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I was 17. I went to school in lower Manhattan, not 5 blocks from the WTC. While walking past it one day, perhaps a year earlier, my friends and I tried to guess whether it would hit our school if it fell. We decided that it wouldn't, and furthermore that it was extremely unlikely to fall in that direction anyway. On September 11th, the dust cloud from the collapsing WTC did in fact brush up against our school building.
The day began normally enough. When I exited from the train station, I saw what looked like confetti, and a lot of people looking upwards. Eventually the WTC came into view, and I could see the smoke and fire. People were saying that a plane had crashed into the building. A friend confirmed it. I joked that the pilot must have been very drunk.
My school is well funded. There are televisions in many of the rooms, especially on the lower floors. The class, teacher included, watched events unfold, both from the helicopters' cameras, and through the windows. The camera didn't catch the second plane hitting, only the explosion. After the expected chorus of people proclaiming "Oh shit" and "Holy shit", the first words out of peoples' mouths were "Yep. It's terrorism."
Note the use of the word "yep." It is not a direct quote, but I use it to convey the mindset of myself and my peers. We had all considered immediately that it could have been terrorism. I had continued to school with that thought in my mind, despite my crack about the pilot being drunk. Do you know why? It simply wasn't a big deal. Life would go on. Terrorism was fact. One had to look no further than the Oklahoma city bombing, or the previous WTC bombing.
So the day continued. An announcement came from the principal to continue attending classes normally. We all laughed. Nobody was gonna leave the building or anything, but we certainly weren't gonna pass up this chance to miss class.
I went to the highest floor of the school. A friend of mine had gotten the same idea. Being in Manhattan, horizontal space is at a premium, so our school had 10 floors. The upper classrooms were vacant, and we could get an excellent view from the windows. There wasn't much to see, except some fire and falling debris. But lo! doth falling debris have arms and legs? That's how we could tell that people were falling. At that distance, arms and legs are a major identifying feature. Most of the debris was just debris, but some of it was in fact people.
Maybe that's what made me feel more mortal that day. Maybe it's why, as the school was evacuated and we walked up the West side highway, I stayed close to the heavy cement divider in the middle of the road, in case someone opened fire on us. Or maybe it's because our whole building shook at some point in the morning. Seeing death, with your own eyes, can be very powerful, even at a distance.
But I was never scared of anything BECAUSE of the event itself. Such things happen. There are 50,000 deaths per year due to car crashes. Why do we not have a Department of Automotive Security?
I carried that fear through the war in Afghanistan. It was state sponsored terrorism, the TV said. Could it be? Was it that easy? Then by all means, go get 'em! A war to show our defiant enemies that we would not stand for this sort of thing. It sounded like it could work.
Events like the Anthrax letters, and the Beltway snipers, helped continue the atmosphere that, this time, it was different. I had not been shot at on the West side highway, but elsewhere this sort of thing was happening. Our brave soldiers and law enforcement officers were keeping us safe. Or so I thought.
I supported the Iraq war. "They know where they are," I said to objectors. "They can't tell us because that would expose their sources!" When we didn't find the weapons, THAT was something that changed my views of the world. Our government lied to us? What else are they lying about? It was my questioning spurred from this that exposed the facts about terrorism, about the states that sponsor it and about what effort we've really made to fix the problem. All of this and more worked together to convince me that my initial view was right - that terrorism really was not a big deal, in the death and destruction it causes. The only power terrorism had was the power to change people's minds. That's why it's called terrorism. Not car-bombism, not civillian warfare. Its goal is to create and use spectacular events to change public opinion. Through fear.
There was a saying after the attacks. "If you do X, the terrorists have already won." To me, this always seemed absurd. Like walking into a wall, over and over, again and saying "If you change direction, the wall has already won." If terrorism was a true threat, you must take the steps logically necessary to defeat it. And yet throughout the years since, our government has been combatting the conventional wisdom by curbing our rights and liberties, making us wait longer at the airport, and wasting billions of dollars on warfare that will eventually make more terrorists. None of these measures are effective at beating back terrorists. The only conclusion I can come to is that terrorism is not a true threat. Which is the mindset I've always had. That's why I wondered at the reactions of so many adults, and people who had never seen terrorism close up.
Maybe it's just because I grew up when I did. Maybe I've seen too many movies, or have an overactive imagination. I was not shocked on 9/11, except perhaps at seeing death so close. Death is everywhere. Death is life. If letting fear rule your actions is letting the terrorists win, then they have beaten our great country. On November second, they won big.
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