9/11 clearly the worst American tragedy

By Chris Sweigart

Published: June 29, 2007

It doesn’t take Albert Einstein to determine the worst tragedy in the history of the United States. You remember where you were when the planes crashed into the Twin Towers and Pentagon. That day, known forever as 9/11, seems like yesterday.

The events of that morning delivered a double whammy. First, thousands of lives were lost. That’s bad enough. Second, the world as we know it changed. The War on Terror began and America’s witch hunt for 9/11’s masterminds began. Since then, thousands more have died overseas defending freedom.

Certainly, if 9/11 never happened, our world would be much different.

Here’s how I’ll round out the rest of the top five:

2) Pearl Harbor—The original 9/11, except this one didn’t involve commercial airliners and happened in the Pacific. It’s the first time I recall America being completely blind-sided and thrust the U.S. into World War II, though we may have been on the brink of getting involved anyway.

3) Civil War—Good grief! It seems bloodshed dominates the top of this list. When our nation is torn against itself and brothers are killing brothers in mortal combat, that’s pretty darn tragic. The Civil War should have been fought democratically through debate.

4) The Great Depression—Many Americans lost everything they had. There were few jobs. There was little money. America was a very undesirable place to live. And this was less than 80 years ago.

5) JFK assassination—Like 9/11, this is two-fold. On one hand, you’ve got to wonder about what direction this nation had gone in had JFK not been gunned down on a Dallas street in 1963. The late 60s turned turbulent and rebellious. Would Kennedy’s presence in the White House prevented our full involvement in Vietnam? Would Civil Rights been handled differently, though LBJ did a meritorious job in that regard? Also, his assassination brought distrust among American people in regard to its own government. Some still believe the assassination was an inside job. If your president can’t trust the government, how can we? Then again, he may very well been killed as part of a Cuban/Russian plot involving Lee Harvey Oswald and a few other bad guys.

I thought about Katrina, which is undoubtedly the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history. But I’ll leave natural disasters to another category, for another day. Also worth mentioning are the Space Shuttle disasters.

Next week: Greatest sports moments in U.S. history.