Division
I was talking to a veteran this weekend. We know each other well: I was his high school cross country coach. Surprisingly for these days, we were actually talking politics, but more in general than in specific. We talked about the great divide in America, the polarization to the point where “talking politics” outside of your own bubble is a recipe for anger and insult. And he reminded me of something.
He knows I’m a Democrat, but he said: “I don’t know what you think of George W Bush as President, but we’ve never been more united than on September 12, twenty-two years ago.” And I told him the truth, I didn’t like much about George Bush before that week. In fact, I struggled to accept him as President, seeing him as elected more by the five Republicans on the Supreme Court than by the Nation. But that week, after September 11th 2001, I was united with the rest of the Nation behind his leadership.
We Heard
Bush’s own actions did it. The military and the Secret Service shuffled him around like a pea in a shell game on September 11th: He fled a second grade classroom in Florida for Barksdale Air Base in Louisiana, and then Offutt Air Base in Nebraska. It was at that moment, hidden in a bunker, Bush “became” President. He ordered Air Force One back into the air, the only plane in the American skies, and he flew back to Washington. He spoke to the Nation and the World. And then, three days later, he went down into the still smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center. He held up a bullhorn, surrounded by hard-hat workers and firefighters. He started to speak and the workers farther away yelled out, “We can’t hear you”. And Bush responded with a spontaneous phrase that galvanized a Nation:
“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
America – we knew it was time to go to war. And we were more than ready, even the Democrats who voted for Al Gore ten months earlier, even those of us who protested Vietnam. We were ready to make those that attacked feel America’s wrath. It wouldn’t last; the “justified” war in Afghanistan morphed into a less clear attack on Iraq. The atrocities at CIA “Dark Sites” and Abu Gharib created fractures in American resolve. But for those first weeks, months and even maybe that first year; we were the America of December 8th, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. We were the “Great Democracy”, willing to use the “righteous might” of our forefathers to avenge our losses.
Defenders
For me, those days have the crystal clear memories of the moments before a car crash, the second-by-second hyper-focus that never goes away. I’ve written about that before, in an essay titled Eighteen Years Ago. And I’ve told the “stories” around 9-11, from the stirring monuments to the courageous survivors in other essays, including Twenty-One Years Ago and Shanksville.
Many of the young men and women I taught around that time felt compelled to defend our Nation. They went to war in far-away places, in situations where there were few “rules of engagement”, at least for the enemy. Some sacrificed their lives, and many more sacrificed their youth and their health to make sure that those “… people who knocked these buildings down would hear from all of us”. They went for the same reasons my father’s generation went to Europe and the Pacific in World War II.
Teachers
My friend and I are both teachers, though I am retired. He teaches medics how to deal with crises, hopefully not like 9-11. What used to be a common memory, like a current event in his classroom, is now a page in the history book. Most of his students are too young to remember anything but the images of collapsing buildings – maybe a memory of the day, more likely impressed from thousands of repetitions on television. And while they may know the “facts” of 9-11, they cannot “remember” the unity of the 12th.
We are America. Do not let the division of today, determine our necessary unity tomorrow. History shows the error of foreign leaders “taking advantage” of American divisions. It didn’t work; not in World Wars I and II, not on 9-11, not even in Ukraine. American politics is like a family – the brothers can fight each other like mortal enemies, but don’t let an outsider attack one. The brothers will be shoulder to shoulder fighting back.
It’s hard to imagine such unity right now, Red Hats and Rainbow Shirts. But it doesn’t require a National disaster to achieve it. Unity is still here. We see communities come together, regardless of politics, in disasters and crises. We can still work together for the betterment of our towns, regardless of who we choose for President.
I am a “blue” living in a sea of “red”. But we are all American. And today is not only a day to remember the fallen on 9-11, but a day to remember the unity of the day after.
