9–11: Do We Still Appreciate the Significance of Sacrifice? Or Have we Squandered It? Dr. Robin McFee
“Let’s roll.”
Todd Beamer, Passenger United Flight 93
Lest we forget, the first Americans who fought the war on terror were passengers on a commercial airliner. They gathered together, likely led by Todd Beamer, as the first US warriors on a hijacked flight high in the sky over Pennsylvania, and though they died, their sacrifice made it possible for our congressional leaders, our government leaders, our fellow citizens to live out the day on 9-11, unaware that Flight 93 was heading for Washington, DC.
2015
As of September 2015 Freedom Tower is built. The Memorial is open. The Twin Tower Lights will once again illuminate the New York skyline. Many will take a moment of remembrance, and think back…..
2001
The morning of September 11th, 2001 was not unlike most weekdays in America – people going to work, others enjoying their morning coffee, some admiring sky scrapers dotting the NY skyline, while tourists photographed historic buildings in the nation’s capital or along the lower part of Manhattan or on the river boat docks near the Pentagon.
Some folks were in the military, and wore their service uniforms, and others were going about their jobs clothed in suits or dresses. The sun was shining, kids were in school, and the weather was pleasant with ideal end of summer temperatures. In essence it should have been a glorious day on the East coast.
Little did anyone know that before 8 am radical Islamic terrorists will have set in motion the events that would change individuals’ and a nation’s lives – forever.
Just before 8 am, Flight 11 took off from Boston’s Logan International Airport. At 8:46 AM Flight 11 flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. At 9:03 Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. At 9:37 flight 77 flies into the Pentagon.
The last of the commercial airliners that are off transponder, and feared commandeered, Flight 93 has deviated from scheduled flight plan and is on a track towards Washington, DC. They are too late. At around 9:58 am the South Tower collapses. By 10 AM US airspace is shut down to non military aircraft. Fighter jets have been scrambled from Otis and patrols the NY skies.
And at approximately 10:03 Flight 93 crashes into Pennsylvania pastureland. From phone records and accounts it appears the people on board learned that other similar aircraft had been used to attack the World Trade center.
And so a group of passengers – some suggest they were led by Todd Beamer – decided to wrestle control of their plane from the hijackers. They hoped their efforts could prevent the misuse of the flight as a weapon against America. One presumes after hearing Todd’s exhortations “Let’s roll” these courageous passengers gave their last full measure of devotion…..
2015
Perhaps our country doesn’t appreciate the sacrifice and implications that occurred during and in the aftermath of 9-11. Imagine the courage it took to go up against people who had just used box cutters to slash the throat of a flight attendant, and who had commandeered with force, an entire commercial jetliner?
And that is precisely what a handful of Americans did on Flight 93. Not unlike the courage 3 American servicemen did on a train in Europe, foiling yet another Islamic attack on innocents.
We should never forget America and Americans are exceptional. 9-11 demonstrated that to the world – our unity, our restraint, our determination. The US could have carpet bombed the entire Middle East, from Qom to Mecca, from Damascus to Riyadh, from Tripoli to Kabul, and few would have stood in our way.
Some Americans argued, and not without basis or logic, that we should indeed have made a powerful and decisive offensive against the enemy wherever he hid out, and against anyone who supplied a nickel to that savage cause of Islamic Jihad. But we didn’t utilize our prodigious military. We used restraint.
I wonder about the people who died on 911, would they recognize the US in 2015?
We – the United States, for all the sham and jealous detractors – have an ideal, a history, an ethos that commends us to be courageous, to help the underdog, to do what is right. We are a great nation, because we are a good nation.
But we are being destroyed from within by forces and factions that would divide us, that would isolate us into identity group politics, forcing group against group in some battle of selfishness and perceived insults, slights, and innuendos.
Thank God on 9-11-01 people looked upon each other as Americans, not straight or gay or black or white or rich or poor or moveon.or or leftist or rightist or politically correct or proabortion or antiabortion or pro EPA or anti overregulation, or as Americans who must vilify and circle the wagons against “others” unlike them.
The colleagues I lost on 9-11 were from all ethnicities and religious tradition, unified by the notion we are all Americans, and their job was to save lives. We lost treasure when they died. I can still visualize the very location on the memorial wall where their names are listed. Good people to a person. They were firefighters. They were fathers, brothers, sons, neighbors, ordinary people doing extraordinarily difficult jobs. Isn’t that what we call heroes? They willingly risked their lives to try and save others.
Last year I asked the question – “Never again, but do we mean it?”
Shortly after 9-11-01 my colleagues and I flew over the smoldering buildings in Lower Manhattan. The only sounds in the plane were heartbeats, stifled sniffles, surreptitious tears, and our own smoldering resolve “never again.” We, like so many in our respective lines of work have spent careers towards the ideal “never again.” Many of us have ceded the work to protégées and students, in the hope they will be custodians of that promise “never again.”
Sadly, no one can do that work effectively without government, financial, and societal support. The promise of “Never again” in the aftermath of 9-11, and the ‘war on terror’ after so many years has become almost white noise – background that most Americans, unless they have some form of skin in the game, have forgotten, or worse blithely go about their daily business ignorant of the fact we are still waging that war, with service men and women risking their lives.
In the last 14 years, from the skies and battlefields of 2001 to the rocky kill boxes in Afghanistan in 2003 and remote places across the Middle East, courageous – which is to say ordinary people charged with doing Herculean tasks, our military – are waging a war many, dare I suggest most Americans overlook, until, perhaps days of remembrance like 9-11?
In the aftermath of 9-11 the US, which means ‘we’ – you and me as citizens, voters, leaders, a community, a nation – sent men and women to the Middle East as part of a complex foreign policy designed to address, attack, and defeat the terrorist infrastructure. In some ways we were winning, and in some places we lost our way.
But democrat or republican, leftist or on the right, there is no arguing thousands of our military, and private contractors also there to do important work, died, or were horribly wounded. Have we forgotten their sacrifice? Given homeless vets, men and women, are among the fastest growing groups of new homeless in the nation. It is shameful. Clearly we have not been good custodians of their sacrifice.
We also have non-uniformed Americans at risk – from intelligence officers and contractors, to diplomats – think Benghazi. Their lives and those of their protectors and diplomats alike were and are squandered – sacrificed on the pyre of political power. Shameful! Ambassador Stevens and his team deserved better. Our current foreign officers deserve better.
As we come up on the 14th anniversary of 9-11 we should take a moment to think about the significance of that fateful day, the courage displayed by average citizens and professional responders alike, and the legacy they have left us. Have we been good stewards of their sacrifice, their memory, that legacy?
America and the West are facing an adversary unlike any we had ever encountered. Recognizing the effort, and resolve it took to mount such a concerted attack on the United States in 1993 and again in 2001 gives us pause to think about our own efforts and resolve to counter future attacks.
Discussion
9 – 11: Do we still appreciate the significance of sacrifice? Or have we squandered it?
I would argue this current POTUS, his policies and supporters, have minimized, dare I suggest squandered, the memory of the blood and treasure sacrificed by so many people on and after 9-11.
Some might argue that rebuilding a tower, and placing memorial fountains at Ground Zero, as well as creating the 9-11 Museum are all evidence of our gratitude. No argument there. But it must go further.
For many of us, 9 – 11 has always been very personal, as thoughts turn to the friends and colleagues we lost that fateful day, after having made the ultimate sacrifice.
We owe their memory much more than a passing thought. 9-11 reminds us of the work of preparedness we embarked upon, the firefighters and responders to Ground Zero we treated, and the resolve with which we all pledged “never again on my watch.”
That was the motto for so many of us who headed various forms of terrorism, bioweapons, or general preparedness enterprises. But we are being replaced by a new generation of preparedness folks and political leaders.
The events of 9-11, from jets being used as cruise missiles by savage beings who long abandoned any semblance of humanity, let alone their right to be called human (and this includes their supporters), to the anthrax attacks in the aftermath to the growing Jihad against the West to the destruction of democracies; these events redefined the beginning of the 21st century.
If the 20th century was The American Century, what will history say about the 21st century or the role of the United States played therein?
Did we retake the reigns of global leadership for the good of our planet, and work to rid the world of enterprises determined to foster destruction and chaos, or did the US retreat into oblivion, irrelevance, devoted to pleasure more than purpose, as so many prior great democracies in history succumbed before us?
That seems to be our trajectory – abandoning our allies, like Israel, supporting our enemies, like Iran, funding terrorism through bad global deals including the nonsensical nuclear deal with Tehran, creating a dependency class fueled by the politics of jealous hatred instead of inspired towards self sufficiency, the growth of anti-law enforcement political climate, and the list goes on.
If these dangerous policies become entrenched into our culture, and ultimately our legacy, we will have indeed squandered the sacrifices made during and after 9-11.
9-11 is more than a day of remembrance. It is a reminder that our country must always be vigilant, and have people willing to sacrifice for a greater good. Are we still the United States of 2001 or something better or something worse? I wonder if this generation will recognize the sacrifices made by so many to give them USA 2015, and are we, those who were defined by 9-11, doing enough to remind them?
Dr. Robin McFee, MPH, FACPM, FAACT, is medical director of Threat Science – and nationally recognized expert in WMD preparedness, who consults with government agencies, corporations and the media. Dr. McFee is the former director and cofounder of the Center for Bioterrorism Preparedness (CB PREP) and bioweapons – WMD adviser to the Domestic Security Task Force, numerous law enforcement and corporate entities after 911, as well as pandemic advisor to federal, state and local agencies, and corporations during the anthrax events, SARS, Avian and swine flu epidemics. Dr. McFee is the former chair of the Global Terrorism Council of ASIS International, and is a member of the US Counterterrorism Advisory Team. She has delivered over 500 invited lectures since 9-11, created graduate level courses on WMD preparedness for several universities, authored more than 100 articles on terrorism, health care and preparedness, and coauthored two books: Toxico-Terrorism by McGraw Hill and The Handbook of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Agents, published by Informa/CRC Press.
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