 13, 2001. Those poll results said:

• 78% thought it was very likely that Osama bin Laden was personally involved in the attacks.
• 44% thought it was "somewhat likely" and 34% thought it was "very likely" that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks.
• 62% thought the US should declare war as a result of the attacks.
• 66% were in favor of ground invasion of another country as part of retribution.
• 65% thought that US military strikes against OBL would lead to a broader war between the US and other countries in the Middle East.
• 85% favored strategic air strikes against isolated military targets.
• 81% favored assassinations of leaders responsible for terrorism.
• 55% favored ground invasion with US troops that would result in loss of US lives.
• 48% favored massive bombings that might kill civilians.
  

From Newsweek, in the article entitled "The Toll on Our Psyche" by Sharon Begley..."The attacks have broken the illusion, deeply embedded in the American mind, 'that we are more protected, and safer, than other countries,' says trauma specialist Terrence Real of Massachusetts' Family Institute of Cambridge...."We as a country have been living as though the catastrophes in the rest of the world don't apply to us, disaster doesn't happen on our soil. But from now on, we can no longer deny that we are vulnerable."

From People, in the article "America Under Attack: Black Tuesday" the unnamed author states..."But while World War II was a battle for national survival, the conflict against terrorism is something more subtle and limited - a struggle to preserve national values."

From Time, in the article "If You Want to Humble an Empire..."This was the bloodiest day on American soil since our Civil War, a modern Antietam played out in real time, on fast-forward, and not with soldiers but with secretaries, security guards, lawyers, bankers, janitors. It was strange that a day of war was a day we stood still."

So, have we forgotten? I believe a majority of our population has. We are definitely a divided nation. Divided politically and becoming even more divided ideologically every day on not only defense but on issues that make up the very fabric of those national values that were attacked.

Are we only filled with pride and a sense of one purpose when we bleed? Do we have to be under attack to realize we, a nation struck by the peoples of the world, have more points of agreement than points of division? We are disagreeing over troop strength and withdrawal dates, WMDs and funding. But surely, surely, we agree that no one has the right to come to our shores and kill our citizens without provocation or reason. Are we allowing these evil fiends to tear us apart in the hearts of our character and our values?

War is now something fought in a distant land rather than coming to our streets and our cities and our fields. It's inconvenient to political candidates regardless of whether they are "for" the war or "against" the war (or were for it before they were against it). The war is now a beach ball being batted around on the Sunday news shows and from political stumps. Polls, not unlike the one noted above, are taken to see where the best "stance" should be in order to win votes. What would the citizens of our great nation answer to those same questions now? I'm sure there would be different numbers because, for the most part, we have forgotten. The politicians and bureaucrats and talking heads have forgotten. Congressmen and Senators have forgotten. Media pundits have forgotten.

You know who remembers best? Those who lost friends and family that September day six years ago. Those whose friends and family members are in our volunteer military. Those volunteer soldiers who even now are preventing that war from coming back to our shores by taking the fight to the initiators and their doorsteps.

Wake up people. This war is not going to go away if we just take our toys and go home. They will be back. They will be back and they will be even better prepared. They will have bigger catastrophes in store than four jetliners loaded with fuel and 19 nut cases with box cutters. There is a whole population of nut cases out there who are ready and more than willing to bring this war back to our shores. We have to prevent that from happening again. Let their citizens perish as a result of their actions - not ours.

Who can stop it? No, not the President and surely not those wafflers in Congress. Our soldiers on the fronts lines can delay it. Our guys in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan can take them out one by one but they are only removing men, not evil. Our soldiers in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad can dampen it. Our sailors patrolling the waters where the world's oil supplies are floated out to the nations can forestall it. But only us, WE THE PEOPLE can stop these crazy, evil demons from toppling all that our nation stands for, has worked for, and has died for in the last 231 years. We have to be united when we don't bleed, or else we surely will bleed once again.

God bless America. God bless our President. God bless our soldiers.