9-11, 2001 - Five Years Later
Dear A-Letter Reader,
Americans are great for celebrating national days, even though Jay Leno's T.V. street quizzes have proven many of us are ignorant about our history.
We celebrate our hard fought independence from England on the 4th of July. On Memorial Day, we should recall those who died fighting in our wars. And Christmas, our major national religious (and commercial) holiday, is an orgy of spending.
Sentimentalists that we are, we also like to commemorate personal anniversaries, not just happy days, such as weddings and birthdays, but even long ago passings, as evidenced by photos and messages in the obituary sections of newspapers. In each case we're trying to preserve and continue, by remembering an event or a person, some cherished ideal or lost loved one. These principles, these people, will not die, we try to assure our mortal selves, so long as we remember and exalt them.
What then to say, on this fifth anniversary, about the events of September 11, 2001 -- "9-11" as it is now universally known in media shorthand.
I was one of those horrified Americans watching live CNN when United Airlines flight 175 crashed into the South Tower if the World Trade Center at 9:02:59 a.m., an event covered live by global television with cameras trained on the buildings after the earlier crash. In my minds eye I can still see my coffee cup on the kitchen counter, the sun streaming in from the east across the green lawn, the TV screen with a small black moving dot, then a giant fireball bursting like water from the sides of the silver tower.
"My God!" my mind whispered, as I imagined the instant obliteration of human life. These were not accidents and I feared the worst, confirmed within minutes by the crash into the Pentagon. After reactions of horror, disbelief, anger, sorrow for victims, it was left to my friend and former House colleague, US Rep. Ron PAUL of Texas, to best sum up my troubled thoughts: "Times of tragedy and war naturally bring out strong emotions...Sometimes people are only too anxious to sacrifice their constitutional liberties during a crisis, hoping to gain some measure of security. Yet nothing would please terrorists more than if we willingly gave up our cherished liberties because of their actions." And, to a large degree, that is what has happened.
In his apt warning, Ron Paul was echoing an earlier parliamentarian, the MP in the British House of Commons for Bristol, Edmund Burke, (1729-97) who said in a speech at Buckinghamshire, 1784: "The people will never give up their liberties but under some delusion." He might have added that delusions can include unreasonable fear, something unscrupulous politicians are more then willing to exploit.
Sad to say, many of the predictions I made in this very Comment space on Sept. 12, 2001 and thereafter have come to pass. At the time I said that "readers know my view that freedom in the United States has eroded for decades, most assuredly in the area of financial privacy. Having served in Congress I know how panicky politicians react in times of crisis; witness the many liberties we have lost under the false banner of the failed war on drugs. Recall the outrageous demands made by Bill Clinton for unconstitutional restrictions after the tragic Oklahoma City bombing, some of which became law. The excuse then also was terrorism."
I added: "I have no doubt that those of a police state mentality, mouthing the cry of anti-terrorism, will redouble efforts to infringe on civil rights, hoping most of us won't resist. And the very agencies of government that failed miserably to detect the World Trade Center attack will cry loudest for more power and money."
And so it has happened. But this is not the time for a litany of lost liberties. I have catalogued them before.
But consider some numbers. Excluding the 19 hijackers, a confirmed 2,973 people died and another 24 remain listed as missing as a result of all the 9-11 attacks.
Without denigrating the memories of those who died on 9/11, it is worth considering that in all the wars America has fought, including our own Civil War, 1,090,200 died. Add to that another 2640 Americans who have died in Iraq. During Gen. Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North, at Antietam in my home state of Maryland, in one day alone, Sept. 17, 1862, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing.
Yes, we are under constant threat from terrorism. But because of 9-11 and its after threats, should Americans sacrifice the liberties for which so many have fought and died? I think not.
In The A-Letter we often speak of freedom and liberty, usually in terms of very real threats to both of these precious commodities. To observe that so many have died in the American cause over so many centuries is only to accentuate the meaning and importance of the greater cause for which they died. They died before their time, much of their promise unrealized, and in the service of their country. Those who died on 9-11 were innocent victims of yet another war, a religious jihad that some few fanatic Muslims see as the means to impose their view on the whole world.
I noted at the time that the real legacy of September 11, 2001 would be determined by how a free people reacted to this great provocation. I fear for my country and for the world. This truly was America's moment of truth and we may have failed the test.
That's the way that it looks from here,
BOB BAUMAN, Editor The Sovereign Society. |
