The following is a Letter to the Editor for the Opinions section.
When United Airlines Flight 175 plunged into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on live television, I thought my parents were watching a movie. My eighth birthday was in five days. I asked if we could change the channel to cartoons instead.
“No,” said Dad, straightening his tie. “This is history.”
I don’t remember everything about Sept. 11, 2001, but I’ll never forget Mom calling us out of school for fear of Colorado coming under attack. When we went to pick up Dad from work, the streets were buzzing with people wandering around as if to keep an eye on the downtown Denver cityscape. Newspapers took flight like tumbleweeds in the wind, their front pages splashed with photographs of collapsing skyscrapers.
That night, Mom wept in front of the TV.
“All those poor people,” she said.
20 years later, when a crowd of President Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to scare Vice President Mike Pence into usurping the 2020 election from President-elect Joe Biden, I was reminded of that fateful Tuesday in 2001. Jan. 6 may not have been as destructive as 9/11, the deadliest strike on American soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But Sept. 11 wasn’t even as deadly as Jan. 12, the worst day of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. so far, with a death toll of 4,327.
Still, the Capitol siege felt like watching the next generation of extremists finish what the last one started. Yes, their causes were worlds apart. 9/11 was the result of backlash against American interventionism in the Middle East while white supremacists perpetrated the violence at the Capitol. One was not more justified than the other, and both made the world a more dangerous place, but the key difference between the two is that the first attack on the Capitol failed.
Four commercial jets were hijacked on Sept. 11. In addition to the suicide mission at the Twin Towers in New York City, American Airlines Flight 77 was flown into the Pentagon in Virginia. Meanwhile, the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 brought the plane down in a field in Pennsylvania after a revolt against the al-Qaeda terrorists.
Flight 93’s intended target remains unclear. Osama bin Laden is said to have preferred the White House while ground commander Mohammed Atta is believed to have favored the Capitol building for its prominence over the D.C. skyline.
Either way, if not for the Americans on United 93, the hijackers would have brought the crown jewel of our republic to its knees.
Did they really die defending this country, only for the Capitol to fall anyway within my lifetime?
What’s worse, these rioters were acting on behalf of the President himself—a native New Yorker—and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani—none other than the Mayor of New York City during 9/11 and its aftermath.
It was enough to bring tears to my eyes, much in the same way as it would have done for my mother if she were alive today. Could it be that we have already lost our memory of a day we said we would never forget?
It’s possible. After all, like Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier, 9/11 started a war. As a matter of fact, the Obama Administration defeated bin Laden’s al-Qaeda when Biden was Vice President. However, the Global War on Terror did not end there. Some children of Afghanistan veterans are old enough now to serve in the same conflict as their parents. Many were born after Sept. 11.
I once met someone my age who didn’t know there were people on the planes that hit the World Trade Center. As for myself, I didn’t even know about the Pentagon or Flight 93 until years after the attacks. It’s understandable. We were children. Our parents were protecting us as best they could.
But now that we’re old enough to vote, what does that mean for the future of our democracy if we no longer remember it’s worth fighting for? How can we answer the question, “Where were you on 9/11,” when we didn’t experience it? In this veritable “Ignorance Age,” where half of Americans believe in Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, are we doomed to repeat our history rather than learn from it?
So it is with the victims of United 93 on my mind and in my heart that I remind you their heroism wasn’t “fake news” and their patriotism wasn’t an “alternative fact.” What happened in our nation’s capital was an insult to their sacrifice.
And may we never forget it.
