Shiho Fukada, Associated Press
	New York City police officers Andrew Capul, left, and Wayne Schrader look at flags in the NYC 9/11 Memorial Field at Inwood Hill park in New York, Friday. Three thousand flags with names of victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center are set up for fifth anniversary of the attacks.

By Steve Levin
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The pervading sense after Sept. 11, 2001 from politicians, media, clergy and psychologists was that life would never be the same.

RELATED COVERAGE Hunt for Osama bin Laden goes cold In lower Manhattan, boom and sadness Homegrown terror threats more likely Children born to 9/11 widows approaching age of understanding Associated Press interactives Sept. 11, 2001 - A photo essay of images of the attacks and aftermath Remembering Ground Zero: Interactive tour of the World Trade Center site, its rebuilding and reflections on 9/11 Personal, public memorials to the victims of 9/11

The obvious changes -- increased airport security, secret wiretapping, tighter scrutiny of foreigners, world opinion of the United States, the higher cost of doing business -- have been absorbed fitfully by Americans, the price of living in an open society during a battle that has been called "American pop culture vs. the radical mosque."

But five years since the day that forever will be known simply as 9/11, life, in fact, remains very much the same.

Church attendance, volunteering, blood donations -- none changed appreciably in the past five years, despite the initial spike in numbers common following disasters. After a brief hiatus, partisan politics, government boondoggles, celebrity scandals and sports obsessions also returned.

A year after 9/11, a Gallup poll showed that three-quarters of Americans were living their lives as they did before the attacks. This summer, a third of Americans surveyed in a Scripps-Howard/Ohio University poll said they suspected federal officials assisted in the attacks or did nothing to stop them in order to facilitate a war in the Middle East.

And a month ago, a Washington Post poll showed that 30 percent of Americans couldn't name the year the attacks occurred.

Has anything changed? What is different five years later?

For such a shocking event, the changes have been surprisingly subtle: loss of well-being and personal security, a sense of bonding, suspicions of foreigners. Time fits neatly into pre-9/11 and post-9/11 compartments.

"We understand 9/11 as having been some kind of life-transforming event," said Daniel J. Santoro, an associate professor of political sociology at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown. "Even if people don't have a clear understanding of history before 9/11, they understand things are different now.

"We don't see the impact of it every day."

The bonding, he said, is characterized by "a general consensus" that the attacks were a tragic event for the country. But it is easily broken by politics.

"The question comes, what are we going to do about it?" Dr. Santoro asked. "When we get into the issue of policy, then we're going to get into positions and they're drawn along political lines."

Over time, it's natural for the force of that day to diminish. The process usually occurs in three stages, according to Dr. Garret Evans, a former University of Florida professor who now is a disaster consultant for businesses.

The first phase after a disaster is a heroic time, said Dr. Evans. For 9/11 that was exemplified by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's calm control of the city's chaos, and the United Flight 93 passengers who prevented their plane from striking its Washington, D.C. target.

Disillusionment follows; in this case, Dr. Evans said, it was bickering about the nation's intelligence failures, insurance problems and the recovery process. Communities wanted life to revert to the way it was before the disaster, something obviously not possible.

The final stage, he said, is resolution, and not everyone is equally happy about it.

"It's a reorientation to acceptance that we're not going to have our communities back the way it was," he said. "But we're not going to let it run our lives. There's hope that things can be good again."

What remains five years later is a bond among Americans, but its strength differs by geography, remaining strongest in the locations closest to the attacks, said Dr. Evans, who met with New York City fire department families in the aftermath and helped organize local counselors' work with city residents.

"It's easier in Sonoma, [Calif.] to have 9/11 clouded by all the events since then, the political overtones to what's happened since that time," he said.

Roy Licklider, a political science professor at Rutgers University, compares the bonding to Marine boot camp, where people from varied backgrounds are placed in a high-stress situation.

Similarly, he said, studies show that college students' lifelong friends are those most likely met within the first three weeks of school.

"Sometimes, it's not the experience of it but having been through the experience with these folks," he said.

One group whose bond has been strengthened by the experience of 9/11 is the National Guard. The guard always has had both a combat and a support role, but prior to 9/11 members were required to serve no more than six months overseas. Following 9/11, President Bush issued massive Guard call-ups, first for airport security and then for manpower in Afghanistan, followed soon after by Iraq. Now, overseas deployments can be for as long as 24 months for the roughly 435,000 members of the Army and Air National Guard during their six-year service compacts.

Subsequently, said Cindy Williams, principal research scientist for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program, Guard members feel the government hasn't treated them honestly.

"For a lot of members who were already in the National Guard, they perceived a real breaking of the compact," she said. "Their understanding of the job was that they still would be a part-time force.

"They didn't think they would be called up routinely. For those people, it's really bad for them and it's really bad for their families."

The 9/11 attacks also precipitated changes across the country in universities' international student programs. Notification of the federal government, for example, is required within 10 days of foreign students changing their home addresses. Prior to the attacks, such information was forwarded to the federal government only when requested. Now, it's done as policy.

At the University of Pittsburgh, David B. Clubb, director of the Office of International Services, has charted all the regulatory and legislative changes since 9/11, each of which has required significant operational changes in his office.

Still, the number of international students at Pitt has remained virtually the same since 9/11, totaling 1,618 last year compared with 1,640 in 2000.

Mr. Clubb said the regulatory changes have not altered his office's primary focus of "being international educators."

"The bottom line is, international students are still part of the solution and not part of the problem," he said. "We're trying to bring people here to improve dialogue, so that we can send them back home as ambassadors for the U.S.

"They are a huge asset for us."