9/11 No Longer About Fear of Flying
Linda Kulman
Contributor
Posted:
09/11/09
In the fall of 2001, when I was reporting on the aftermath of 9/11 for U.S.News & World Report, one historian I interviewed said that as obsessed as our nation is with the present, Americans would soon forget the date that the terrorist attacks occurred.
I guess I should have asked him what his definition of "soon" was.
Not only has the date entered the lexicon, but I've also never forgotten a description in a New York Times editorial published on Sept. 12, 2001. It said that the day before was "one of those moments in which history splits, and we define the world as 'before' and 'after.'"
Eight years later I'm here to say that there is no going back. And in this after-world, while the shock has worn off, the fear that bright, blue-sky day spawned has become ingrained in our national psyche.
It's fear (and retribution) that led us into two un-winnable wars where we have so far lost 5,130 men and women fighting on our behalf. It's fear (and retribution) that led the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to engage in questionably harsh interrogation tactics around the world.
And at home, while we -- I, anyway -- don't think that every plane I board is going to end up as a fiery ball as I did in the last months of 2001, we still have to go barefoot in airports and surrender our expensive makeup to uniformed members of the Transportation Security Authority (unless you smartly do what Helena did) out of fear.
There are far worse affronts than those to our vanity. We now live in a country where suspicion is sanctioned; where we are supposed to report on packages sitting alone in subway stations; where a Muslim family can be forced to deplane for wondering aloud which is the safest part of an aircraft; where, on any given day, you can check the threat level on the Department of Homeland Security Web site to see how suspicious you should be. Remember when Code Orange referred just to air pollution?
Perhaps the most lasting effect of 9/11 has to do with our children. When I was nine months pregnant with my son in September 2002, my OB/GYN and I made a deal: I would try not to go into labor on Rosh Hashanah if he would change the date on the birth certificate were my baby to be born on 9/11. (My son, who has impeccable timing, arrived on the 9th.)
At 7, he and the little sister who followed know nothing of 9/11. Not directly, anyway. But in the end, does it matter in whose closet the bogeyman is hiding? He's still scary.
After the death of my father this past summer, my husband pointed out that I was on unreasonably high alert over our children's safety. It's true -- I freaked over simple things like crossing the street -- and I'm betting that 9/11 has done the same thing writ large. Mary Pipher, the anthropologist and author of "Reviving Ophelia," has said as much: "It used to be the job of parents to expose their children to the outside world; today, it is their job to protect their children from the outside world."
Eight years out, I no longer keep nonperishable food and a roll of duct tape in the basement as I did when my son was a baby, but I occasionally wonder if I should. And though my husband and I have no contingency plan for how to reach one another during a national emergency, I have thought in passing that I'm glad our kids are in school a walk-able two blocks away. They will probably be 89 before I decide they're old enough to fly unaccompanied by an adult family member.
Could it be that 9/11's legacy for our nation is a variation on Chinese military strategist Sun-tzu's advice: hold your friends close, your enemies closer, and your children closest of all?
I guess I should have asked him what his definition of "soon" was.
Not only has the date entered the lexicon, but I've also never forgotten a description in a New York Times editorial published on Sept. 12, 2001. It said that the day before was "one of those moments in which history splits, and we define the world as 'before' and 'after.'"
Eight years later I'm here to say that there is no going back. And in this after-world, while the shock has worn off, the fear that bright, blue-sky day spawned has become ingrained in our national psyche.
It's fear (and retribution) that led us into two un-winnable wars where we have so far lost 5,130 men and women fighting on our behalf. It's fear (and retribution) that led the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to engage in questionably harsh interrogation tactics around the world.
And at home, while we -- I, anyway -- don't think that every plane I board is going to end up as a fiery ball as I did in the last months of 2001, we still have to go barefoot in airports and surrender our expensive makeup to uniformed members of the Transportation Security Authority (unless you smartly do what Helena did) out of fear.
There are far worse affronts than those to our vanity. We now live in a country where suspicion is sanctioned; where we are supposed to report on packages sitting alone in subway stations; where a Muslim family can be forced to deplane for wondering aloud which is the safest part of an aircraft; where, on any given day, you can check the threat level on the Department of Homeland Security Web site to see how suspicious you should be. Remember when Code Orange referred just to air pollution?
Perhaps the most lasting effect of 9/11 has to do with our children. When I was nine months pregnant with my son in September 2002, my OB/GYN and I made a deal: I would try not to go into labor on Rosh Hashanah if he would change the date on the birth certificate were my baby to be born on 9/11. (My son, who has impeccable timing, arrived on the 9th.)
At 7, he and the little sister who followed know nothing of 9/11. Not directly, anyway. But in the end, does it matter in whose closet the bogeyman is hiding? He's still scary.
After the death of my father this past summer, my husband pointed out that I was on unreasonably high alert over our children's safety. It's true -- I freaked over simple things like crossing the street -- and I'm betting that 9/11 has done the same thing writ large. Mary Pipher, the anthropologist and author of "Reviving Ophelia," has said as much: "It used to be the job of parents to expose their children to the outside world; today, it is their job to protect their children from the outside world."
Eight years out, I no longer keep nonperishable food and a roll of duct tape in the basement as I did when my son was a baby, but I occasionally wonder if I should. And though my husband and I have no contingency plan for how to reach one another during a national emergency, I have thought in passing that I'm glad our kids are in school a walk-able two blocks away. They will probably be 89 before I decide they're old enough to fly unaccompanied by an adult family member.
Could it be that 9/11's legacy for our nation is a variation on Chinese military strategist Sun-tzu's advice: hold your friends close, your enemies closer, and your children closest of all?