Separate victims from 9/11’s political legacy

ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL: September 11th, 2001: a day that I lived through, yet simultaneously exists as historical fact for me. A day that shocked the conscience of the world as 2,977 people from all walks of life lost their lives when terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda hijacked three passenger jets loaded with fuel for cross-country flights to California and flew them into New York City’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon Building. A fourth jet, United Flight 93, was also hijacked, but its passengers managed to retake control and crashed the jet into an empty field in rural Pennsylvania, avoiding a further catastrophic attack. 

Still to this day, 9/11 was the deadliest terrorist attack in world history and the deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in American history. 

The deceased included firefighters, paramedics and other first responders who were carrying out their job to rescue people from the collapsing towers, children and elderly persons who died on the flights and priests who entered the building to perform last rites on the dying. It included servicemembers, young stock brokers and consultants who got to the office early to get ahead on work for the day, flight attendants and pilots, and hotel employees who worked at the World Trade Center Hotel. Thousands of people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

My generation lives in the shadow of September 11th even though some of us lived through it. We know no other world than one where airport security requires us to remove our shoes and pass through metal detectors and ID checkpoints. Until a few weeks ago, we knew no other world than one where the United States was embroiled in decades-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars which left behind a generation of traumatized combat veterans and inflicted unimaginable human suffering onto innocent civilians in both countries. 

We know no other country than one that has come to conflate all Muslims with fundamentalist terrorism, no other country than one that has deployed all range of digital technology to surveil its citizens and collect their private information in the name of national security. We know no other country than the one that presently bears the moral stain of usage of torture and denial of civil liberties to suspected terrorists at sites like Guantamao Bay and Baghdad’s infamous Abu Ghraib Prison. 

Twenty years out, the troubling aftermath of September 11th colors our memory and our understanding of the attacks. It is hard to be in Washington today and not contend with the mistakes and abject failures that followed, especially as the architects of those failures return to the spotlight as America processes the withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

In the face of these complexities, I still grieve 9/11 today and I take stock today of those lives lost. The victims of September 11th are not culpable for the political and cultural sins that followed the attacks. The 2,977 people who died in New York, Washington, and Shanksville cannot be blamed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hatred that was hurled at Muslim Americans and people of Southwest Asian ancestry or the continued cycles of violence associated with the War on Terror. In our reflections and analysis, we cannot forget to grieve those lives lost and approach their memory with compassion and grace, and we must not conflate their lives with the complex cultural and political legacy of 9/11. 

To spend today on Twitter waxing poetic about the evils of U.S. imperialism, without taking stock of the sheer human tragedy of 9/11 and the collective national trauma of that day, is to invalidate the grief of the victims’ families. These Americans have spent twenty years celebrating important milestones without some of the dearest people in their lives. Twenty Thanksgivings, Christmases and birthdays, not to mention twenty years worth of graduations, engagements, births, promotions and other large events. Twenty years too without the small joys and beams of light that these people brought to the world. 

Centering noxious and venomous political rhetoric today, and deflecting from public and private commemoration, is to take space away from the children who grew up without parents, and vice versa the parents who lost their children and buried an indispensable part of their hearts. It is to take space away from those who lost the loves of their lives, and with them, the dreams that they built for their futures. It is to overlook how many possible contributions to our society by the vibrant people who perished were robbed from us. It is to erase the continued suffering of survivors who have fallen ill as a result of exposure to carcinogens and toxic substances during the attacks and the recovery efforts. 

It is certainly appropriate to bear witness to the complex legacy of September 11th while simultaneously taking the time to acknowledge and honor the innocent lives lost aboard Flight 93 and at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Indeed, as we reflect twenty years out, we must contend with the human and collective failures that occurred in response and resolve to do better. Not taking the time to acknowledge and grieve the 2,977 lives lost, however, is a categorical failure of empathy, one that betrays an insincere commitment to ideas of compassion and solidarity in our society. 

Eric Bazail-Eimil is a lead editor at On the Record. A junior in the School of Foreign Service majoring in Regional and Comparative Studies, Eric is originally from South Florida.