Never forget 9/12/01

I will never forget 9/11. But I also remember 9/12, and what it did to us.

I have horrible memories of 9/11, 25 years ago, and the dread I felt sitting in the office at a military base near Washington in utter shock, watching everything unfold on TV, then getting sent home early… and watching the nation slip into self protection mode. It cost us dearly: a loss of some liberty, the end of innocent air travel, and so much more.

But I also now see what that cost us, in a different way: we were sold the line that an entire religion was out to kill us. On 9/12 the shock and sorrow turned to bitter, violent rage. And rage never has good fruit. America became deeply Islamophobic almost overnight, unreasonably so.

Today I see that one of the outcomes has been the slow and steady metastasizing of extremism in America, too: I firmly believe that today a segment of the Christian nationalists are actively trying to become just as fundamentalist as those that murdered so many Americans 25 years ago, but in the name of Jesus instead of Allah. There are people actively calling for repealing the voting rights of women, murdering members of the queer community, expelling Muslims from our society, and much more.

I mourn the ability to live at peace with each other. Exactly as many people warned at the time, and to my shame which I ridiculed, one outcome of 9/11 is that we let it change us. A lot of what’s happening in politics today is a direct descendant of the voices on 9/12 that called for blood in revenge. We’ve spent over 20 years killing our fellow humans. Yes, we lost 3,000 lives. But our wars led to well over one hundred and perhaps as many as three hundred times that number of deaths.

The aftermath of 9/12 also killed the son of my best friend, fighting a war that ultimately didn’t need to be fought, along with roughly 7,000 other American service members and 8,000 contractors – five times the original 9/11 deaths. And ultimately another 30,000 veterans ended their own lives after the war from the trauma they suffered. 9/12 cost America a total of 15 times the direct 9/11 loss of life. Even accounting for more than 9,000 people estimated to have died of 9/11-related illnesses, according to the WTC Health Program, there have still been nearly four times the number of American war-related deaths as the 9/11 and related deaths.

Collectivist cultures in the Middle East have exceedingly long memories of harm done to them, and the American wars will never be forgotten. In America, we tend to culturally forget things very quickly, and we often criticize those cultures for their long memories.

But 25 years later, our individualist nation which loves to think highly of our own motives is still holding tightly onto 9/11, and using it to justify endless harm. We built shrines to the dead – and to remind us of who killed them, and who deserves to die because of it.

Three days after 9/11, Representative Barbara Lee cast the sole vote against revenge, explaining roughly a week later that the vote “was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit” and wisely observing that “a rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed.” It turns out that she was right, and that all the outrage and ridicule she suffered was wrong.

We didn’t need to do what we did. It didn’t make things better.

Jesus knew what He was talking about when he said to turn the other cheek. He also was right that “all those who take up the sword will die by the sword.”

Someone has to turn the cheek – and maybe be willing to die without defending themselves – to end the bloodshed. That’s the example that Jesus set. We should learn from it.

Never forget 9/12, not just 9/11.