9/11 was a day that made America less naive, more wary
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Volunteers light thousands of candles Saturday at the Flight 93 Memorial to honor the victims of all the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks.
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On Sept. 10, 2001, catastrophic terror attacks by radical Islamists happened only overseas, there was no Department of Homeland Security, color-coded threat level or Axis of Evil, and the worst thing about airline travel was the food.
All of that changed the next day when a coordinated group of 19 al-Qaida terrorists from four Arab countries commandeered four commercial airline flights and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and, after a passenger revolt, a field in Somerset County.
Some 3,000 innocent people died that day, along with any sense of national invulnerability. Americans vowed that the shadowy forces behind the attacks would not defeat us. But they did change us, and today, the 10th anniversary of the attacks, we are in many ways a different country -- warier and more withdrawn, yet paradoxically more cognizant of the world beyond our borders.
Almost overnight, concrete barriers went up around government buildings and airports. Airline travel, or what remained of it, became an elaborate ordeal of ID-checks, with security agents searching luggage and bodies for a growing list of contraband -- nail files, matches, liquids, gels, shoe explosives.
PG VIDEO: FLIGHT 93 MEMORIAL DEDICATIONPG VIDEO: FLIGHT 93 SPECTATORSPG VIDEO: WALL OF NAMESPassengers regarded each other with suspicion, especially anyone who looked Middle Eastern or was overheard praying in Arabic. Immigration clamped down tight on student and travel visas to the U.S. A country once famous for its openness pulled in on itself, having seen that attribute exploited by its enemies.
A decade later, Sept. 11 is enshrined in American history alongside Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor day, as a calamity that caught us sleeping.
For all our myriad intelligence agencies and operations -- and despite an earlier attempt to blow up the World Trade Center -- we were utterly undefended against 19 fanatics with box cutters and a will to martyrdom.
That late summer day delivered a powerful blow to the American psyche and economy, setting the stage for a deep recession, two wars on land and a third on terror worldwide, the Patriot Act, duct-taped houses and freedom fries.
First Published September 11, 2011 12:00 am
