9/11: The Brouhaha

When Osama Bin Laden sat in his safe house in some undisclosed location in the Middle East, brooding on ways to strike terror into the heart of the United States of America, I’m sure that he had a set of intentions. It doesn’t take a genius to assume that he planned something akin to inflicting serious casualties upon our nation and tarnishing its golden-fleeced reputation as the planet’s mighty constable. But what I’m sure Bin Laden never attributed to his ghastly chaos was the following decade of self-invented and self-perpetuated hysteria to come, the furor that would mask the future of the proud USA for thirteen years and counting.September 11th is marked by numerous recognizable rituals. There is the tolling of bells and the mandatory moment of silence. There is, per usual, media profiteering in the form of dramatic pannings of the towers on fire and candid snapshots of the deceased that would normally be reserved to family picture albums. But above all, there is the return of consolatory sentiments, a reminder that the nation that was reborn in the aftermath was proper and legitimate.There have been numerous other massive bombings and acts of terror in the past. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, which resulted in 9,000 casualties, far more than those of 9/11, remains a historical anomaly shoved to the corners of German history textbooks. Then there are the Dresden bombings, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, none of which have pestered the minds of a nation as thoroughly as the memory of 9/11 has pestered ours.I am not downplaying the tragedy of 9/11, which was a horrible incident that the world should have never witnessed. However, it was just as much caused by the inadequacy of our own policies than by terrorism. The failure of an intelligence system funded by billions of dollars, as well as the lopsided and hypocritical support for Israel, led to many of our problems; instead of responding to this failure in an orderly fashion, we allowed our enemies to change our way of life permanently in the wake of this tragedy.If we take away any lasting impact from such an event, it should stem not from the act of terror itself, but from the nation’s response and strength. Instead, an unnecessary but cleverly coined "War on Terror" was unleashed upon the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq turned terrorism into the emblem of American foreign policy. We all went along with it; we separated those who were our friends from our enemies, those who were with us from those against us, creating a nationwide consciousness that bred suspicion, hatred and fear.By doing these things, we people of the United States of America, evolved a simple hardship into something far more dangerous and caustic, highlighted by continued violence propelled by Al Qaeda, and more recently, by ISIS. We have allowed September 11 to warp reality and bring the very calamity upon peoples of the world that we ourselves experienced. It is us, the people of America, who allowed 9/11 to change us in such a drastic and overwhelming fashion, and now it is us who need to alter our mindset.