9/11 - Twenty Years Later

I don't have much to say about the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (plus the failed attack on the U.S. Capitol) today.  I thought I did, but what little I do have to say should be enough.

This twentieth anniversary takes on even more significance than it otherwise would have had in light of two ongoing major events - the fall of Afghanistan and a COVID outbreak spiraling upward with no ceiling in sight.  Right now, the United States is humbled, humiliated and defeated by the failure to secure the lives not just of so many Afghans but so many Americans, as more of our own people live in a more unequal society and in fear of a hideous death from a hideous and as right-wing populism threatens to erode our freedoms and turn into a fascist state.  Twenty years ago, Americans received sympathy and goodwill in the late of the 9/11 disaster.  But after two decades of squandering that goodwill through the Iraq War, the financial crisis, drone strikes, the mismanagement of the Islamic State crisis, the rise of the Tea Party, the election of Donald Trump, the rejection of international climate-change agreements, the COVID crisis, the death of George Floyd, the Capitol insurrection, and the assault on civil rights, and the mismanagement of the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, the United States only receives scorn, hatred, derision, and a hefty dose of schadenfreude.

There have been times before when I thought America had hit rock bottom and couldn't sink any lower.  Up to now, I've always been disappointed in being wrong, and today, as we hit what appears to be rock bottom again, I'm disgusted about being dead wrong.  But maybe, as President Biden tries to make greater inroads in controlling and ending the pandemic even as the country is finally in a state of peacetime with the end of the Afghan conflict, maybe, just maybe, Americans can come back and rebuild the trust of other nations and trust among each other, and start over using the assumptions of a caring, just, and generous society.

I hope I'm not wrong this time.  And I hope I'll be proven right by the 250th anniversary of American independence and the 25th anniversary of 9/11 in 2026.