Wednesday, September 11, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Commentary...
Remembering 9/11 —
and 9/12
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
The terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, are
fading into history, though
the echoes of that terrible
day continue to reverberate
through our lives.
Sgt. First Class Elis A.
Barreto Ortiz, who was
killed by a car bomb in
Kabul, Afghanistan, last
week, was 16 years old
when the Twin Towers
fell and the U.S. went to
war to dismantle al Qaeda
and their Taliban hosts in
Afghanistan.
We9re still trying to extri-
cate ourselves from the end-
less conflict in that war-torn
land.
A new generation is com-
ing of age that was not yet
born when the events that
changed our world took
place.
For the rest of us,
September 11, 2001, is for-
ever burned into our con-
sciousness. We remember
where we were and what we
were doing when we first
understood that the U.S.
homeland had come under
serious attack.
It was a Tuesday, and I
was driving into The Nugget
for work, still basking in
the afterglow of the Sisters
Folk Festival. I heard a
radio report that a plane
had struck one of the World
Trade Center towers, but,
like many, I assumed it was
an aviation accident. I got
to the shop, sat down at the
keyboard and went to work.
Nugget publisher Kiki
Dolson came in and asked
me, <Do you know what9s
going on?=
I said, <Yes, I heard a
plane hit the World Trade
Center.=
<Two,= she said, and I
felt gears and tumblers turn
and fall into place as the
whole world shifted. I went
home and woke my wife and
told her the U.S. was at war.
Information was hard to
come by in those strange,
dislocated hours, where
we tried to go about our
work with our minds 3,000
miles away, in New York;
Washington, DC; and
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Most Americans then
were only vaguely aware
of al Qaeda and someone
named Osama bin Laden.
I felt in my gut that it had
to be the same people who
had bombed two embassies
in Africa in 1998 and the
U.S.S. Cole in Aden Harbor
in Yemen in 2000. I fumed
that the administration of
President Bill Clinton had
failed to treat those attacks
as the acts of war that they
were.
Fuming and grieving
were about all we could do.
And yet when September
12, 2001, dawned, America
was rousing itself from its
shock and disbelief and
rallying with a newfound
sense of purpose. People
in their thousands donated
blood; young men and
women enlisted in the mili-
tary; diverse groups began
to organize to find myriad
ways of supporting the great
city that had been struck so
terribly.
For a time, there was a
widespread sense of unity
and purpose that is often
lacking in our political and
cultural life. The bitterly
contested election of 2000
seemed a long ago trial
from another world; politi-
cal and ideological orien-
tation ceased to matter as
we turned our might and
resolve to face an assail-
ant who despises the values
Americans hold most dear.
That sense of unity
couldn9t last in a diverse,
fractious republic 4 and it
didn9t.
President George W.
Bush squandered much of it
in leading the country into
a misconceived invasion of
Iraq in 2003. The opposi-
tion party soon reverted to
a focus on political calcula-
tion. And as time marched
on with no new attacks on
the homeland, Americans9
attention shifted back to
domestic concerns, even as
a small number of American
servicemen and women
fought in two savage wars
and engaged in countless
covert actions to combat
Islamist terrorism around
the globe.
We have fallen a long
way from the spirit of
September 12, 2001.
Divisions are so stark and
apparently unbridgeable that
some believe that Americans
are actually locked cultur-
ally in a <cold civil war.=
No one wishes for a catas-
trophe on the scale of the
September 11 attacks to
restore a sense of unity. But
it would behoove us all on
in this anniversary week to
contemplate the values that
bring us together.
The idea of America, no
matter how flawed in its
manifestation in the rough-
and-tumble of history, is
worth holding up and worth
defending today, just as it
was in those turbulent times
nearly two decades ago.
27
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