Trending
How can it be 25 years?
We keep asking that about 9/11 and it proves one of my favorite sayings, "Time's a noodle."
I remember the 25-year anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, in 1988. I was 10. It was one of the first times I noticed "wall-to-wall" media coverage about something. But 1963 seemed completely mysterious to me, like another world. It was 15 years before I was born.
It makes me wonder, "What do we tell the children today about 9/11?"
Here are some thoughts:
-- It was a very bad day for anyone with a shred of human decency. And yet, there were individual stories of incredible heroism and courage. Even in the worst of circumstances, we can find strength and grace.
-- Sometimes, there are bad actors in this world that we do not take seriously until it is too late. U.S. intelligence knew very well that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida was up to something, but apparently didn't think they could do much more than the previous car bomb attack on the World Trade Center. Even with evidence that their operatives might be trying to learn how to fly planes, it was sort of assumed they couldn't do something really big.
Around two decades after 9/11, we saw another example of fatal underestimation when Hamas attacked Israel.
-- There are people who will use some big, terrible event to justify their own ends, no matter how remote those ends are from the event. Many will immediately think of George W. Bush's war on Iraq after that statement, but I'm not even really talking about that.
I'm talking about the local politicians I witnessed early in my career, working at the newspaper in Cortland. These people spent the better part of two years blaming 9/11 for every shortcoming in Cortland County government. It got to the point where I used to joke that if a county snowplow broke down, surely 9/11 was to blame.
Fast-forward 19 years and I was back in my native northern Chautauqua County, just in time for COVID-19. I witnessed the same thing again. For about two years, the COVID epidemic and shutdowns were a convenient excuse for almost every local problem.
-- America had far less fear running through its society before 9/11 than it did after. That is the longest-lasting effect of the attack on the nation. The destroyed structures are rebuilt, the victims are buried and their loved ones have moved on as best they can. What we have not moved on from, as a country, is the fear that Al-Qaida threw into us on that disgusting day.
I remember just days after 9/11, a shop down the street from the Cortland paper was selling merchandise referencing the event. One of the bumper stickers said, "Osama bin Laden can kiss my American ass!"
I think the fear he and his operatives instilled in this country is why, 25 years later, I say Osama can still kiss my American ass.
However: He's dead, and his organization is all but broken up. If we are seized up by fear about anything now, maybe it's our own fault.
M.J. Stafford is an OBSERVER staff reporter.