Remembering September 11

A few weeks ago, a September 11-style attack was narrowly averted by British, American, and Pakistani authorities. Some 24 British citizens of Middle Eastern descent were arrested in the northern U.K. They had planned to simultaneously explode ten commercial jets departing from Britain over American cities. Other plotters of this fiendish crime may still be at large.

This development should be a wakeup call to anyone who believes that terrorism is not a threat to the civilized world. And, for New Yorkers in particular, it reopens painful memories of the mass murder of nearly three thousand people five years ago.

The events of September 11 are permanently seared into the collective consciousness of New Yorkers. As with the assassination of JFK, everyone who lived through September 11 remembers exactly what he or she was doing when those planes hit the World Trade Center.

I was shaving in the bathroom. My father, a 77-year-old World War II veteran, came up to me, and, in a peculiar mixture of agitation and anger, exclaimed, “Come look at the television!”

Not being in a particularly good mood, I nonchalantly shot back, “What’s it got to do with me?”

“It has everything to do with you. And me. And this world.”

I looked at my 26-inch color television screen and saw the second plane hit. It was something out of a disaster movie, but it was real. My first thought was: terrorism. My second thought was: Osama Bin Laden. Looking back in 20-20 hindsight, I continue to be astounded that it took government officials so long to come to the same conclusions, but, at the time, I could only think of the carnage.

After a few minutes, the initial shock began to wear off. My next thought was that there were going to be a lot of dead people, and that the wounded were going to need blood. I rushed off to Coney Island Hospital on foot. Fortunately, it was only eight-tenths of a mile away. I was in no shape to drive.

I live in southern Brooklyn, about 12 miles from Ground Zero. Even at that distance, by mid-morning, the bright blue sky had turned a sickly gray from the toxic mixture of burning fuel and metal emanating from the World Trade Center. During my walk to the hospital, a bizarre stench began to fill the air. A few hours later, in nearby Sheepshead Bay, cars would be covered in soot.

On the street, I saw a short, slight man in a white tunic. Middle-aged, he had a salt-and-pepper beard that reached to his collar bones. He was standing about aimlessly.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have given him an instant’s thought, but this was no ordinary moment. Why was this man dressed like that? Was he crazy? I imagined a bunch of vigilantes with baseball bats setting upon this fellow.

Perhaps it was a premonition because, tragically, a number of such incidents subsequently occurred throughout the U.S. Or, perhaps, in my disorientation, I was struggling with a sudden surge of my own bias.

There is prejudice in all human beings. Anyone who says he has none is either a saint or a liar, and there are very few saints in this world. Most of us recognize this flaw and struggle to overcome it.

I recall my father telling me a story about when he was on leave from his Air Corps radio course before going overseas during World War II. He was incensed at the sight of a subway conductor belligerently forcing an elderly Japanese man to open his belongings for inspection. The conductor’s behavior was very wrong but understandable. He was overcome by the moment. Then, as now, we were at war.

I brushed aside my disturbing thoughts about the man in the tunic and proceeded to the hospital. Inside, I found hundreds of people eagerly wanting to give blood. Most of them were men in their 20s and 30s, angry and shocked at the day’s events. A former Foreign Service officer who served in Afghanistan bitterly reflected on the chaos in that country.

I felt like I was in a conscription office right after Pearl Harbor. For a brief, shining moment, we as a people had a single, unified purpose: to defeat and destroy the terrorists who perpetrated this monstrous sneak attack. Unlike the soldiers who perished on December 7, l941, the thousands who died on September 11, 2001 were civilians, which makes the destruction of the World Trade Center even more dastardly than the storied Day of Infamy.

The scene at the hospital was extraordinary. People were actually cutting in front of each other to give blood. An off-duty nurse lied in an attempt to jump the line. She was asked to leave. At 4:00 p.m. everyone behind me was told to go home. I was the last person to make the cutoff. Finally, about half an hour later, I was able to donate a pint of my red corpuscles. I had been at the hospital for over six hours.

I still have my Blood Donor Card bearing the date September 11, 2001. I consider it a civilian award of sorts, a miniscule yet meaningful contribution to the war on terror.

That evening I heard news anchor Rosanna Scotto on Fox 5 Television echo what my dad had said earlier: “If you don’t think this affects you, just open your window and breathe the air.”

I didn’t need her to tell me that. I’d had a charcoal taste in my mouth all day.

I am not a policeman or first responder, and I live 12 miles from Ground Zero. Still, the memory of September 11 will always be with me.

Five years later, New York, the epicenter of world commerce, is still in Al Qaeda’s cross hairs. We continue to live under the Damocles sword.

Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the would-be airplane bombers in Britain have achieved a victory in their defeat. Airline traffic in the U.S. and the U.K. was severely disrupted. There will be economic fallout, and people are frightened. We can thwart a thousand plots, but the terrorists only have to be successful once for a replay of September 11.

Worse, we have lost the unity of September 11. Our national conversation has degenerated into political bickering and recrimination. And our enemies love it.

The military historian and retired U.S. Army Colonel Ralph Peters has often said that when you fight a war, you must fight to win. Half measures won’t do. The U.S. is constrained by its desire to minimize casualties, placate public opinion, and safeguard civil liberties. Terrorists have no such compunctions. They turn against us the very qualities that make America a modern, vibrant democracy. That is the conundrum of 21st-century society.

War is a dirty, nasty business. Of course civil liberties need to be safeguarded, and differing opinions need to be constructively exchanged. But I fear that our modern sensibilities will prevent us from effectively dealing with this evil.

In February 1945, the United States blanketed Dresden with incendiary bombs that killed 135,000 civilians in 48 hours. Roughly the same number of civilians were killed by atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year. In Triumph and Tragedy, the last volume of his World War II memoirs, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill estimated that the latter action saved 1.5 million American and British lives that would have been lost in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

To be sure, such action in the present war on terror would be wholly unjustified, counterproductive, and insane. That being said, I am concerned that we may have lost our ability to make the tough – even brutal – moral choices necessary to overcome the malevolent forces that have insinuated themselves in over 60 countries. Do we have the will to get the job done, or have we lost our way?

Five years ago, a commentator observed that terror scenarios are only limited by one’s imagination. Ban liquids on board aircraft, and maybe terrorists will switch to gases. The possibilities are endless. The same commentator half-facetiously suggested that everyone fly naked. I don’t think that would solve the problem, but, just in case, save me a seat next to Pamela Anderson.

September 11 will be with us for a long time. Shortly after that horrific day, while Christie Whitman and the EPA were telling everyone that the air around Ground Zero was fine, local school children were taking sick by the dozens. Recently there have been high-profile reports of New York City police officers and firefighters dying from respiratory ailments contracted on September 11.

A series of August 2006 articles in The New York Post tell the tragic story of Sister Cindy Mahoney, a former South Carolina EMT who ministered for hundreds of hours at Ground Zero. Dying of respiratory disease, she is requesting that her body be autopsied to prove that her death was caused by fumes from the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, a mass tort action brought by 8,000 plaintiffs is moving forward.

And how do we all move forward? As best we can. This is going to be a long war. To many, it doesn’t feel like a war because there is no mass mobilization of troops and industry, no sovereign state or uniformed enemy to fight. But that is precisely what makes it even more pernicious. The British plotters were home grown, and, by many accounts “good boys”

As long as there are people whose fanatical hatred compels them to choose mass-murder-suicide over life, we’ve got a problem. Yes, we need vigorous, worldwide law enforcement, covert operations, and military action. Thank God for Scotland Yard!

But we also need something else. In his 1990 autobiography “Why Me?”, Sammy Davis, Jr. posed the question of how do you kill an idea. His answer: with a better idea. Davis was talking about racial prejudice, but his comment also applies to today’s terrorism. We need to get people to choose life over death. Successful people who enjoy good jobs, friends, and families don’t have time to indulge in mindless hatred.

Only when both prongs of this strategy are effectively utilized will the war on terror be won. So far, we haven’t been winning many hearts and minds. As the fifth anniversary of September 11 approaches, let us remember what was lost on that terrible day, and pray for victory on the battlefield of arms and ideas.