Staff Editorial: 9.11.11, Where Are We Now?

As Pearl Harbor was for some of our grandparents and President John F. Kennedy's assassination was for some of our parents, September  11, 2001 was the "where-were-you-when" moment of our generation. It was a Tuesday morning that rocked our elementary and middle school lives, changing the focus of our geography lessons from the West to the Middle East and permanently etching a new "t-word" into our vocabularies. It was one day—four incidents in the span of a few hours--, the repercussions of which we are still facing in our young-adult lives.

Two wars (three, if you count Libya; infinity, if you count every country with U. S. troops in it), hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and ten years later, life is still not quite the same. Subway and bus stations have become search checkpoints, warning passengers to beware of and to report suspicious activity.  The purse-clutching, attitude of fear that black men complained of enduring in society has re-materialized as a fear of all things Islam, as racial profiling has taken on a whole new life. Every person from the Middle East, and every person someone believes looks like they are from the Middle East, has to prove that they are not terrorists as the  hypersensitive public fearfully waits for the slightest sign of anything to the contrary. Airplane travel almost feels like a mission to Mars rather than a trip across the country. Gas prices have never recovered.  Even the mail is not safe.

Much has been said about the September 11th attacks being almost like a wake-up call for America. While anti-United States sentiment was hardly a secret and "terrorism" was not  a new phenomenon to the rest of the world,  the events of September 11th forced the United States to confront its negative international reputation and to do something to improve it. Debates about whether or not these efforts have been successful  are numerous and varied, but no one can say that it is not on our radar. 

While many Americans seemed to view the capture and death of Osama bin Laden as vengeance for the September 11th attacks, some people are not as easily vindicated. Recent reports detail the long-term illnesses and health defects that first responders and volunteers at the World Trade Center, as well as residents of lower Manhattan who lived near the Twin Towers, continue to suffer from due to the effects of the smoke and toxic chemicals to which they were exposed. Of course, perhaps even worse off than them, are the people whose relatives and friends are gone forever.

Sadly, for all of the pain, violence, and death that September 11th wrought a decade ago, it continues to bring about more every single day. Rather than banding together to work for peace, the nations of the world, Western and Middle Eastern alike, are mostly pre-occupied with wreaking havoc in the name of "national security" and defending 2their honor against perceived potential threats, regardless of the cost. In the process, we've become even more divided than we already were.