Can America Free Herself from 9.11

It’s very difficult not to think about 9.11 and the airplane bombings of the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon attack and the heroic men and women who took down over western Pennsylvania the plane that was headed for the White House.

We have been flooded with the images, some so painful that one instinctively turns away. We have been inundated with words trying to explain, understand, grieve, heal.

There are, sadly, no words to cover the sense of inadequacy, the pain of abrupt death, the loss of innocence.

There were only the leaders who tried to comfort, console, guide, act. And, there, perhaps is the key to what happened after the terror had subsided. For leaders must always find the words, the actions, the response to console a people.

John Quincy Adams said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

But what if the dream becomes a nightmare? What if the event is so heinous that nothing can be learned, nothing about it can inspire?

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King said that. And, today, ten years on from 9.11, Americans are still trying to come to terms with where they stand after that terrible day.

President Bush tried to lead. He went to Ground Zero, he prayed with his people, he promised retribution. He even went to war. Perhaps to save America from unknown dark forces. Perhaps because it seemed the only road to take. Perhaps because he couldn’t think of a better response. And it helped initially to focus America, to give her citizens a sense that something was being done to right the horrible wrong they had suffered.

But, ten years on, the wounds are still open, the wrong still burns at the American psyche, the wound is not healed.

After President Obama’s election in 2008, he tried to take another approach, to suggest that America had done enough, that the wound really had closed, that other priorities needed attention. But, behind the applause and the cheering, the gash continued to ooze.

No one has got it right yet. The explanations, the books, the defense of actions, the tightened homeland security, the deification of her soldiers, the determination to overcome - they help but they have not healed America.

David Hume, an 18th century Scottish philosopher regarded as one of the greatest who ever lived, said, “It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.”
Is Hume telling America that the time has come to act, to put aside mourning and get on with building the future - of America and of the world? Mourning has an important place in human lives. It heals and it allows the past to be placed in context and used for its beauty and revelation, and not as a hiding place.

As always, when I am looking for the kernel of truth in the American experience, I finally turn to Ronald Reagan.

Listen to his words.

“I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.”
“Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.”

“They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.”

“We are never defeated unless we give up on God.”
There is the truth. America will never lose if she remembers to do what is morally right. Take the high ground and force those who are impoverished in spirit to stand down.    
If America’s leaders today could just bring themselves to follow that simple advice. Go with God, who may take many forms and fit Himself into many cultures, but who always expects of his children that they will love each other, that they will protect the needy, that they will stand up for what is right, that they will never turn away from the good.

That makes 9.11 surmountable. It puts it into the right context. God gives us challenges, but He never asks the impossible.

So, grief, yes. Sorrow, yes. But, determination, too, to put America back on a stable path to her rightful place in history.