I’ve been spending my free time listening to Bruce Springsteen’s new CD, the one about the aftermath of September 11th. I can’t exactly say I’m enjoying it, but I appreciate it. The words and music are a reminder of the depth of our personal and national wounds and how fresh they still are. It’s hard to get things done when the CD is playing, the songs pull me up short and leave me thinking about how much some people lost and how much I still have and hold.
The date itself is less than two weeks away. There will be other anniversaries – 10, 25, 50 – but this is the year when September 11th passes from the time-suspended present and begins to slowly recede into the past.
Anniversaries are a time for accounting, and a year later, the balance sheet doesn’t look good. We certainly knocked Al Quaeda for a loop, but we’ve lost track of Osama bin Laden. George Bush stood before Congress and promised to deliver bin Laden “dead or alive.” Little did he know then that there was a third category, somewhere halfway between the two and that Osama would slip away into it. The Taliban no longer rules Afghanistan, but that country seems to be falling into the warlord-dominated chaos that gave birth to the Taliban in the first place. Mullah Omar has joined Osama in the insubstantial world of shadows.
In this country, we’ve learned the FBI and CIA dislike and distrust each other. The mutual dislike may have prevented them from avoiding our disaster. The Justice Department is seizing more and more arbitrary power for itself, but has little to show for a year of investigation. In the days following September 11th, there were reports in the press that airline employees found box cutters hidden on planes on the west coast, on flights grounded by the attacks in New York and Washington. The box cutters were like the ones used to hijack the fatal flights. What happened to that story? A few months ago I realized I never heard a resolution. Were there hijackers on those flights or not? If not, where did the box cutters come from? Were there fingerprints on the box cutters? Whose fingerprints?
What about the anthrax attacks? Law enforcement officials say they don’t believe the anthrax attacks were the work of foreign terrorists, but they seem to know very little for sure. Steven Hatfill has been named a “person of interest,” another term for public harassment by the police. Dr. Hatfill does not fit my idea of a swell guy, but unless John Ashcroft is ready to bring charges, he should pipe down and leave Dr. Hatfill alone.
A year later, one of the few certainties we have seems to be a looming war with Iraq. The Bush administration’s calls for war feel as if the president has made up his mind and his aides are trying to find facts to justify the decision. If there is war, it will be a war of sour grapes, driven by regret from the Bush Family and Dick Cheney that Saddam Hussein was not driven from power 11 years ago.
The other certainty we have is that we have a little less certainty at home. People, citizens and aliens alike, disappear into jails. There are more checkpoints, more searches and more surveillance than before.
A year later the American people are still strong. In Red Bank, New Jersey, a community that lost so many people a year ago, a makeshift memorial is still carefully tended each week. We still lean on each other and share our strength, but our leaders give us cause for concern. In early November, we’ll have the opportunity to begin picking new leaders.
Unfinished Business
I’ve been spending my free time listening to Bruce Springsteen’s new CD, the one about the aftermath of September 11th. I can’t exactly say I’m enjoying it, but I appreciate it. The words and music are a reminder of the depth of our personal and national wounds and how fresh they still are. It’s hard to get things done when the CD is playing, the songs pull me up short and leave me thinking about how much some people lost and how much I still have and hold.
The date itself is less than two weeks away. There will be other anniversaries – 10, 25, 50 – but this is the year when September 11th passes from the time-suspended present and begins to slowly recede into the past.
Anniversaries are a time for accounting, and a year later, the balance sheet doesn’t look good. We certainly knocked Al Quaeda for a loop, but we’ve lost track of Osama bin Laden. George Bush stood before Congress and promised to deliver bin Laden “dead or alive.” Little did he know then that there was a third category, somewhere halfway between the two and that Osama would slip away into it. The Taliban no longer rules Afghanistan, but that country seems to be falling into the warlord-dominated chaos that gave birth to the Taliban in the first place. Mullah Omar has joined Osama in the insubstantial world of shadows.
In this country, we’ve learned the FBI and CIA dislike and distrust each other. The mutual dislike may have prevented them from avoiding our disaster. The Justice Department is seizing more and more arbitrary power for itself, but has little to show for a year of investigation. In the days following September 11th, there were reports in the press that airline employees found box cutters hidden on planes on the west coast, on flights grounded by the attacks in New York and Washington. The box cutters were like the ones used to hijack the fatal flights. What happened to that story? A few months ago I realized I never heard a resolution. Were there hijackers on those flights or not? If not, where did the box cutters come from? Were there fingerprints on the box cutters? Whose fingerprints?
What about the anthrax attacks? Law enforcement officials say they don’t believe the anthrax attacks were the work of foreign terrorists, but they seem to know very little for sure. Steven Hatfill has been named a “person of interest,” another term for public harassment by the police. Dr. Hatfill does not fit my idea of a swell guy, but unless John Ashcroft is ready to bring charges, he should pipe down and leave Dr. Hatfill alone.
A year later, one of the few certainties we have seems to be a looming war with Iraq. The Bush administration’s calls for war feel as if the president has made up his mind and his aides are trying to find facts to justify the decision. If there is war, it will be a war of sour grapes, driven by regret from the Bush Family and Dick Cheney that Saddam Hussein was not driven from power 11 years ago.
The other certainty we have is that we have a little less certainty at home. People, citizens and aliens alike, disappear into jails. There are more checkpoints, more searches and more surveillance than before.
A year later the American people are still strong. In Red Bank, New Jersey, a community that lost so many people a year ago, a makeshift memorial is still carefully tended each week. We still lean on each other and share our strength, but our leaders give us cause for concern. In early November, we’ll have the opportunity to begin picking new leaders.
May we choose wisely.