Remember

To our parents and grandparents who survived the Great Depression of the 1930’s, December 7, 1941 was indelible in their minds.  It was not a holiday.  It was not a celebration.  It marked the first act of  foreign aggression on our soil in over 125 years.  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor scared them.  They didn’t know what would happen next.  They looked for answers but couldn’t find them.

Sixty years later, on September 11, 2001, we experienced another act of aggression. In many respects, it was more devastating than the December 7 attack.  Our war with Japan was over in 5 years.  The Japanese are now our allies. Last weekend, we marked 10 years since the attacks and there is no clear end in sight for us since what is now indelibly known as 9/11.

The attacks on the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon and another unknown target in DC were not military actions by a foreign country.  The targets were innocent civilians and our way of life by a faction of a terrorist group that really had no home.  There was no country to call our enemy.  This was a different kind of war than we had ever faced.   And at the end of one of greatest business booms in our history, it helped send us into a downward spiral that continues to pick up speed today.

9/11 has changed our government, our military and our own lives.  Nothing is the same as it was.  The ten years just passed have seen our country question its place as a world power.  We’ve been fighting a war (wars) on different turf with different weapons and a very different kind of military.  Unlike the war against Japan with its battleships and tanks, our special forces and clandestine efforts lead by the Navy Seals and the Army’s Delta Force have become the most effective means of fighting a war where the enemy is so elusive.

Man, all of that makes it sound like we’re headed down a pretty rough patch of road. Well, we are and someone said to me the other day that one person, one vote, may be our only way out of this mess.

The 9/11 attacks galvanized our country, but only for a very short time.  Since then we have become more factionalized than almost any time in our history.  Congress and the White House and the courts are all fighting amongst themselves…and the media, especially the NEW media, is fueling the fire, along with a weird group of presidential contenders, who, at best, have a very disparate view of our world and America's place in it.

The War in the Pacific made us closer.  It created jobs.  It strengthened our economy.  It was a war we knew we could win.  Today, we’re fighting two wars.  Neither of which really have much, if anything, to do with the 9/11 attacks.  We’ve spent over 3 trillion (with a T)dollars on wars and security since those attacks.  Yes, we’re safer when we get on an airplane today.  The new tower, the Freedom Tower, going up near the site of the World Trade Towers attacks is being built to withstand the impact of a 747 aircraft.  There is some comfort in that but this is a big country, with hundreds if not thousands of targets for the faceless terrorists out there, who are nearly impossible to identify. How safe can we really be from this kind of an enemy?

When 9/11 happened, I spent the next 48 hours helping the Space Needle, an icon of the success of the Pacific Northwest, do something it had barely even considered doing in the past…prepare for a possible terrorist attack.  Just think about what our daily routine has become since that day.  We drive, ride, work and play, wishing we had eyes in the back of our heads.

Oh, how our world has changed.  Oh, how we have changed.  My father, who was drafted into the army after December 7, was still alive when 9/11 occurred.  He was a career soldier.  He said to me after the attacks, “From now on, we’ll have to keep looking over our shoulders.  But we just have to deal with it.  We’ll find a way to live our lives.  We have to.”  Ten years later, our world is smaller and our future is more uncertain than ever. Let’s hope we can make a better future from what we’ve learned in the past. Boy, do I miss the 1950’s!