9/11 and institutions

thoughts on today

I spoke on an NDU President’s Lecture Series panel this morning to discuss memories of 9/11. It was a packed audience of more than 500, some international officers but primarily U.S. citizens who were not all in college yet when the attacks happened almost a quarter century ago today.

While I knew no one personally murdered that morning, a first grader in my daughter’s class lost her mother. The youngster was close to my daughter for several years so I remember her coming to occasional sleepovers (I always suggested we invite her as the little girl at times seemed so lost by her father’s remarriage and new blended family). As the years passed, however, the girls went down their separate paths so I don’t think they shared anything in high school or beyond. I have wondered for 23 years how that youngster is, since her mother never saw her grow up, graduate from high school, probably college, and perhaps begin her own family.

I was in my ninth year teaching at NDU, serving in leadership at the War College, and was within hearing distance of the plane hitting the Pentagon that beautiful, crisp Tuesday morning. Between 2001 and 2022 when I taught my final seminar, the College enrolled roughly 4300 students, a good deal of whom I got to know by name or reputation, though certainly far from everyone. Most anyone in uniform served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civilians almost all went through the horrors of life in the Baghdad Green Zone and the dangers of Kabul.

I knew students who perished in Afghanistan or Iraq, two wars intimately related to that fateful morning and the individuals who perpetrated the attacks. My remarks this morning did not mention those who sacrificed for the nation because I thought it so obvious yet I am well aware of the effects upon their families.

I also know veterans, several from the faculty, who ultimately took their own lives following those conflicts. I am not sure we ever know what drives someone to that point but the frustration, the pain, or the growing futility as the wars dragged on had to contribute.

One of the other three speakers this morning predicted we will be hit again. I suspect what he was saying was not a carbon copy of 2001 attacks but that we will have conflicts again. I don’t think we ever stopped having conflicts in the post-Cold War world so that is probably an accurate prediction on his part.

But, what I worry most about is how we will treat each other when the next problem arises because we are so anxious about people whose views are not exactly our own these days. I had a most upset note from an Actions reader when I arose this morning, posing questions about last night’s debate as she felt FPOTUS received much harsher treatment that the current Vice President and Democratic candidate. I am so happy she wrote her concerns but doubt I assuaged them, as you will see below.

I tried to explain my position to her as I don’t watch debates as I think them theater. I think it falls to each of us to hold candidates accountable by examining what they say in detail over the course of the campaign, a position I think I have made clear here. I think that much of what passes for media scrutiny these days—anywhere in the press—has devolved to partisanship; not every single person but much of it.

But, ultimately, I am an institutionalist, hence trying to renege on the 2020 election results is more important to me than I am able to express. Why is this relevant to today’s panel discussion?

Because without institutions, we would not have survived 9/11 intact. Yes, George W. Bush went to Ground Zero where he grabbed a bullhorn in an iconic photograph three days after the attacks. But what mattered about that photograph and action was that the president of the United States was rallying the nation, as had been true when he addressed a Joint Session of Congress that same week. The institution of the president was what people really reacted to rather than the individual as George W. Bush had been controversial following the 2000 election.

But, we rally around institutions as the strength of our system. We absolutely need the sanctity of those institutions and must respect them. They are laid out in our seven article Constitution from 1787 with its couple of dozen amendments over the past two and a half centuries. We are not beholden to individuals or any party but to the living document setting out our government and its quilt of functions.

Trying to tear down those institutions matters a great deal; it’s an absolute. If we as a nation revise those institutions, that is one thing but flagrantly seeking to overthrow them by force under the premises of a lie is a step I cannot abide at all.

The men and women I mentioned earlier in this column took an oath to defend that Constitution of the United States. I took that oath as did my husband before he put his life on the line in Vietnam, in the Navy, and as a public service post-Navy. I don’t speak for him or anyone else who took that oath but no matter how frustrated I ever was at rules or decisions or anything else about being a federal employee, I could never ever ever countenance using violence to get my way. It is non-negotiable. I wouldn’t want anyone in military doing that, either, as the ramifications are so profoundly obvious in so much of the world. I owe that to my fellow citizens, don’t I?

9/11 is burned in the memories of anyone who witnessed it twenty-three years ago. But, now 6 January is as well. Those are powerful memories intertwined in ways we never expected but we owe those who sacrificed. We owe them the responsibility to uphold the document they defended.

Thank you for taking time to read this. Please feel free to send me feedback of any sort. I hope my interlocutor this morning will continue reading and sending feedback or taking me up on having coffee or lunch to discuss our differing views.

I hope we never face another day like we did twenty-three years or three and three quarter years ago.

Be well and be safe. FIN