09/11/2021
September 11, 2021
I've been reading a lot of accounts from people who say they’re glad the war in Afghanistan is over because they “don’t even know why we’re fighting.”
This is perhaps the saddest thing I can see next to having lived through the attacks of 2001. We all lost 20 years ago. We lost lives. We lost beloved family and friends. We lost a sense of security and naivete about America.
And now 20 years later, when I read that people “don’t even know why we’re fighting,” it’s clear we’ve lost far more. We’ve lost what we vowed we’d never forget. We lost a necessary sense of duty and responsibility to what and who were destroyed. We lost determination to succeed when working against those determined to ensure we don’t. We lost the perspective required to progress by building on the goodwill, cooperation and political capital we had in our nation and across the world. We lost patience for the time and effort it takes to dismantle terrorism by fighting a war that can’t be easily won. We lost our stamina to build up a successful democracy and ensure its independence and stability.
We lost hope. We gave up on the idea that the world would be better for our efforts. We abandoned all we invested in Afghanistan and its people. And it bothers me that the justification some use is that they “don’t even know why we’re fighting.”
Have we really become that fragile? Are we really now a nation that forsakes decades of effort, thousands of lives, an entire fellow nation and trillions of dollars because we can’t remember the unprecedented unity we had just 20 years prior? How are we not better than that? How did we take so many steps back from where we were?
On September 11, 2001 we were shocked by actions so evil, they were beyond our abilities to comprehend. On September 12, we were forged in the fires of the previous day’s atrocities. We were rescuing each other. We were helping each other. We were giving to each other. We were determined as a common people. We were a scorned nation with a unified cause. We were squarely atop the moral high ground, so much so that even our adversaries pledged their support to our plight.
I liked what and who we became. I felt bolstered by our resolve. I was heartened to see a singular, inarguable focus. And now that’s no longer so. Now our steely steadfastness has dissolved and we’ve become the worst version of ourselves, giving in to pettiness, backbiting and social and political derision. We’re encouraged to latch onto anger and mockery where we should instead strive for understanding and cooperation.
Being better starts with me. And you. It starts by realizing that just because we disagree doesn’t mean we have to hate. Just because we have different ideas of how to accomplish goals doesn’t make us enemies. We can’t successfully fight a war when we’re fighting ourselves. I’ve seen too much turmoil across our nation during the past year and a half to believe there are easy ways to remedy what ails us. So that means it’s going to take hard, difficult work to make lasting, positive change. It means discarding the belief that your opinion contains the whole truth or the only truth. It means entering every conversation with the belief you have something to learn and actually listening with the intent of becoming better, and speaking to share knowledge and experience. It means believing that learning from others isn’t a threat to your self worth. It means no longer attaching feelings of self validation to our political ideologies, candidates and elected officials. It means making the most difficult, frightening change to yourself and fighting the inevitable feelings of vulnerability and fear in order to be better for others and for your country.
Twenty years ago we achieved just that. It was something beautiful that arose from the darkest landscape of our time. We don’t need to suffer that reality again to be as good as we were then. That’s the America I knew briefly. And I miss it.
