On September 11, 2001, I was three years old, in a kindergarten in Atlanta, Georgia. The school closed at lunchtime with many of the children’s parents being evacuated employees from the nearby Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. My family went home and watched the news like many others. But I don’t remember any of this.
I don’t remember the fear, sorrow, and uncertainty that came immediately after the attacks or how security changed or a time when the United States wasn’t committed to wars in countries I had yet to hear of.
What I do remember was the fallout that unfolded over the following years. I remember the way that my community responded, the kindness and empathy and calls for peace. I remember anti-war messages painted across my neighborhood — bumper stickers on cars, yard signs, lessons and sermons about loving people different than you.
I remember the way that my community responded, the kindness and empathy and calls for peace. I remember anti-war messages painted across my neighborhood — bumper stickers on cars, yard signs, lessons and sermons about loving people different than you.
I remember a conversation with my dad in our living room in which he told me for the first time that we had been at war for most of my life — a moment that made me feel small. I remember the way in which the adults around me spoke of what was happening in the world and I remember trying to square these concerns with what I had been taught the United States stood for.
Growing up, I felt that I was playing catch up, trying to understand this complicated new world piece by piece, slowly learning that things which seemed normal to me had, just a few years earlier, been unthinkable. In fact, many of my assumptions about the way the world worked continually baffled adults in my life.
Many of my assumptions about the way the world worked continually baffled adults in my life.
It is easy for me to trace these threads as they wove my journey into national security. The things that most concern me today are the same concerns that colored the political backdrop of my childhood: the use of force that exceeds the scope of its authorization, national leaders that turn a blind eye and manipulate tragedies in favor of political interests, uncontrolled military spending on things that do not make us safer, etc.
Like the adults around me in the complicated wake of 9/11, I often struggle to balance my love for my country and a critical view of its actions and legacy. On this 25th anniversary, when we find ourselves in another protracted conflict in the Middle East lasting beyond its authorization, when defense spending is skyrocketing to the trillion-dollar mark, and when our leaders undermine our security for their political interests, we should take this moment in time to reassess who and where we are as a country and to imagine what we could achieve if we led with the values that this tragedy has become emblematic of: empathy, the kindness of everyday people, and the strength of community over fear and division.
