9/11 observances

By: Jennifer Foster | Opelika Auburn News
Published: September 12, 2009 | 0 Comments | Post a Comment

I hope you had some time today to watch and/or listen to the services for the victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I just flipped through photos in a slideshow sent to me by a friend. My husband remarked that he got a bit sick to his stomach as he viewed them.

I understand.

I am still overwhelmed by the magnitude of the destruction -- the complete obliteration of the Twin Towers, the profound damage to the Pentagon and the scorched earth of Shanksville, Pa. Even more overwhelming than those things, though, is the human toll -- of course, for the men, women and children who were lost, but also on the loved ones from whom they were so abruptly and violently taken.

Put simply, it's still difficult for me to completely grasp -- or perhaps, just to accept -- that losses of such devastating proportions can be perpetrated on so many by so few.

It's common to hear refrains of "May we never forget" at this time every year. Someone asked this morning on Twitter what, exactly, that means.

For me, it means the continued, conscious effort to remember the events of that day: The confusion, the shock, the sadness, the anger and ultimately, the resolve. It means making a conscious effort to force myself to watch the video clips of that day, to look at those awful pictures, to remember what I felt like as those events unfolded. It means remembering the physiological reactions I had throughout the day: The elevated heart rate, the quicker breathing pattern, the borderline panic. As I'm watching those videos and looking at those pictures, it's not uncommon for me to experience those physiological reactions anew. And that's OK: I only go through it once or twice a year. There are thousands of Americans who live with much more profound, and permanent, ramifications every minute of every day.

That's what I want to remember.

Lee Hamilton, the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, did this nation a favor by crystallizing the shortcomings of our intelligence and security capabilities in succinct and memorable language: 9/11 was possible in large part simply because America had a failure of imagination, he said.

That's what I want to remember.

I was seven months pregnant with our first child on 9/11. I remember reaching down and touching my belly and wondering what sort of world my little one would inhabit. I had always had some measure of interest in civic affairs and government, but I realized that day in a way I hadn't before that I had a responsibility to contribute what I could to policies and leadership that would keep our baby safe.

That's what I want to remember.

9/11. May we never forget.

See also:

Are your vivid memories of 9/11 starting to fade? Spend some time watching CNN coverage and Fox News coverage of the WTC attacks. Note the suppositions that dominate the early analysis of these events: Anchors and their guests explore the possibilities that the sun could have blinded pilots, pilots were distracted and/or became confused about their routes, massive navigation failures affected both planes, etc. This is that failure of imagination we discussed earlier. Fox News anchor Jon Scott is the first to call it terrorism, and he correctly identifies Osama bin Laden by name as the responsible terrorist within 10 seconds of witnessing the impact of the second plane into the WTC. FNC reporter Eric Shawn describes the possibilities of hijackers having overtaken the planes.

Worldwide serach for new videos of 9/11 attacks, an Associated Press story about the efforts to find, catalog and preserve little-known sources of film, whether from bystanders, surveillance cameras or anything else, that captured the worst terrorist attacks on American soil.