11 September 2001
Posted by Ian Raugh on Saturday, 10 September 2011
As you can imagine, a lot of people are typing 9/11, and related terms, into their browsers looking for information and opinions. The past decade has brought a lot of changing emotions and views about the event, so let me add my thoughts to the storm, from the perspective of someone who was only 11 at the time.
The day itself is a blur, but I distinctly remember (I could find the room if asked to) being in class in sixth grade doing long division when the announcement came that the teachers should not turn on their televisions. I also distinctly remember not being able to focus the rest of the day out of raw curiosity over what had happened, especially as children were leaving in droves. I watched the news when I got home, and I remember seeing the famous footage but can’t for the life of me remember how I reacted. I probably simply did not comprehend it, even with reporters saying exactly how I should be reacting, I do not remember any strong reaction.
The years following are similarly a blur, I was too young to pay attention to all the political fallout (although I now wish that I had). Years passed and, besides the anthrax scare shortly after, I just let it slip out of my mind. One of my teachers was sent overseas, so most of our school made cards for him. Mine, in some vague understanding that vengeance/punishment for those responsible was a goal, wrote to “Remember 9/11/2001″. Did I really mean it? No, but I thought it was ‘appropriate’.
The farther removed from the day the less it was in, at least my, consciousness. At school we did the minutes of silence in respect and I was respectful, although these days I wonder if it was out of respect or conformity. I still paid attention to the casualty reports on the news and heard arguments over keeping our troops in or pulling them out. Although I retained relative neutrality, reasoning that I did not know enough about the situation, I slowly fell to mild support of removing our troops. This was largely my preference for not having anyone in a war setting, rather than a carefully reasoned position.
When Obama was running for the presidency, his statements about the gradual removal of our troops seemed reasonable to me. After all, removing them suddenly would leave a power vacuum and would probably only allow someone to rise to power who would subjugate the people again. I voted for him, or rather, I voted against Palin. Until the death of Osama Bin Laden, I had not really thought about the war at all (my reaction to his death will have to wait for a different post).
So here we are, a decade later, and what have we accomplished? Quite a bit, I will not argue that in the slightest, but I can’t help but view it in these terms: How many lives have we improved since 9/11 and what have we sacrificed for those ‘improvements’?
And let me part with this: Are we any safer? Are we any less safe?
I, quite frankly, don’t know.
