What Have We Learned From 9/11?
September 13th, 2010 | Published in Community | 1 Comment
Written by Joshua Patton
In the early morning hours of September 11, 2001, my then-girlfriend and I had been up rather late timing her contractions in what turned out to be an instance of false-labor. We had moved to the living room from the bedroom, her on the couch and I sitting upright, timing the contractions to ensure that if they fell into that five-minute window, we would be off post-haste to the hospital. My daughter Madison didn’t actually arrive until two weeks later, but in those two weeks the entire world had changed.
I had left the television on CNN and when I awoke, the first tower had been struck and I thought I was watching a movie for minute. With later reports of a plane crashing near my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, my girlfriend fled to her parents’ house an hour south of the city and I chose to stay. Then like the rest of the nation, save for NY, D.C., and the fields of Shanksville, PA, I experienced it all on television.
The strongest memories I have from this time are not tinged with sadness, but with a swelling of pride at the national sense of community that stemmed from the days, weeks, and months following the attacks. It wasn’t just in this country, either. Le Monde, a newspaper published by the French proclaimed the next day, “We Are ALL Americans.” NATO invoked a measure that states if one of their allies is attacked they are all attacked, a provision originally put in place to ensure American retaliation were any of them to be attacked by the Soviets. The perimeter fence of Eagle Base in the mostly Muslim community of Tuzla, Bosnia was lined with flowers and signs denouncing the attacks and the attackers as “bad” Muslims. There was an incredible opportunity there for America and the World, which was arguably squandered. That is another story, for another day.
What beleaguered President Bush did correctly was ensure that the nation and the world knew that the war that was being launched in retaliation to these attacks was not a war on Islam. How then, one year shy of a decade later, has the country whipped itself into such an anti-Islamic fervor that the President, Secretary of Defense, and General Petraeus had to personally talk bigoted loon Terry Jones out of staging a mass burning of the Quran, the Muslim holy book believed to be the LITERAL words of God by the faithful, much as the Gospels are in Christianity.
Also dominating the national conversation, and typically being used for political posturing and fear-mongering, is the proposed “Ground Zero Mosque” which is actually a community center owned and operated by Muslims, but serving the community with prayer rooms for many different religions. Even Sarah Palin weighed in calling the area near Ground Zero hallowed ground.”A religious center is distasteful”, but she has no objection to the strip clubs located closer to Ground Zero than Park51 would be.
Personally, I think that building an Islamic community center there is the most supremely American thing we could do. Israel is often credited for how quickly it rebuilds after a terrorist attack, showing their enemy that all their attacks accomplish is a renewed fervor to defeat them. We did not do that. Ground Zero was a gaping hole with no construction for too long. Even if Park51 were solely a mosque, I would still welcome it being built in the former shadows of the WTC, if only because it would piss off the enemy like nothing else could.
People such as Terry Jones and Newt Gingrich, who tactlessly released a video today that in essence claims the war we are fighting is indeed a war against Islam, are doing the best work for Al Qaeda that an American can do. They are proving them right, that we are an intolerant bully that wishes to destroy all that is sacred to Islam. This undermines not only the perception of America in the Muslim world, but also undermines the sacrifices made by veterans and the active duty soldiers still fighting today. Bin Laden and the dusty swine that make up his inner-circle bet that by attacking America with terror tactics, we would wage war against all of Islam. While they have been driven into hiding in Pakistani caves, their work is seemingly carried on by disgraceful politicians and media personnel that are either pushing this agenda for political and financial gains or because they actually believe it. I am not sure which is more terrifying.
The opinions expressed with in this article are those of Joshua M. Patton and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other staff members at Veteran Journal.
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September 16th, 2010 at 7:28 pm (#)
“–Sarah Palin weighed in calling the area near Ground Zero hallowed ground.”A religious center is distasteful.” Isn’t hallowed ground what most religious centers are built upon? Yet another shining example of her brilliance!