Who we were on Sept. 12

Scott Loftis

Friday, Sept. 11, will mark the 25th anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history.

That day, Islamist terrorists hijacked four airplanes in the skies above our nation, on a suicide mission aimed at inflicting mass casualties and striking fear in the hearts of Americans from sea to shining sea.

The terrorists flew two airplanes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in northern Virginia. A fourth airplane crashed into a Pennsylvania field after brave passengers rushed the cockpit. It is widely believed that the plane’s intended target was the U.S. Capitol.

The losses were horrific: 2,977 people were killed in the attacks and thousands more were injured. An untold number suffered long-term health consequences. The toll in infrastructure and property damage was estimated at $10 billion.

Those who died in the attacks weren’t targeted because of who they were as individuals, but because of what they represented. The terrorists were attacking our way of life — just as they believed we had attacked theirs. Their goal was to disrupt not just our sense of freedom and liberty but our economy. They wanted to frighten us, and they did. They wanted to make us pay, and they did. They wanted to hurt us, and they did.

They also woke us up, forcing us to confront the reality that evil does exist and that despite our greatness as a country, we are not immune to that evil.

I’m sure that all of us who are old enough to remember that day can recall vividly exactly where we were when we heard the news.

I was working in Little Rock as the editor of a national newspaper covering the for-hire trucking industry. I wasn’t feeling well that morning, and when I called the office to say I wouldn’t be in, I was told what had happened. Like virtually every other American, I spent the rest of that day glued to the television as the horror continued to unfold. I remember watching footage of people who were trapped inside the World Trade Center towers and chose to jump to their deaths rather than be consumed by fire. I remember the images of a wall of smoke and soot rolling over entire city blocks. The carnage was virtually unfathomable.

I remember, too, the way our nation responded in the immediate aftermath. Hours after the attacks, approximately 150 members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives — Democrats and Republicans alike — gathered on the steps of the Capitol to hold a moment of silence for the victims before singing an a cappella rendition of “God Bless America.”

If the terrorists hoped to divide us, they failed. In the short term. Petty politics weren’t important in the wake of the attacks. We were one nation, indivisible. For a little while.

Twenty-five years later, however, that might not be quite so true. America these days sometimes feels deeply divided, struggling to reconcile contradictory viewpoints on who we are and who we ought to be as a nation.

How much of that division can be attributed to those horrific attacks on Sept. 11, 2001? That’s a matter of opinion, but I can’t help but think that some seeds of our current divide were sown that day.

I’m sure all of us will remember that awful day in our own individual ways. Each of us will have our own point of view on what happened and how it affects our society even today.

I’ve seen this written multiple times, so I take no credit for the idea. But it makes sense to me: The best way that we can honor those whose lives were forever changed on Sept. 11, 2001, is to be the people we were on Sept. 12.

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Scott Loftis is editor and publisher of the Carroll County News.