Stop reliving 9/11…

This will likely rub some of you the wrong way. Fine. Good even. As Americans, we need to have our ingrained notions of superiority and eternal rightness challenged from time to time. I would like to do so now, in my own small way. But first, some background on myself.

I was brought up in a small town in northern Illinois. My family attended Protestant church services every Sunday, we went to church picnics and concerts, and my sister and I were both active in church youth groups. I earned the rank of Eagle Scout in 2006, the same year I graduated from high school. I choose to go straight to college on a partial academic scholarship. After deciding that college was too expensive, and realizing that I probably needed more structure in my life, I left for the Army. From 2008–2016 I was an active duty MP. I spent my 21st birthday in Baghdad. I spent my 25th birthday in Kabul. I have spent more hours in tactical schools than most MPs. I have shot a truly ridiculous number of rounds of ammunition, perfecting the skills required to take life. I am now a graduate student studying conflict analysis and resolution. I want to make it clear that my perspective, and the opinions I have elected to share here, have been developed over a number of years and a variety of very different experiences.

So here goes: We need to stop reliving 9/11.

On September 11, 2001, 2,977 people lost their lives in the terror attacks (CNN). These attacks were masterminded by Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network. Because we had intelligence that made this pretty clear, the US invaded Afghanistan, whose Taliban regime was providing a safe haven for bin Laden and Al-Qaeda camps. The Taliban turned out to be a pretty weak match up against the might of the US military, and was toppled quickly. Since then, the situation has been in an odd type of limbo. The Taliban was defeated, and bin Laden killed, yet we still have troops in that country, 15 YEARS LATER (oh, and the Taliban has been retaking territory). Shortly after toppling the regime, our government chose to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein. Now, I was only a freshman in high school in 2003, but I remember being a bit confused as to how Iraq fit in with 9/11 and terrorists. Trusting that there was a good reason, I supported our presence enough that I signed a military contract in 2007. And I found may way into the Iraq “surge,” spending 15 months there. It was this period in my life where I really threw off the wool of naivety, constantly asking what on earth I was supposed to be accomplishing in Iraq. I had a different experience there than most vets because my job required that I interact with the same Iraqis every day. I developed friendships with them. I was attacked with them. We saw the horrors of war together, only I got to go home and they had to remain. The UNHCR reports that as of 2011 there were approximately 3 million persons of concern in or from Iraq, which includes refugees and internally displaced persons (MIT). Three. Million. People. Many of them have not been home in years, if their homes are even still there. According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, between 2003–2006 approximately 151,000 people were killed in Iraq. Not injured. Not affected by the violence. Killed. Some of these people were bad, sure, but many more of them were fathers, brothers, wives, mothers, cousins, teachers, policemen, and friends. They were people.

Afghanistan is a similar story. CNN reports that there have been approximately 149,000 people killed in Afghanistan between 2001–2015. The UNHCR reports around 1.8 million people of concern in 2015 in the country. If you’ve been paying attention, my date ranges vary depending on where I found these articles, but I will total them as-is, because the results will be plenty shocking as they are:

American Deaths: aprox. 10,000

Iraqi/Afghan Deaths: aprox. 300,000

People of Concern: aprox. 4.8 million

Osama bin Laden is dead. ISIS is the new threat. ISIS was born out of Al-Qaeda Iraq. Have we been successful? In our primary goal of bringing those behind 9/11 to justice: yes, we have been successful. BUT, we are still fighting a radical, extremist organization in the same region where we’ve already been fighting extremists for 15 years. Terror attacks against Western nations seem to be increasing in frequency. People are indeed terrorized. In this aspect, we have absolutely not been successful. But where do we go from here?

It starts with 9/11. Like other pivotal moments in American history, we should remember 9/11, but American culture has elevated this single day to a religious-level of importance. Acknowledge what happened in your own way, and know that I do too, but plastering social media with images of the burning towers does not do anything to honor the memory of the fallen. What it does accomplish is to re-ignite our anger, and it serves as a continuous justification for military action in the Middle East. Dr. Sara Cobb, in her works on narratives and conflict, mentions how our stories can perpetuate violence. When origin myths are present, they can result in a circular pattern of conflict: “You did this to me, my actions were just retaliation.” “Oh yeah? Well I did that because of what you did before. And now I’m just responding to your aggression.” To both parties, their own violence is justified by the actions of the Other. In the case of 9/11, we justify our military action in the Middle East by pointing out that They struck first. And our annual reliving of the events keeps this story, and our justification for violence, fresh.

I am trying to say that remembering and reliving are different. We don’t elect to relive the Oklahoma City bombing year after year, though those who were affected certainly remember that day. If that event were our primary justification for military action, I would be writing about it instead. 9/11 doesn’t define me as a person or us as a nation, the story is more complicated than that. We are the collective total of our experiences, and choosing to define ourselves through a singular, victimizing event is simplifying our narrative, making it easier to otherize, and perpetuate violence, rather than spreading peace and justice.

Works Cited:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/many-americans-died-u-s-wars/

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts/

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0707782

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/asia/afghanistan-pakistan-war-deaths-study/

http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/

http://reporting.unhcr.org/node/4505#_ga=1.209775573.1163186685.1473718611