10 Years Later

10 years.  A lot has happened in ten years.  I remember being at the Kenton, Ohio water treatment plant that morning.  When my co-worker and I got there, several of the workers were in the break room watching TV.  We went out and made some measurements on the flocculation and sedimentation tanks outside.  When we came in, we talked to the plant supervisor, then one of the workers came up and told us two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers, and one had just collapsed.  We then went in, and watched the TV as they showed replays, then we watched the other tower collapse.  What I remember most was how the day was rife with rumors.  A car bomb went off outside the State Department building.  A bomb went off at Wright-Patterson AFB.  Gas prices were going up to $5.00 a gallon.  Stations were running out of gas.

After the rumors settled down, it was moving to see all the genuine warmth people showed for one another.  The heroic stories of firemen and policemen  and civilians on Filght 93 and in the towers were extremely moving.  While there was a lot of shock and grief, these stories were truly uplifting.  When I reflect on those days, the thing I remember the most was the photo of the firemen running up the stairs while people were flowing down.  That demonstration of heroism will always be with me.

But there were bad things too.  The Sikh cab driver who was beaten to death.  The Muslim-Americans who were snatched up and held incommunicado for weeks.  The suspicion of the Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, Christian and Muslim alike. 

Events after September 11 have snowballed.  We live in a changed nation, generally for the worse.  We are involved in two mishandled wars, which have wasted over a trillion dollars so far, and thousands of American lives, but also tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani lives.  We are spied upon and frisked.  We were made accessories in torture.  We are blackmailed by politicians to give up our rights, because we could be victims again.  Everything has changed.

And yet, it hasn't.  This country still has the goodness, which was on display then, within it.  I would like to see us get back to the civility and compassion we showed in the weeks after that awful day.  We can, and we must. 

I remember Congress gathering on the steps of the Capitol to sing "God Bless America" after the attack.  Why did it take such a tragic event for them to gather and do that?  Now, our representatives act as if the people across the aisle are members of Al-Queda.  It would be nice if, at this time of giant economic troubles, these representatives could come together and plan for all of us to make painful sacrifices for the greater good.  Too often in the past 10 years, we've hidden behind the folks in uniform, and left them as the only Americans making sacrifices for the so-called good of this nation.  Everyone else has seemed to be out for his or her own best interest.  In this economic crisis, we need everyone to step up, get over their pride and self-righteousness, and do good.  We owe that to the people who died ten years ago, and those who died in the wars we started after that. 

(I intended to post this tomorrow, but I accidentally sent it today.)