{"id":4734,"date":"2021-09-10T07:35:08","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T11:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=4734"},"modified":"2021-09-10T07:35:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T11:35:48","slug":"twenty-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2021\/09\/10\/twenty-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2019 I wrote this essay for the 18th Anniversary of 9-11. I’ve gently updated a couple of things – but it’s worth saying (again). It was 20 years ago…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

November 22, 1963<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I was six years old when John F Kennedy was shot in Dallas.\u00a0\u00a0My memories of the time are clear:\u00a0\u00a0released from school; something awful happened in Dallas.\u00a0\u00a0The teachers wouldn\u2019t tell us, so us second graders talked about monsters attacking the state. The staff wanted our parents to handle it.\u00a0 On the walk home I argued with some boy who said the President was shot. I didn\u2019t believe him.\u00a0Words turned to fists, a second grader versus a third grader.\u00a0\u00a0I think I won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I got home, Mom met me at the door, tears in her eyes.  I wish I hadn\u2019t punched that kid; for the next few days it was grainy black and white television, first from Dallas, and then the funeral from Washington. The caisson carrying the flag covered casket, the rider less horse behind with the boots strapped backwards in the stirrups; the President\u2019s family stoic and brave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I guess if you were six on September 11th<\/sup>, 2001, you would have some pretty clear images of what happened, even if, you didn\u2019t have much understanding.\u00a0\u00a0To put that in perspective, you\u2019d be twenty-six today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is amazing how quickly \u201cevents\u201d become history.  What feels like just a couple of years ago, is now in an eighth grade textbook.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday Morning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday morning, September 11th<\/sup>, 2001, I was in \u201crecovery\u201d mode.\u00a0\u00a0We had just completed our big home cross country invitational the previous weekend, I was looking forward to getting my team ready for the next competition, and getting back to concentrating on my classroom.\u00a0\u00a0I taught senior American government class, and we were reaching the end of the first unit, trudging through the US Constitution and the Amendments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Watkins Memorial High School we started the day early, the first bell rang at 7:19.  The school was under construction; all of the in-class TV\u2019s were off line.  So it was on a restroom run between second and third period that a fellow staff member told me of a plane, crashing into the World Trade Center in New York.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tragedy, a horrible accident; I talked briefly to my class about it as we started.  When another staff member came to the door, and told us of the second plane, we all knew it was something more than an accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Planes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to know what was going on, and I wanted my classes to know too.  We moved outside and sat in the band bleachers of the football field, facing north, and turned up the radio from my jeep.  The class sat and listened as the third plane crashed into the Pentagon, and heard the rumors of other planes \u201cout of contact\u201d with air traffic control. We heard reports of a fourth plane down in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as we sat in the bleachers, we watched the final approach leg into the Columbus Airport, (then Port Columbus, now John Glenn International.)  We listened as the World Trade Centers collapsed, and watched as plane after plane, maybe forty of them, lined up to land right in front of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that day the football coach and I rigged up a television with an outdoor antenna in our school\u2019s wrestling room.\u00a0\u00a0Hundreds of kids came in at lunch time, watching, wondering, and looking for answers:\u00a0\u00a0who did this, why, and how could it have happened?\u00a0I spent any breaks on the phone, trying to reach my sister and her husband in New York.\u00a0\u00a0All the lines were down, crashed by the volume of calls.\u00a0When I finally did talk to them that evening, my sister was at home when it happened. But my brother-in-law had to walk home from the City.\u00a0\u00a0His train passed under the World Trade Center just a few minutes before the first plane hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Mission<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We released the kids from school, finally.\u00a0\u00a0I went home that night with a mission, to find out everything available, so I could teach my kids what this was all about.\u00a0\u00a0The Amendments to the Constitution would have to wait (it would end up being two weeks). American Government at Watkins Memorial was going to be about what happened to our country, and our lives, on September 11th<\/sup>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out in the front yard that evening, the sky was completely empty of planes, but one.\u00a0\u00a0 Air Force One, taking President Bush back from Nebraska to the White House.\u00a0\u00a0It looked odd and lonely; the escort fighters must have been high above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next weeks were filled with questions and information.  We learned about Al Qaeda and Wahhabism, the puritanical version of Islam they practiced.  The Class studied the difference between that and the Islam worshipped by the Taliban, the group that controlled Afghanistan and allowed Al Qaeda to set up bases there. We learned history:  of Afghanistan, of the Middle East, and that Islam didn\u2019t attack the United States, Al Qaeda did.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The class asked questions about how we should respond.\u00a0\u00a0These were seventeen and eighteen year olds (now thirty-eight) and the question of war had tremendous immediacy to them.\u00a0\u00a0Several of the students in that class would end up in the armed forces, fighting in the mountains and villages of Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00a0They all came back, but many suffered injuries, both physical and mental, that they are still struggling to overcome today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty Years<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t seem that long ago.  On Friday of that week, I was in a car crash.  My Suburban was totaled, my fault, but fortunately no one was hurt. On Saturday my cross country team went to the Galion Invitational, and since I had to find a ride to school I got there early.  That gave me the opportunity to have a long talk with our bus driver, the sweetest older man ever, Lester Kahrig (here’s a link to his story<\/a>.)  We talked about war, about what would happen to these kids on the bus.  He talked about \u201chis 9-11\u201d when he was seventeen, Pearl Harbor, and about the war he fought in the Pacific. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those weeks were the best teaching I\u2019ve ever done.  They were also the best learning my classes ever did.  There were no tests, no matching \u201cOsama bin Laden\u201d to \u201cleader of Al Qaeda;\u201d there was no need.  The kids wanted to know, needed to know.  I don\u2019t remember any principal saying that I could take my class this direction, but they knew it was the right thing to do.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty years since 9-11, and we finally have let Afghanistan go.\u00a0\u00a0One of the things we learned in those weeks is that controlling Afghanistan is like holding desert sand in your hands, you might think you\u2019ve got it, but slowly, inexorably, it slips between your fingers.\u00a0\u00a0The harder you clench, the more slips away.\u00a0\u00a0Every conqueror from Alexander the Great, to the British, to the Soviets figured it out.\u00a0\u00a0America learned the lesson too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Afghanistan List<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Afghanistan List (essays on Afghanistan dating back to April of 2017)<\/p>\n\n\n\n