American Airlines Flight 11 lifted from Boston's Logan International Airport at 7:59 a.m. carrying 92 people, tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel and five hijackers. Less than an hour later, this plane would become the beginning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
News media blasted us with information in the hours and days afterwards, but at that moment not one of us truly understood what was going on. The world had been turned upside down. All flights in the U.S. were grounded, and they watched with the rest of America in stunned silence.
When the dust settled, the number came out. A total of 2,996 people were dead and thousands more were injured. It was the deadliest attack on American soil ever, a day that will live in infamy.
Now a decade later, we know what happened, and our world has been thrust into a new era of globalization. The hijackers' leader, Osama Bin Laden, is dead and a memorial has been built on ground zero, but we still don't understand why it happened.
There were few things any of us could have done to prevent it from happening, but each of us had complete control of how we handled the so-called "post-9/11" world.
While most of us moved on with our lives and continued the American dream, the memory of the people who died and the heroes of that day have been marred by politicians using the terrorist attacks as political crutches to force-feed policy on the United States, by bigots who moronically incite hate against Muslims, and by political flip-floppers that tried to deny helping the first responders with their medical costs.
Oct. 26, 2001 saw the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, designed to drastically reduce restrictions on law enforcement agencies by giving them the "tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism." Only a month after the attacks, and wielding the word patriot like a bludgeon, the bill passed the Senate with a 98-1 vote.
Of course law enforcement needs the proper "tools" to fight terrorism, but the PATRIOT Act goes well beyond simply helping. It has served to subvert our constitutional rights through provisions that allow indefinite detention, unwarranted wiretaps and searches of our telephone, email, and financial records.
The law has hardly been used to combat terrorism at all. According to New York Magazine, the delayed-notice search warrant power that PATRIOT granted was used 1,618 times between 2006 and 2009 for drug related charges and only 15 times in terrorism cases. Assaulting the Constitution is hardly a great legacy to remember about 9/11.
The PATRIOT Act, although flawed, was well intended. Nobody would argue against preventing terrorism, just the methods used to combat it. The Sept. 11 attacks did, however, bring a more malicious type out from under the rocks. Bigots across the nation used 9/11 as a launching point for anti-Islamic sentiment.
One of the biggest attempts at inciting hate against Muslims was the so-called "9/11 Mosque," a 13-story cultural center that is to be built a few blocks from Ground Zero. The project was met with widespread protests, and conservative blowhards like Glenn Beck saw a great opportunity to look "patriotic," and jumped on the issue, calling it a disgrace and a "victory memorial."
In an insulting editorial, the Washington Times said that America needs to stop "pretending that terrorism is not linked to Islam." This hits to the core of the fallacy that is perpetuating the bigotry and hate.
Radical Muslims like the ones in al-Qaeda are no more representative of Islam than the Ku Klux Klan is representative of Christianity. Timothy McVeigh committed the worst act of terrorism in America before 9/11, and no pundits jumped on his radicalized Christian values to claim that Christianity is a violent religion.
It is only natural for us to look on people that are different with suspicion and fear. Major news companies focused so heavily on how the hijackers were Muslims that they inadvertently ingrained an image that Islam is tied to terrorism and helped create this climate of fear. The focus that was missed was an attention to the massive majority of Muslims who did not support terrorism at all, and the American Muslims who suffered just like everyone else.
Muslims were even among the first responders to the World Trade Center. One would think that these brave men and women, universally touted as heroes, would be well honored in the years to pass.
Unfortunately, politicians decided to use their name to pass bills, get re-elected and defame other candidates. Rudy Giuliani in particular used 9/11 to push his 2008 presidential bid forward, going to far as to request donations of $9.11 at one of his fundraisers.
It would seem to follow that when it was discovered that many of the first responders were getting sick from the toxins in the air after the buildings collapsed, that the same politicians who used their name to further their own interests would come to help. Many were getting cancer and other respiratory diseases, and a bill was on the table that would assist them in paying for their medical bills.
Those same Republicans tried to block the bill, however, under the guise of cost saving and worries that the bill would be wasteful. So when it served them to support the ongoing victims of 9/11 they talked a big game and puffed their chests out, but when it came time to help keep those victims alive they turned their back on them to improve their fiscal records.
The bill eventually passed after massive public outcry and an inspired episode of the Daily Show that criticized Republicans very heavily.
Now that it's been 10 years since 9/11, a new generation is arriving that can barely remember the attacks and does not have the emotion attached to the event. We are going to enter the world as the last people who remember the events, as they happened, not in hindsight, and we need to be the ones to protect the memory properly. Let's end the bigotry and the politics and honor everyone involved.
