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Five years after: Memories linger, security is absent
This Monday will mark five years since this country’s sense of safety was shattered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Like all other Americans, we remember exactly what we were doing that fateful Tuesday when the first reports surfaced – we were in the newsroom, polishing the stories destined for that week’s Community Life session. It was then-school board Chairman Martha Queen who called and told us to turn on a television. Those images of smoke and flame against that perfect September sky left us numb with shock and disbelief.
For those of us old enough to remember 1963, it brought back echoes of that year’s Nov. 22, when the news footage that played endlessly was of a slain president. As we had done almost 40 years before when President Kennedy was shot, we saw the towers’ collapse again and again. We watched over and over, perhaps thinking that if we looked long enough the story would have a different ending.
While our memories are so vivid that it’s hard to believe that five whole years have passed, a look at the political landscape reminds us of how different things are now. Many of our leaders have politicized the event, discarding the faith, unity and patriotism that flowered in the aftermath of the attacks.
This is evident when we have members of the current administration questioning the patriotism of Democrats in Connecticut who did not vote for the incumbent in a Senate race primary. It’s also apparent when national leaders advocate trampling on the rights of individuals in order to protect our country from additional attacks and play on ordinary citizens’ fears to keep themselves in power.
We recognize that steps must be taken to ensure the safety of our borders, and we realize that good intelligence information from the FBI and CIA is crucial to thwarting potential attacks. However, there needs to be a balance. If we surrender the ideals this nation was founded upon, then the terrorists win in another way.
Despite administration rhetoric, recommendations of the 9-11 commission are being ignored. Homeland security is being neglected as the situation in Iraq worsens, and the president still insists that Iraq is a front in the war on terror – despite evidence that Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks and that Osama bin Laden opposed Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Global events now seem more local, and it’s not a good feeling that words like “terrorism” and “weapons of mass destruction” have made it into everyday conversation.
It’s been five years. In one sense it seems like yesterday; in another, it seems like a lifetime.
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