“On that day, our nation changed.” Promotions, teases and lead-ins to broadcast programs or segments about today’s sixth anniversary of the 9/11/2001 terror attacks often have had this or a similar phrase. Hosts on shows so far repeat the statement and precede it with, “Everyone knows that. …”
No, we don’t. No, it didn’t.
I remember six years ago today clearly, and the months afterward. During that time it seemed everything had changed. On that morning I was driving 55 miles down Interstate 540 to check my mom out of the hospital, stop by the pharmacy and take her to her home in Fort Smith. The car stereo was tuned to NPR’s live coverage. In the hospital, every TV was on, with patients, family and staff looking up every chance they got. At the drug store, the canned music was shut off and clerks and customers almost moved in slow motion.
Airport security tightened immediately. Washington gave itself permission to do more snooping, immediately. Little else happened. Measures for those seagoing cargo containers and for America outside New York and Chicago to a large extent still remain in the planning stage.
When in recent months you hear of any little Podunk, in this case Lowell, Ark., mounting a security videocamera high enough to look in every back yard and of Razorback Stadium installing a number of cameras, you have three possibilities:
- Concern to prevent or lessen a heartland 9/11 attack.
- Concern of another Columbine High (April 20, 1999), Virginia Tech (April 16, 2007) or even Oklahoma City (April 19, 1995). [T.S. Eliot was right in 1922 about April being “the cruelest month.”]
- Governments big and small have a tendency toward increasing control.
Point 2 seems more likely than 1. Point 3 seems more accurate than the others. Besides, whatever happened to the Anthrax Scare, which began a week later, Sept. 18, 2001?
The relatively young Bush administration hijacked the facts, history and symbolism of 9/11 for foreign policy already drafted. This is the shrill Michael Moore view, but Iraq remains top of the news and Afghanistan — where the hunt for Bin Laden is based — stays low and not always updated daily. Coverage follows interest.
Our nation should have changed on 9/11. If it changed, it was for the worse. -30-
