Behold the Scar

On any other day, I would write of 9/11 as a historical event. On any other day, I would hold it up as evidence of the threat of radical Islam. But history, important as it is, cannot pay the full respect due to the kind of tragedy we witnessed on September eleventh. We read that Lincoln's mother died while he was a boy, yet how many of us weep? We read about Washington's victories and know of their importance, yet do we cheer?

In history, we may study disasters and epidemics, but we do not truly remember tragedies. We have swept away the debris of the Twin Towers and now work toward the construction of something that is, no matter what we may say, a historical monument. No matter how much we say that it is about freedom and the loss of life from the disastrous events of 9/11, the fact remains that a monument is just a slightly more artistic and emotional expression of a historical event.

As those four planes fell from the sky, they left a scar upon the United States that has yet to-indeed, must never-heal. Already, we have attempted to turn this tragedy into history so that we could turn on it an apathetic eye. We should never have disturbed the debris except to search for survivors. We should have left that mournful scar to forever bear witness to the tragedy of September 11. To build the Holocaust Museum, did we tear down Auschwitz?

I say this because a tragedy is more than something that appears on the news or a paragraph in a history book. It is an event that steals loved ones, calls forth the most deeply hidden aspects of one's personality, and destroys the lives of all those involved in more ways than one.

Could anything fit this definition more perfectly than 9/11? As two planes headed for the World Trade Center, countless lives were about to be torn apart. In the planes, the Towers, and the surrounding areas, there were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and aunts and uncles. There were teachers, businessmen, lawyers, engineers, shopkeepers, and janitors. There were veterans, artists, policemen, and ministers. There were rebellious teenagers, broken-hearted fools, ambitious college graduates, and retirees. Each and every one of them had a personal history, a set of beliefs, and an emotional state of being. Each and every one of them had their own sense of normality, their own routine. They had friends and family, goals and fears, fond memories and deep regrets. Every last one of them was a human being. In a few hours, these normal, individual, human lives would be dissolved in a tide of panic.

In the planes, hundreds of passengers were tyrannized by a handful of armed terrorists. As pilots were killed and the passengers were held under the threat of death, the full potential for a human being to commit an act of evil was made horribly obvious. In a matter of seconds, one human being took absolute control over the existence of another in this world. They stole from them their friends, their family, and decades of life. They took hundreds of normal, everyday people and thrust them into a nightmarish hostage situation.

On the ground, mass hysteria broke out as-in a single moment-everything that was taken for granted quite literally went up in smoke. Those at the point of the planes' impact had only a few seconds-if even that-to realize their approaching doom. Most victims were not so lucky.

Office workers were trapped in the collapsing buildings, the jaws of death slowly clamping down around them. Drivers and pedestrians fled from the blanket of dust and debris that had become the world. Those outside the range of the debris experienced a shadow of the hysteria that ruled only a few miles away. Everywhere, human beings flung themselves out of windows, ran for dear life, and fled to any shelter that presented.

The rest of us watched in horror as our fellow citizens were devoured by that dreadful, black mass. We looked on as the nation that had become the champion of freedom suffered its most obscene offence in two-hundred and twenty-six years. On that day, every raindrop was a tear from God. Every gust of wind was a mourner's sigh. Every dark cloud was formed from a black column of soot. Every wave upon the shore was a heartbeat stolen from an innocent.
Yet the day was not finished, there was a fourth plane that had yet to make its fatal dive. This final event is at once a tragedy, a source of hope for the innocent, and a warning to the killer, the rapist, and anyone else who delights in the power to kill, harm, or otherwise tyrannize their fellow human beings. This is because on that final plane, the passengers proved that in every crowd of common, everyday people, there is a hero. The passengers were not trained to deal with crises, they were not used to anything more serious than the drama of everyday life. These same people were plunged into a world of terror in which they were under the control of death-mongering lunatics. They learned of the other three hijackings and the purpose for which they were used. They knew that if they did nothing, their lives would be spent in a direct attack on America. For their friends, their families, and their nation, they decided to die at a time of their choosing. They chose to die with freedom.

No matter how long ago this was published, no matter what day it was when you sat down to read this, today is 9/11. There is a pillar of soot and debris in New York City, the Free World has suffered a direct attack, and thousands of individual lives have been brought to an abrupt stop. Behold the scar.