It has been 23 years to the day that the unimaginable became an everyday nightmare when four airplanes shook the nation to the core, shattering forever a sense of nigh-invulnerability between our own shores. As we wrote in an editorial this date in 2004:
“Not too long ago, the arc of a jetliner through the azure traced no more than a path to adventure or vacation. Manhattan was a skyline of romance. Firemen were just public servants. Same for policemen. And all fields in Pennsylvania were equal.”
Then “four airplanes carved this date Sept. 11 into the consciousness of the world. Epic skyscrapers fell from the sky, the courage of emergency workers in the face of chaos and death made heroes of their brethren everywhere and a crash site near Schanksville, provided bitter inspiration of stalwart resistance.
“… on Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people died when terrorists hijacked four airlines, crashed two into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. The fourth crashed in western Pennsylvania after passengers attacked the hijackers.”
We launched a war in Afghanistan, then Iraq. We created a new Department of Homeland Security and revamped everything we do in the name of security, giving up surprising amounts of privacy in the name of detecting threats before the death and destruction happen.
And for a while, we seemed a united nation, a people largely of a single mind, collectively set on helping those who lost loved ones, recovering, rebuilding and refocusing.
Sadly, that unity faded as politicians and pundits found division more effective than cooperation, tribalism more valuable in their work than the hard art of compromise, and fighting from the far edges of the political spectrum easier than finding common ground.
We take a moment during this anniversary, in part, to remind everyone as this election cycle climbs to a crescendo that the attacks of 2001 proved both what happens when we opt to fight among ourselves more than fighting the real outside threats, and that we move forward best as a country when we work together.
But this date also begs — indeed, we think it demands — that we remember the real cost of Sept. 11, 2001: People. All those who have fought for us since, but especially those who never intended to be victims. To quote the 2004 editorial:
“Now this nation is divided, over purpose, over leadership and security and economy and our place in the world. Have we helped our cause or sustained our foe? It is a basic question with an answer no more certain than taking your finger and tracing a line through the sky.
If our present and future course are unclear to a majority of the people of this country, we should remember the irrefutable truth of three years ago.
Begin counting the faces of spouses, mothers, fathers, friends, co-workers and strangers, lost on a terrifying final flight, on what should have been just another day at an office piercing the sky or working for the government outside Washington, D.C.
Count to 2,976 to reach the lives lost. Remember them.
And remember the pain of a loved one lost is universal. So is bitterness, and revenge. Adding to the number who die, here and around the world, adds to the tally of anguish and vengeance that none wants to know.”
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