This Saturday, Sept. 11, is the 20th 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 the next 20 years.

A month after Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. and coalition troops were sent into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban government that had provided sanctuary to the master­mind behind the attacks, Osama bin Laden, one the wealthy sons of a multi-millionaire Saudi Arabian construction magnate, who had been orchestrating attacks against Western assets in the Middle East since 1988 through his terrorist organization al Qaeda.

The attacks marked the first time that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked Article 5: An attack on one NATO member will be treated like an attack on all members, and thus demand a military response. At the peak of U.S. involvement in 2011, 100,000 American troops were in Afghanistan.

After 9/11, there were terrorist attacks by al Qaeda-affiliated cells and those inspired by the group in Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels and Boston. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, where al Qaeda had more direct access to the population, there were thousands of attacks not just against Westerners and Western nations but local populations as well, with shootings, kidnappings, car bombings, assassinations and sabotage.

In 2011, the Arab Spring toppled dictatorships from Syria to Yemen to Morocco, with varying levels of success.

World governments imposed new policies and programs to curtail terrorist activity, with some governments infringing lightly or blatantly on the rights to privacy, security and property or the rights of their nations’ ethnic minorities.

In 1992, American political scientist and author Francis Fukuyama wrote, “The End of History and the Last Man,” suggesting that due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the baby steps communist China was making toward capitalism, Western-style liberal democracy would soon be the worldwide norm, republican democracies would eschew war for diplomacy and the world would effectively settle into global peace.

It is perhaps not surprising, given human nature, that small groups of discontented zealots could so easily upend this vision of a peaceful future for decades.

Not only in the United States and West, but all over our planet we still view those “others” — refugees, immigrants, people of other ethnic groups, people with different spiritual views, people from across the political aisle, the extremely wealthy or the extremely poor — with a suspicious eye, rather than seeing the real threats to our people are not bomb-makers, but natural disasters, climate changes, cancers, viral pandemics and the faceless cruelty we allow our governments to inflict in our name.

There was a time — one idle Tuesday morning — 20 years ago, when the differences between us were not so stark.

Workers filed into their office buildings in New York City and Arlington County, Va. Firefighters and police officers donned their uniforms to serve the public of their city. Airline passengers boarded aircraft to either head back home or go away on vacation and business.

Those everyday people collided violently above the streets of New York City, in the Pentagon and high above a field in rural Pennsylvania. As victims, they were united in tragedy rather than divided by their differences. Now 20 years after Sept. 11, 2001, we remember the 2,240 New York City civilians, 23 police officers, 343 firefighters, 125 Pentagon workers and 246 airline passengers and crew who represent us, with varying political and religious beliefs, jobs and incomes, and reasons for being where they were when they were.

They were everyday people just like us — the difference being none of them saw the invasion of Afghanistan nor the later invasion of Iraq, nor the 20 years of war and political upheaval.

This weekend, as we remember the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which changed our lives and our world a generation ago, focus on the tragedy of that day and what we felt that day.

We can reserve all our political debate about the aftermath for Sept. 12, a date 2,977 lost souls never lived to see.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor

“They Held Hands”

By Christopher Fox Graham
Written Sept. 17, 2003

They held hands as they fell
on a commonplace Tuesday morning,
not unlike that Sunday morning
60 years before,
destined for infamy

It was a working Tuesday
a date on the calendar
a morning like the morning before
but now they found themselves
standing on the window sill
of the 92nd floor
overlooking the city of New York
and they were weightless

They were not thinking
about the cause-and-effect history
of textbooks and CNN sound bytes
they weren’t debating the geopolitical ramifications leading up to that morning
he had decaf
she had a bearclaw and an espresso
and they talked about “Will & Grace

jets impregnated buildings with infernos
and now the fire was burning
and the smoke was rising
and it was getting hard to breathe
even after they smashed the window out
the inferno was swelling
it had reached their floor
their stairwells were gone
and the options now
were to burn
or to fall

when the human animal realizes death is inevitable
psychologists say we want control
over those final moments
choosing suicide over surrender is a healthy reaction
because we choose to accept annihilation
rather than letting it choose us

So on one side
is unbearable heat
roaring flames
acrid smoke
and screams of the suffering

On the other side
fresh air

suicide is the final act of free will
that keeps the consciousness intact
even as it is destroyed

but they were not thinking about psychology
they were not thinking about terrorism

the debate about responsibility,
retaliation,
wars, flags, and Patriot Acts
can wait until September 12th
this morning belongs to them
because they did not have a tomorrow

the true terror of that morning
is to know what they were thinking
as they decided then whether
to burn
or to fall

now, imagine having that conversation
with the stranger
sitting next to you:
The barricade at the door is on fire
the extinguisher is empty
we are blinded by the smoke
and on the windowsill of the 92nd floor
we wait until flames lick our clothes
before we lean forward
and choose that moment to fall
others who fell were scrambling
or screaming or on fire
but we held hands as we fell

survivors of falls from extreme heights report
that falls are slow-motion transcendence
and the experience is almost “mystical”

I don’t know if they felt “mystical”
I know it takes

1 …

2 …

3 …

4 …

5 …

6 …

7 …

8.54 seconds

to fall

1,144 feet

just enough time to say a prayer
or regret a memory
or ask forgiveness
or say goodbye
or wonder how the sky can be
so perfectly blue
on such a beautiful morning