Have We Forgotten, Already?

Originally penned Monday, June 27, 2005

The tenth anniversary of one of the most saddening days in our country’s history was celebrated, almost in silence, compared to the issues we face daily with the current tension our country faces.

The day was almost a blur to me as I was preparing for my wedding that weekend, but the reality came to me slowly after the event. On a sunny, spring day in 1995, terrorists bombed the Murray Building in Oklahoma City. That bleak day in April, most everyone thought that it was an attack from foreign terrorists. Only a few years earlier, foreign terrorists attempted to blow up the World Trade Centers in New York City with the same concept: rigging a rental van with explosives. This time it was again a rental van with home-made explosives that saw the fate of several hundred people in that government building in Oklahoma City.

No one ever thought it would be home-grown terrorism.

After all the investigations, the evidence and the trials, two citizens of the United States of America had their due process, were convicted and punished for their crimes—legally.

Another sad day in our country’s history is practically emblazoned into everyone’s memory: 9/11. Before September 11, 2001, if someone mentioned the numbers 9 -1 - 1, someone would have thought you were talking about the nation-wide emergency response phone number. (Was it a coincidence that this national state-of-emergency happened on 9/11?) I think much of the world mourned on September 11, 2001 after seeing the events of terrorism unfold on that fateful day, and realizing that not only US citizens but many foreign nationals died as a result of carefully crafted plans by known international terrorists were executed. People died on that day, and our national “innocence” died on that day, as well.

It wasn’t like these terrorists caught us blind-sided, as was the case with the Oklahoma City bombing. I remember seeing a news clip on The Daily Show when George W. Bush celebrated a birthday in July 2001 by golfing with his dad, the former 41st president, George Bush (remember the baseball caps with “43” and “41” on them??). The scene held the younger Bush fielding questions in his golf cart from reporters (valid reporters, not a Daily Show reporter). One reporter asked Dubya about the rising reports of possible terrorist threats in the US. Dubya casually blew off the reporter’s question as a non-issue, while he diligently picked off sod between the spikes on his golf shoes. Apparently, that sod was a more pressing issue to the President. The elder Bush could be seen next to his son with steam just about to burst from his ears. I can vividly remember saying to my husband, Dubya will live to regret that statement. To this day, not one news department (not even The Daily Show) has rebroadcast that revealing news clip. This is just one of many examples that we as a government, and as a people, knew that terrorist threats were mounting in the United States.

Sure, this happened before, even when Bill Clinton was in the White House. And, most all of those threats ended with terrorist attacks against American interests abroad. The only time terrorists had previously launched a large-scale attack on US soil was the mostly unsuccessful first attempt to annihilate the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993.

However, the terrorist threats in 2000 and 2001 seemed different to me. They seemed to take on a different aura about them. And it seemed the more terrorist threats were reported, the more it seemed the Bush Administration was brushing them off. This seemed so against the nature of the presidency not to at least validate these terrorist threats, and not to make any attempt to protect the citizens of the US.

Then, the morning of September 11, 2001 happened. Oddly enough, the vice president was “running” some air training session with some aerial bombers around the Capitol city. The president was reading children books in an elementary school in Florida. The media estimated that around 11,000 people work in and around the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks, however a little over 2,000 people lost their lives. It didn’t seem that there were 9,000 people that rushed out of those buildings alive on that fateful day. Odd that thousands of people would not be at work on 9/11, isn’t it? There were people that knew something was up that day. And then there are people, even to this day, think that we were caught by complete and utter surprise with these terrorist attacks.

It was quite evident that these were foreign terrorists, a militant Muslim faction, attacking on 9/11. The more investigation into these acts, the more we find out that they were quite frank about their actions. They felt justified and we feel victimized. What is the justification? Who ultimately has victimized us as US citizens?

Now, as we continue in a war waged in other countries against other citizens, many as innocent as those lost in Oklahoma City and the attacks of 9/11, the actions of our government in waging wars continues to give justification to these militant groups, and adds to their numbers those disenfranchised with the way the United States treats their country and their people.

We cannot and should not forget the lives that these senseless acts of terrorism stole from us. Nor should we ever forget the lessons we should have learned from this terrible event.