A day for reflection

Like the day President John F. Kennedy was killed or, for people in our area, the day the levees broke in New Orleans, the memory of where any of us were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, is indelible.

It was the day when we joined other nations whose people have suffered the pain of blanket aggression carried out by people who cared not if innocent lives were lost, who were dead-set on destruction and death as a goal.

It was the day two commercial airplanes flew into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, another into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and one more into a Pennsylvania field. The perpetrators, we were told, were Islamic terrorists who accomplished their goal of damaging not only the people directly affected but, for a time, all of us.

Along with death, they sowed fear. From that day on our world has changed, and not for the better.

In many ways it was our finest hour.

Edward Bernard, a Bayou Blue tug captain who worked in New York, was among the mariners who ferried survivors and medical supplies between the foot of Manhattan and the safety of New Jersey. He worked so long and so hard that late in the night of the tragedy he had a heart attack, and with so many wounded being tended to there was nobody to care for him.

There were, of course, the public safety people, cops, firefighters, medics and those in the federal service, who used their training, skill and discipline. In the words of the poet Malachy McCourt they “went through hell on their way to heaven.”

Their sacrifices, along with those of the many civilians who performed unsung acts of heroism, will never be forgotten.

Acts of heroism not withstanding, there was much that came of the attacks that was bad.

As a people we have shown our willingness to trade freedom for security. Some of us have, from time to time, given in to the xenophobia that is sired by fear. We have made excuses for doing torture to prisoners.

We allow our public policy to be shaped by this fear.

And the bad guys know it.

We have sacrificed heroic young men and women for years after the debacle, sending them to far-flung places where they were forced to kill and where they themselves were killed.

We have looked at our options in terms of global diplomacy too often from a standpoint of weakness, too often as a people who have tasted the bitterness of mass violence. We have not demonstrated effectively that we can make decisions not based on from whom or from where the next attack on our soil will come, but rather on what is right and what shows in a light that can allow us to be most admired.

We have demonstrated, alas, that we are not fearless, and we have used our insistence of national security as a mantra rather than a thing that we do because it is smart, for political purposes, and to tear down rather than build up.

Both political parties are guilty of this, for reasons far too complex to get into here, at least not right now.

Instead as we observe the 13th anniversary of this shocking and horrible attack, it is better to focus on our assets, on our positives, on what we can and should be proud of.

We are proud that Americans have rebuilt what was destroyed along with space that honors the dead. We are proud that our armed forces have taken out many of the people responsible, and that the legal system has taken out others, and that this will continue as long as anyone associated with the Sept. 11 massacre is identified and found.

We must also be proud of the men and women who, since the tragedy occurred, have found their way into law enforcement and other forms of public service, as well as our all-volunteer military, with commitments to do what they can through their work to keep the nation safe.

All of us, meanwhile, must do what we can to keep our nation strong. That means we must stand up for preserving our rights as citizens to obtain information, to be secure in our homes, papers and person from unreasonable intrusion.

Without all of these things happening simultaneously, then it will mean the terrorists have won. As Americans we can never allow that to happen.