The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

It’s been 20 years since the Trade Towers were destroyed by Al Qaida with nearly 3000 people killed. The wave of American revulsion is still reverberating if we can judge by the ceremonies planned for this anniversary. This is well and good, a fitting and proper tribute to the victims of the Towers and the Pentagon and Flight 93 over Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

I remember watching in horror on our television the first Tower burning high up in what seemed like an accident, some jetliner out of control, coming down in New York City … and then, unbelievably, the second one hitting the Tower next door. Forget about accident, this was an attack! People were jumping out of windows to their deaths and then we all watched the first tower suddenly collapse, followed shortly by the pancaking second, thousands of people in those buildings who never made it out. If you watched this, you will never forget those images. Twenty years later, they’re still the horror show of our lives.

But you’ll forgive me, or maybe not, if I inject a note of cynicism here on a hallowed day in American history. I had a couple of folks say to me in the aftermath of this terrorism, somebody needed to pay. Someone needed to be killed. Someone needed to be on the receiving end of our righteous vengeance. 4×4 jacked up pickups roared up and down the island with huge tattered double American flags, patriotism on full display. Muslims in America were suddenly our enemies. Sikhs too for those whose hatred was fueled by a fevered ignorance. We went to war in Afghanistan, then we went to war again in Iraq.

Somebody paid all right. But mostly not the perpetrators, mostly innocent civilians we euphemistically called collateral damage. We brought Hell to bear on these people for our wounds. And no doubt we created another generation of people who see America, not as some shining city on a hill, but Stormtroopers invading their countries in search of … what? Revenge? Osama bin Laden? Weapons of mass destruction? Oil?

Twenty years of this, hundreds of thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, a loss of innocence. The jingoism that emanated from the tonnage of collapsing glass and metal and concrete still rings loud in the Land of the Free, the not really so Brave. The fear of future terrorism brought forth outright racism, nationalism and ultimately the likes of Donald J. Trump. It’s fine and appropriate to commemorate the lives lost on Nine Eleven two decades later, but let’s remember what else was lost on that day. Maybe even learn from it….

Hits: 21