9/11—THE DATE I HATE TO THINK ABOUT

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, here it is. I don’t like to even think about September 11th, 2001, let alone celebrate it. “Why?”You ask.

The answer is simple. It hurts too much. In fact, I don’t believe that it’s healthy for President Bush to think about it either. If you ask me, I believe the greatest tragedy of the Bush administration is that the President is both humiliated by and obsessed with, the September 11th, 2001 attack on our shores. Furthermore, it appears that practically all of the President’s foreign policy actions are linked to what occurred on the second Tuesday in September six years ago.

Hence, last Tuesday morning when I turned on my radio, I heard pretty much what I expected to hear. Everyone, including our most prominent local radio talk show host, was vividly recounting the events that occurred two thousand one-hundred and ninety-one days before and pleading with us to never forget. Not far down the radio dial, the angry and insistent voices of “lefty” and “righty” talk show hosts made compelling cases for both my dissatisfaction with as well as my support for our foreign policy response to 9/11.

To me, the 9/11 actions of Al Qaida were as “dastardly” as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on that December 7th Sunday back in 1941. Nothing the United States government has done or failed to do can possibly justify that murderous Al Qaida attack on us. It’s hard even to argue with President Bush’s determination to respond militarily against Al Qaida and Taliban base camps in Afghanistan.

It’s painful enough to think of the loss of innocent lives on that terrible day -- American and otherwise -- people who were working:
at the World Trade Center,
at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,
or those who may have been flying aboard United Flight #93, the Boeing 757 which exploded in a Pennsylvania farm field,
or aboard American Flight #11, the Boeing 767 which hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center,
or on United Airlines Flight #175, the Boeing 767 which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center,
as well as on American Airlines Flight #77, the Boeing 757 which crashed into the Pentagon.

The personal pain, emphasized and dramatized by the films taken that day of the crash scenes, invoked an intensity of anger and heartache that, no doubt, will cause long term anguish and illness in hundreds of thousands of innocent hearts and souls for years to come. It’s the very energy produced by the horror of 9/11 that most disturbs me.

Even worse than recalling the pain and suffering experienced by so many perfectly innocent human beings six years ago is the sense of helplessness so many of us feel as to what we can effectively do to redress that outrage and to prevent future outrages perhaps of even more catastrophic severity.

As far back as the March 5th, 1770 Boston Massacre, Americans have been urged by various elements in our society to vividly recall and respond to our national misfortunes.
We were asked to remember the cruelty of the pre-revolutionary “bloody British”. “Remember the Alamo” was the cry when that San Antonio fortress fell to Mexican General Santa Anna on March 6th, 1836. Two editors named Pulitzer and Hurst prodded us to “Remember the Maine”, the American battleship that blew up in Havana harbor on February 15th 1898 thereby compelling a reluctant President William McKinley to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Spain. Later from Tin Pan Alley came “Remember Pearl Harbor,” just one of the songs we sang to keep our respective chins up, especially during the early months of World War II when news from distant battlefields was all bad.

Two centuries ago, our forefathers created a government pledged to defend our liberty and designed to carry out our will. While there is some argument as to whether or not our “Founding Fathers” established a republic or a democracy, there’s little disagreement even among our most radical opinion makers of today that our government is expected to be responsive to both the will as well as the safety of the American people.

Thus my dilemma: I share President Bush’s outrage against Al Qaida and the Taliban. However, there is a difference between an angry response and an effective response. Additionally, it seems to this observer that Mr. Bush, our leader, has done more to rile us than he has done to reassure, let alone comfort, us.

If the magnitude of the crisis with Radical Islam is as great as President Bush insists, America is hardly in a position to handle it alone. It used to be a presidential strategy to establish international alliances, but sadly, it doesn’t appear that President Bush respects the international community enough to realize that he could lead it if he only would.

In the fall of 1991, during the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush, the largely bloodless final days of Soviet-sponsored international terror came about. Although President Bush and former President Reagan took bows for having brought this gigantic and nuclear-muscled “Godless” monster to its knees, not even they believed that they had accomplished the deed alone.

Communism was resisted first by nine American presidents, from Mr. Truman through Mr. Bush the elder, thirteen Secretaries of State (Edward Statinius through George Shultz) as well as leaders named Attlee, Churchill, Macmillan, De Gaulle, and Adenauer. Finally, who can forget those brave Berliners who prospered over Communism even more than they fought against it with weaponry?

It is important to keep two things in mind. Presidents do deserve more support than they are likely to receive given our self-appointed modern media experts at all points of the political spectrum. However, just as important to keep in mind is that distinction between citizen and presidential responsibility.

We the people can afford to be sad, joyous, resentful and angry about world attitudes and events. Of course, Citizen Bush may have the same reactions, but not President Bush. After all, he chose to be elected President and to responsibly shoulder our burdens. As Jimmy Carter used to say when asked about the burdens he carried, “They go with the territory.”

The challenge to 9/11 faced by President Bush is vastly different than the challenge FDR faced by an angry and ambitious Japan in 1941. Unlike Japan, Al Qaida isn’t a nation state anchored to Mother Earth awaiting the hot and poisonous breath of an atomic bomb. Thus the forces needed to still Al Qaida or other powerful pockets of Radical Islam require a different strategy than that of the Axis sixty-seven years ago.

Iran or a radical Iraq -- or any nation -- knows its destruction is assured if it unloads its nuclear capacity on America or any other country. Thus, it seems to me that President Bush’s challenge is to devise a strategy aside from preemptive war -- which has already proven to be a disastrous policy -- to prevent an attack on us by a crazed future antagonist.

Meanwhile, September 11th, 2001, the date I hate to think about, is indelibly carved into our national history. The suffering it marks is not something to celebrate. To celebrate 9/11 is to allow the horrors and outrages of that day to fester in our national heart.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a festering heart the same as a broken heart? If so, can we afford a broken heart?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY