I have had a hard time with the over-abundance of media articles on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. Don’t get me wrong; I thought it was awful at the time. I was in a printmaking class that morning, and someone came in with a garbled account. We turned on the radio but it really didn’t become clear until I went to my next class what had happened. I remember this dawning sense that the secure life I knew was suddenly not so secure. I’d heard and read plenty of stories of attacks; I’d never been living during one. I suddenly understood what my grandparents must have felt like when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I remember walking home, running my fingers along a fence and thinking that the whole world had changed.
We are still living with those changes. Yet after ten years and the many things that have happened to the country, my friends, my family, and myself since then, I find my feelings have become more complicated. I suppose the event has special prominence because it was an attack on US soil that could have been followed by others. However, so many more people have died in so many other tragedies since then, that it is hard for me to understand why we are giving special precedence to this one. Three hundred thousand people died in the Haitian earthquake. Eight months ago my friend who was twenty-six died from colon cancer leaving behind a devastated family. In ten years no one will give them a televised moment to talk about their grief. I feel for people who lost their loved ones in 9/11, but I feel that we too often, myself certainly included, walk by all kinds of other tragedies with a blind eye. I wish we could take the same energy and attention dedicated to this commemoration to searching out and helping people who are silently suffering around us.
Then there is the white elephant in the room: our impact on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I know that we had to do something to respond in defense of our country. I do not know enough to judge clearly the events that have already taken place; I am just certain that we have not always acted in the best way towards these countries and their people. My internet search on civilian casualties has given me very mixed reports; one website estimates that 303 times more people have died in deaths in these countries than in the World Trade Center. Regardless, there is clearly a great discrepancy. Were these wars completely necessary? What could we have done better? How can we end them speedily to bring home our soldiers and end civilian deaths?
In remembering 9/11, let us also remember the complexity of the situation and the ever-present face of tragedy.