Wednesday, Sept. 11, marks the 18th anniversary of the most devastating terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
The attacks were the start of a global assault on the civilized world that has defined the geopolitics of our planet for nearly 20 years.
American soldiers who went to war in Afghanistan to avenge those attacks and bring terrorists to justice are now old enough to send their sons and daughters to the same seemingly endless war.
For the Afghanis, the 18 years of U.S. involvement is only half of their story, as the country has been involved in a series of endless external invasions and civil war for 41 years.
While those behind the 2001 terrorist attacks have been captured or killed, the political environment that fostered al-Qaida lives on in countries around the world.
As terrible as terrorist attacks are on the victims and the psyche of those who witness them, the long-term effects are predictable. Rather than cause the collapse of multicultural liberal democracies, terrorist attacks actually create a sense of national unity and resilience that transcend cultural, political and religious lines.
After 9/11 and attacks in Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels and Boston, the people of the United States, Spain, Great Britain, France and Belgium openly displayed cross-cultural solidarity as petty domestic political disputes muted in the face of a more terrible foe that could strike anywhere, anytime.
“Boston Strong” — a spontaneous motto that arose after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings — is perhaps the most succinct expression of this unity. Since then, the addendum “Strong” has been used by residents of cities in the aftermath of natural disasters, mass shootings and other incidents that caused citywide trauma and loss of life.
In 2004, 9/11 planner Osama bin Laden released an audio tape in which he declared his major plan to destroy the United States would be a “policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy” by using tactics mujahedeen fighters employed to battle the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Al-Qaida’s goal of “guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers” worked against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan because of the heavy military presence in the country and tacit support of an oppressed Afghani population against foreign occupiers.
The American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq created the potential for a similar situation, but with some major differences, first and foremost being that permanent occupation or annexation was never an option for the U.S. in the same way it could have been for the Soviet Union, which shared a border with Afghanistan.
Secondly, unlike the centralized and controlled economy of the Soviets, the United States had then and still has the most robust economy in the world, decentralized and controlled by consumers. While U.S. military spending is large, it is only a fraction of our total economy, 3.5%.
The housing collapse and the Great Recession of 2008 caused far more economic disruption than any al-Qaida attacks, and that was a wholly American creation.
Terrorist attacks, however, leave us with profound sense of fear and loss, even if we personally knew no one who was injured or killed. Remembering our fallen, honoring our dead and renewing our common bonds of national unity is the only way we can recover psychologically as a country.
The Sedona Fire District will host a memorial ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, located in front of Station 6 off State Route 179. The station includes a piece of a girder from the World Trade Center, that was brought to the Verde Valley to serve as a memorial to the nearly 3,000 people killed 18 years ago.
Christopher Fox Graham Managing Editor
