Here is my essay that was published in the Winston-Salem Journal yesterday. It’s behind a pay wall or I would just post a link.
“On September 11 of 2001, on the way to my studio workspace on the 92nd floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center, I witnessed a defining national tragedy. Since that day 20 years ago, I have thought a lot ab…
Here is my essay that was published in the Winston-Salem Journal yesterday. It’s behind a pay wall or I would just post a link.
“On September 11 of 2001, on the way to my studio workspace on the 92nd floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center, I witnessed a defining national tragedy. Since that day 20 years ago, I have thought a lot about those events, and the subsequent fallout from our national reaction.
There was a tidal wave of sadness that engulfed New York City in the days and weeks after the towers fell, as the colossal hole in the ground smoldered on the southern tip of Manhattan. Memorials sprung up in parks and along fences all across the city, with people posting or wearing pictures of their dead and missing loved ones. Every firehouse was shrouded in black, memorials to lost members posted at each door. There were so many funerals that the NYFD asked the public to attend so their widows wouldn’t be alone. The artists in our group gathered to absorb and commiserate as we were coming to understand what happened. The body of one of our colleagues, Michael Richards, had been found, identified by the wallet in his pocket. We were dumbstruck by all that might imply.
Yet in the midst of all the chaos and trauma, people came together to grieve and to help. Volunteers of all sorts assembled to assist in the herculean task of cleaning up Ground Zero.
Something I noticed then was the divergent ways people reacted to the catastrophe, mostly coalescing into two camps: those who asked “Why would anyone hate us so much that they would resort to such madness?”, and “They hate our freedom. Bomb them all back to the Stone Age.” The official responses boiled down to “let’s get to the bottom of this, find out who is behind it, and bring them to justice”, or “This was an act of war which cannot go unanswered in kind.” There was a brief window when our collective response might have been reasonably tempered, to treat the terrorist attacks as a criminal act, work with international allies, and prosecute the perpetrators accordingly, as we did when Islamic radicals carried out the first attack on the WTC in 1993. With the most obvious perpetrators on Sept. 11th committing suicide in the process, that outcome was distinctly unsatisfying. Even a limited war in Afghanistan, with clear objectives and a definitive end-date, seemed reasonable.
We were not to act with reason.
The profound grief over what was lost – all those who leapt to their deaths or died at their desks, brave civil servants who gave everything to save others, the loss of innocence that we could live in a country untouched and unchanged by terrorist violence – became a fissure cleaved into cultural discord. While patriotism proliferated, divisions grew. The Bush Administration, sensing the difficulties of winning in the “graveyard of nations”, opted to focus fighting where they thought they could win. Anti-war sentiment against entering Iraq was quickly subsumed by forces intent on capitalizing on our collective grief.
We once talked about “not letting the terrorists win”, by behaving as a free people. Our open society, the ease with which we entered buildings, boarded planes, welcomed strangers, communicated privately, was suddenly up for grabs. An administration that had won legitimacy by a single vote on the Supreme Court, was so eager to show it was in control after being caught flat-footed by the brazen attack, that it entered not one, but two wars. The costs were put on America’s credit card left unpaid, passed to our grandchildren in a woeful lack of critical infrastructure and essential services. The heartfelt patriotism that had joined us, has since hardened into a dangerous nationalism for some, leading to the Jan. 6th attack on our Capitol. We are reaping now what was sown then.
9/11 became a benchmark for what might move us to action against existential threats. America has since seen more large-scale tragedies; lives lost to gun violence now top 39,000/ year, the pandemic has cost us over 640,000 lives, not to mention the weather-related destruction due to the climate crisis. Still, little has caught our attention as 9/11 did.
If Osama Bin Laden’s goal was to divide America against itself, has his mission been accomplished? After 20 years, have the terrorists won after all?
It remains to be seen whether we have lost the lessons of this tragedy – that we’re better together than apart, that our government can work for all of us. The better angels of our natures are waiting to be tasked.
Well said. We lost our minds. We had a temper tantrum of epic proportions.
In answer to your last question, did OBL accomplish his mission? Yes, but if he had not provided the match for our inferno, someone else would have. The forces of Cheney/Rumsfeld etc. were committed to the destruction of anything standing in the way of the "military industrial complex". Anything, including fiscal responsibility, the value of human life and the continued health of our planet. Oh, and democracy? Just another impediment to be trampled.
Kara Hammond, I wish you would send your OpEd piece to every major newspaper in the country and post it on your FaceBook page (if you have one). All Americans need to be exposed to these words and ideas!
I’d just moved to the Seattle area and knew no one in town on 9/11. So I knocked on a neighbor's door and asked if we could watch the news together. He let me in.
Within days I’d joined a peace and justice coalition. The clouds of war were clearly gathering. I also placed a picture of George W on my mantle as a reminder to pray for him. To pray that his better angels would guide him.
We spoke with our representatives, negotiated with police, joined forces with unions and we marched. But, empires don’t listen, certainly not to their better angels.
We face a Herculean effort to reclaim democracy and heal the soul of our nation.
I was headed to the school where I had worked and now volunteered to teach a small class in expository writing. We had assigned the students to explore oral history by asking people old enough about the assassination of JFK and then realizing that they did not have a similar stunning experience in their young lives, to talk about something in their family. When I arrived, they were in stunned silence and we all agreed that they had their moment that they would not forget and where they were when they heard. As an aside, I was studying as part of a experience abroad at Fourah Bay College, in Freetown, Sierra Leone when JFK was assassinated.
Thank you, Kara, for sharing these wise and deeply felt thoughts.
I hope it is not inappropriate for me to share some of mine, for the whole world was affected, near and far.
I had forebodings. On August 29th, I wrote to a friend about “sleepwalkers reasoning on the edge of the abyss…. But…. are we not already in it?”… She thought I was "exaggerating as usual"… On September 10th, writing to the same person: “The population is like a dog sleeping in the middle of the road… One doubts our survival instincts.”
#
The notes that follow date back to 2017 but broadly represent my view ever since the attack on the Twin Towers. I don’t feel Americans have ever understood the full implications of this horror for them but, precisely because of that, the scars are still too raw, the wound too open and still suppurating, today is not the right moment to probe it.
Still, Leonard Cohen seems to have been touched by these words of Rumi:
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
“It is hardly surprising that the 9/11 attack on New York City should have had the immense psychological impact IT WAS INTENDED TO HAVE. What was both unnecessary and idiotic was for the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld trio, not only to fall into the trap set for America, activating even those sequences in the chain reaction they were not expected to, but to act in such a way as to multiply and perpetuate the dangers faced, not only by the US but by the whole world.
LIKE EVERY SINGLE ACTION OF AL QAIDA AND DAECH, 9/11 WAS PLAINLY DESIGNED, NOT AS AN END IN ITSELF, BUT AS THE TRIGGER TO A CHAIN-REACTION BOMB.
The aim: to spark off war between the nearly 2 billion Muslims and all other human beings. As such, it is not only an attack on those whom the terrorists label infidels, but an attack on the whole world, starting with the Muslim Umma, who will bear and already are bearing the brunt of the suffering. It is not the “shock and awe” effect of the attack on the twin towers that has made this possible but the attack on Iraq in 2003, the knock-on effects of which have already destabilized the Middle East and North Africa and spilled over into Europe.
Instead of calling in the bomb-disposal squad and leading a swift and tightly targeted counter-attack designed solely to discourage any future attempts, the Bush trio, with the help of Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, deliberately promoted an open-ended state of paranoia among the already shocked populace, as a means to maximizing executive power and using it to tighten controls and stampede America into what looks all too much like the export of a permanent state of war.”
#
I know it is still hard for Americans to understand what I have written about the world’s Muslims, caught between a rock and a hard place. Victimhood is a terrible state for all concerned, especially when it becomes chronic, giving rise to all manner of new horrors that make more and more victims. It is so important to rise above victimhood as soon as possible—but who can blame those that never recover?
Very well put, Herb. It was a made-for-tv disaster, orchestrated for maximum horrific effect. And the Bush admin. did their very best to take advantage of it for their own ends, never letting a crisis go to waste and all that Shock Doctrine stuff.
Kara Beautifully expressed and so true. We are the ‘angels’ who now must be tasked to craft a country that serves the great majority of Americans and of whose functional values we are proud.
You are right that they were "capitalizing on our collective grief." And the operative word I think is "capitalizing," as in making $. We did not stand a chance of making a better decision as a community of citizens against the individualistic right to exploit (for $) any situation. That individualistic right is sacred in this country of ours. It always trumps the greater good.
But their first objective was to use the human response for revenge against anyone hurting them to whip up the populace for an attack on those who they could claim were the perpetrators of the attack. Once that frenzy was converted into more Republicans in office, then they could turn the political power into tax cuts for the wealthy, defense contracts and other tax loopholes for big contributors to the Party.
Kara Hammond thank you. I’m so glad this was published, and has the authority of the city paper behind it. Someone below included a link as well—it is accessible online so I’ll go add to the clicks it gets right away. We all should. One note though, an important one: there is literally no such thing as a “limited war.” Each war is Pandora’s box.
Here is my essay that was published in the Winston-Salem Journal yesterday. It’s behind a pay wall or I would just post a link.
“On September 11 of 2001, on the way to my studio workspace on the 92nd floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center, I witnessed a defining national tragedy. Since that day 20 years ago, I have thought a lot about those events, and the subsequent fallout from our national reaction.
There was a tidal wave of sadness that engulfed New York City in the days and weeks after the towers fell, as the colossal hole in the ground smoldered on the southern tip of Manhattan. Memorials sprung up in parks and along fences all across the city, with people posting or wearing pictures of their dead and missing loved ones. Every firehouse was shrouded in black, memorials to lost members posted at each door. There were so many funerals that the NYFD asked the public to attend so their widows wouldn’t be alone. The artists in our group gathered to absorb and commiserate as we were coming to understand what happened. The body of one of our colleagues, Michael Richards, had been found, identified by the wallet in his pocket. We were dumbstruck by all that might imply.
Yet in the midst of all the chaos and trauma, people came together to grieve and to help. Volunteers of all sorts assembled to assist in the herculean task of cleaning up Ground Zero.
Something I noticed then was the divergent ways people reacted to the catastrophe, mostly coalescing into two camps: those who asked “Why would anyone hate us so much that they would resort to such madness?”, and “They hate our freedom. Bomb them all back to the Stone Age.” The official responses boiled down to “let’s get to the bottom of this, find out who is behind it, and bring them to justice”, or “This was an act of war which cannot go unanswered in kind.” There was a brief window when our collective response might have been reasonably tempered, to treat the terrorist attacks as a criminal act, work with international allies, and prosecute the perpetrators accordingly, as we did when Islamic radicals carried out the first attack on the WTC in 1993. With the most obvious perpetrators on Sept. 11th committing suicide in the process, that outcome was distinctly unsatisfying. Even a limited war in Afghanistan, with clear objectives and a definitive end-date, seemed reasonable.
We were not to act with reason.
The profound grief over what was lost – all those who leapt to their deaths or died at their desks, brave civil servants who gave everything to save others, the loss of innocence that we could live in a country untouched and unchanged by terrorist violence – became a fissure cleaved into cultural discord. While patriotism proliferated, divisions grew. The Bush Administration, sensing the difficulties of winning in the “graveyard of nations”, opted to focus fighting where they thought they could win. Anti-war sentiment against entering Iraq was quickly subsumed by forces intent on capitalizing on our collective grief.
We once talked about “not letting the terrorists win”, by behaving as a free people. Our open society, the ease with which we entered buildings, boarded planes, welcomed strangers, communicated privately, was suddenly up for grabs. An administration that had won legitimacy by a single vote on the Supreme Court, was so eager to show it was in control after being caught flat-footed by the brazen attack, that it entered not one, but two wars. The costs were put on America’s credit card left unpaid, passed to our grandchildren in a woeful lack of critical infrastructure and essential services. The heartfelt patriotism that had joined us, has since hardened into a dangerous nationalism for some, leading to the Jan. 6th attack on our Capitol. We are reaping now what was sown then.
9/11 became a benchmark for what might move us to action against existential threats. America has since seen more large-scale tragedies; lives lost to gun violence now top 39,000/ year, the pandemic has cost us over 640,000 lives, not to mention the weather-related destruction due to the climate crisis. Still, little has caught our attention as 9/11 did.
If Osama Bin Laden’s goal was to divide America against itself, has his mission been accomplished? After 20 years, have the terrorists won after all?
It remains to be seen whether we have lost the lessons of this tragedy – that we’re better together than apart, that our government can work for all of us. The better angels of our natures are waiting to be tasked.
Well said. We lost our minds. We had a temper tantrum of epic proportions.
In answer to your last question, did OBL accomplish his mission? Yes, but if he had not provided the match for our inferno, someone else would have. The forces of Cheney/Rumsfeld etc. were committed to the destruction of anything standing in the way of the "military industrial complex". Anything, including fiscal responsibility, the value of human life and the continued health of our planet. Oh, and democracy? Just another impediment to be trampled.
Well stated, Bill !
Kara Hammond, I wish you would send your OpEd piece to every major newspaper in the country and post it on your FaceBook page (if you have one). All Americans need to be exposed to these words and ideas!
I’d just moved to the Seattle area and knew no one in town on 9/11. So I knocked on a neighbor's door and asked if we could watch the news together. He let me in.
Within days I’d joined a peace and justice coalition. The clouds of war were clearly gathering. I also placed a picture of George W on my mantle as a reminder to pray for him. To pray that his better angels would guide him.
We spoke with our representatives, negotiated with police, joined forces with unions and we marched. But, empires don’t listen, certainly not to their better angels.
We face a Herculean effort to reclaim democracy and heal the soul of our nation.
I was headed to the school where I had worked and now volunteered to teach a small class in expository writing. We had assigned the students to explore oral history by asking people old enough about the assassination of JFK and then realizing that they did not have a similar stunning experience in their young lives, to talk about something in their family. When I arrived, they were in stunned silence and we all agreed that they had their moment that they would not forget and where they were when they heard. As an aside, I was studying as part of a experience abroad at Fourah Bay College, in Freetown, Sierra Leone when JFK was assassinated.
Kudos to you, Diane Love !
Thank you, Kara, for sharing these wise and deeply felt thoughts.
I hope it is not inappropriate for me to share some of mine, for the whole world was affected, near and far.
I had forebodings. On August 29th, I wrote to a friend about “sleepwalkers reasoning on the edge of the abyss…. But…. are we not already in it?”… She thought I was "exaggerating as usual"… On September 10th, writing to the same person: “The population is like a dog sleeping in the middle of the road… One doubts our survival instincts.”
#
The notes that follow date back to 2017 but broadly represent my view ever since the attack on the Twin Towers. I don’t feel Americans have ever understood the full implications of this horror for them but, precisely because of that, the scars are still too raw, the wound too open and still suppurating, today is not the right moment to probe it.
Still, Leonard Cohen seems to have been touched by these words of Rumi:
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
“It is hardly surprising that the 9/11 attack on New York City should have had the immense psychological impact IT WAS INTENDED TO HAVE. What was both unnecessary and idiotic was for the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld trio, not only to fall into the trap set for America, activating even those sequences in the chain reaction they were not expected to, but to act in such a way as to multiply and perpetuate the dangers faced, not only by the US but by the whole world.
LIKE EVERY SINGLE ACTION OF AL QAIDA AND DAECH, 9/11 WAS PLAINLY DESIGNED, NOT AS AN END IN ITSELF, BUT AS THE TRIGGER TO A CHAIN-REACTION BOMB.
The aim: to spark off war between the nearly 2 billion Muslims and all other human beings. As such, it is not only an attack on those whom the terrorists label infidels, but an attack on the whole world, starting with the Muslim Umma, who will bear and already are bearing the brunt of the suffering. It is not the “shock and awe” effect of the attack on the twin towers that has made this possible but the attack on Iraq in 2003, the knock-on effects of which have already destabilized the Middle East and North Africa and spilled over into Europe.
Instead of calling in the bomb-disposal squad and leading a swift and tightly targeted counter-attack designed solely to discourage any future attempts, the Bush trio, with the help of Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, deliberately promoted an open-ended state of paranoia among the already shocked populace, as a means to maximizing executive power and using it to tighten controls and stampede America into what looks all too much like the export of a permanent state of war.”
#
I know it is still hard for Americans to understand what I have written about the world’s Muslims, caught between a rock and a hard place. Victimhood is a terrible state for all concerned, especially when it becomes chronic, giving rise to all manner of new horrors that make more and more victims. It is so important to rise above victimhood as soon as possible—but who can blame those that never recover?
Very well put, Herb. It was a made-for-tv disaster, orchestrated for maximum horrific effect. And the Bush admin. did their very best to take advantage of it for their own ends, never letting a crisis go to waste and all that Shock Doctrine stuff.
Yep.
Yes.
Excellent. Thanks for sharing. Bush said the right things yesterday, but he and his puppet masters helped make the mess that we still endure.
Kara Beautifully expressed and so true. We are the ‘angels’ who now must be tasked to craft a country that serves the great majority of Americans and of whose functional values we are proud.
I was able to access the article without subscribing. https://journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/kara-hammond-the-choices-we-had-after-9-11/article_e2030966-10ca-11ec-a202-77fc19e07056.html
Its unavailable in Portugal for legal reasons
Thank You.
Thank you!
Kara, wonderful article and beautiful photo!! Thank you.
You are right that they were "capitalizing on our collective grief." And the operative word I think is "capitalizing," as in making $. We did not stand a chance of making a better decision as a community of citizens against the individualistic right to exploit (for $) any situation. That individualistic right is sacred in this country of ours. It always trumps the greater good.
But their first objective was to use the human response for revenge against anyone hurting them to whip up the populace for an attack on those who they could claim were the perpetrators of the attack. Once that frenzy was converted into more Republicans in office, then they could turn the political power into tax cuts for the wealthy, defense contracts and other tax loopholes for big contributors to the Party.
Kara Hammond thank you. I’m so glad this was published, and has the authority of the city paper behind it. Someone below included a link as well—it is accessible online so I’ll go add to the clicks it gets right away. We all should. One note though, an important one: there is literally no such thing as a “limited war.” Each war is Pandora’s box.
Beautifully written and expressed.
Kara, thank you: this is incredibly cogent and deeply humane.
Wonderfully written. Thank you for this.
Kara, thank you.
Thank you!
Thank You. May I share and credit you and Winston'-Salem Journal. It is so important.
Marvelous.