A day we will never forget
Ten years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Americans are still unable to come to a consensus on what those attacks mean to the nation. Not only do politicians clash on foreign policy actions, but individual citizens maintain different opinions on what the events of that day truly represent.
Steve Sharp, political science professor, Financial Aid director, and former member of the U.S. State Department, said, “I think the main effect of 9/11 was psychological. It ended the notion that peace and security in the United States was the norm.”
Sharp said he considers 9/11 to be “analogous” to Pearl Harbor in the sense that it exposed some of the United States’ weaknesses, which brought on a sense of paranoia.
“Both events aimed at Americans’ assumption of their place in the world,” he said.
However, Michael Lyons, interim department head of the political science department, holds very different beliefs, even directly contradicting any comparison between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.
“My reactions to things are probably going to surprise you,” he said. “I think the most important thing about the 9/11 attacks is that we, in my view, greatly overreacted to it politically. It was an assault upon our dignity and a shock, but in the larger scheme of things, you know, it wasn’t Pearl Harbor.”
“I really don’t think it was a history-altering event, I don’t think it will be seen in those terms,” Lyons said.
He explained that at the time of 9/11, the real estate market and actions on Wall Street were already setting up the economic crisis we are in today. He also cited the development of China as a world power as a far more significant historical event than Sept. 11.
“I wish people would become better informed politically about the genuine threats to our future as a nation,” he said. “Now, I don’t dismiss 9/11 as trivial; it wasn’t trivial. Television images captured the terror spectacularly, but television images don’t capture so effectively some of the other things that affect our economic future. You know, if it bleeds it leads, and 9/11 bled all over the place.”
Sharp agreed with Lyons that, for the most part, the U.S. overreacted to the terrorist attacks, but he asserted that the reaction was reasonable, given the situation. He also disagreed with Lyons and said 9/11 did effectively change history.
“We did go crazy as a result of 9/11. We made some emotional — understandable, but emotional — mistakes that we’re still paying for and still trying to adjust to,” he said.
John Carman, professor from the department of agriculture, said he does not have the same political background as Sharp and Lyons. What he does have though, is a first-hand account of being in Manhattan on Sept. 11.
In a letter to his son, who was serving an LDS mission, Carman wrote of his experience just after getting into a taxi.
“Moments later the cab rocked sideways and shook from the compression wave of the first plane exploding inside the North Tower. The cab driver assured me it was just construction, but the workers were staring at the Towers. I jerked to look through the back window and saw the flame-filled gash in the tower. It appeared to span three floors. My immediate thought: 200 to 300 people instantly vaporized.”
“This symbolized that we are vulnerable,” he said.
He described many of his encounters of traveling abroad, explaining that before 9/11 there was minimal airport security, but then as he landed in other countries, airports would be fully militarized. It was these countries who had experienced terrorism before, he said. Now Americans felt susceptible, they were much more cautious, he added.
Sharp echoed this sentiment by citing an article he recently read, which said there are currently twice as many security guards in the country as there were 10 years ago. He gave the example that back then, no one considered guards necessary at golf courses.
“I think there’s a lot more suspicion,” Dustin Evans, a junior majoring in finance said. “You just worry about, ‘Oh, what if this were to happen?’ There’s just a whole lot more worry and stress than I remember.”
On his way home from New York City, Carman visited a school in Princeton, N.J., where 17 children lost a parent in the attacks, and five were completely orphaned.
“That’s just one of hundreds of bedroom communities,” he said, trying to relate the intimacy of the tragedy in that part of the country.
He said for much of Sept. 11, military planes would fly overhead, causing terrified people to run away in fear of another attack.
“People were on edge and weren’t sure if the attacks were over or not,” Carman said.
Sharp and Lyons both discussed many of the fallouts of 9/11. One obvious result to both of them was the War on Terror, particularly the part of that war taking place in Iraq.
“The global War on Terror was an endless war,” Sharp said. “You cannot eliminate terror, it’s going to be there. Most of the world lives in the shadow of some form of violence, all the time. So, if you have a global War on Terror, you are saying the state of war is the new normal, and we will never escape that.”
Lyons said the costs of these wars are wastes, which have significantly encouraged the current recession.
Sharp maintained some fear of how the wars will end. He said neither political party wants to be the party to lose Iraq, but neither can give a reasonable plan of how to win the war.
However, Sharp did give what he called a “silver lining.”
“By our work in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, we upset the status quo there,” he said. “And to a large extent, we ended up discrediting, in Arab eyes, Islamic fundamentalism — Islamic radicalism.”
He also noted that it has greatly opened Americans’ eyes to the world and to foreign ways of life.
“War is
God’s way of teaching Americans geography,” he said.
Nick Manning, a sophomore studying music education, resonated this message, saying, “I think for me, I have a wider world view. Probably more significantly, I really appreciate when things work well, when you have a safe plane ride, when you have security in your country; I really appreciate that more than I ever would have.”
– bracken_allen@yahoo.com