Three years since, and America’s obsession with 9/11 shows no signs of abating.
Sure, we’re not obsessed in the sense of endlessly talking or even thinking about the events of that fateful day. But it underlies virtually our entire political landscape in 2004. Whether it’s fear of another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 or fear of an administration that has exploited 9/11 to pursue its own disastrous agenda, or both, the day casts a shadow still.
We can see it in the presidential campaign, with both sides playing not to hope but to fear—of attack or of the other side. The spawn of 9/11—two quagmired wars, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and a decreasingly relevant Constitution, among other things—generate additional fear. It is not, in this political season, morning in America. More like minutes to midnight.
The 9/11 Commission filled in some valuable gaps this year in our knowledge of what happened before and on that day, as well as giving us some soon-forgotten policy recommendations. But it did not give Americans the information we really wanted: a glimpse as to whether it can, or will, happen again.
Sooner or later, it will, of course. On this count, Bush, Cheney, and company are totally correct. The world is too small, our borders too easily breached, America has too many enemies, and Americans have little taste—even if our rulers seem to have a lot—for the sort of garrison state Israel has become in a fruitless effort to crush resentment with force. The sensible course would be to make fewer enemies, but our rulers in both parties show no inclination to do that, and our wealth and outsized resource consumption will always guarantee a certain level of conflict with the less fortunate. Terrorism is the 21st-century price we will pay for our affluence, our influence, and our meddling.
The extent to which Americans have put 9/11 behind us is the extent to which we’ve reconciled ourselves to the inevitable. The surprise isn’t that 9/11 happened but that it didn’t happen 20 years ago. Most other Western democracies have experienced more political violence than America has—from Britain’s troubles in Northern Ireland, and Basque and Chechen separatists in Spain and Russia, to the ’70s leftist bombings in Germany and Italy and the various wars for colonial independence that preceded them. We’ve led sheltered, privileged lives—all the more remarkable for the enmity we stirred long before George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq.
Ah, Iraq. The government of Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but its downfall had everything to do with it. Even if we didn’t believe the Bush administration’s fanciful assertions of a working relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda is certainly in Iraq now. The invasion of Iraq, and the Bush endorsement of Ariel Sharon’s ongoing war on Palestinians, has done more than anything Al Qaeda or its brethren could have done themselves to ensure a steady flow of new recruits for the jihad. Americans will be targets as long as we’re in Iraq, and that shows every indication of being for a long time to come, regardless of who wins in November.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of our democracy might ride on how soon we come to grips with 9/11—not so that we can resume shopping (we have), but so opportunistic leaders can no longer exploit our fear. As long as we’re afraid, whether of another attack or what the other side might do if it wins in November, we’re susceptible to politicians who are willing to expand their own power, and the power of the state, at our expense. Democracy is already in trouble in this country, with corporate influence in elections, big money, gerrymandered districts, and TV-advertised lies that pass for debate. It’s especially in danger if ordinary people think we can’t make a difference. Too many of us already have such doubts. American democracy can’t survive too many more frontal assaults.
The Bush administration has worked hard to stoke our fear, with the orange and purple and cinnamon alerts, the endless use of 9/11 to justify everything, the casual declaration of a 50-year war. When we’re afraid, it’s too easy to give up our power. We need to come to terms with 9/11 and with the risk of future 9/11s. It’s not that we shouldn’t work to prevent them. We shouldn’t allow them to control what the country is and what it is to become. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
