Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Now that we’re five years older (and maybe wiser), we can look back at the event that has defined our world. For better or worse, we’ve grown up in the shadow of 9/11 and the so-called War on Terror. The 9/11 attacks united our country, and even the world. These terrorist acts left over three thousand dead and impacted thousands more family members and loved ones of the victims. 9/11 was the rationale behind two invasions, which have left even more people homeless, injured, and dead. 9/11 has become part of our vernacular; we’re constantly reminded of the event through news coverage, political rhetoric, and even the popular culture. Universal’s docudrama about the hijacking, “United 93,” grossed over $36 million. Already, it seems, something about the attacks is fading into history, but the challenges of growing up in a post-9/11 world remain. September 11 was a wake-up call. Students are much more interested in world events, and the number of secondary schools teaching Arabic has increased sevenfold, according to The Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C. A Google News search found over 90,000 articles referring to 9/11 posted in just one day. The topics range from stories about the memorials being erected across the country, to columns by pundits who are still searching for a link between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, to the need for a concise, honest, and appropriate way to explain the day to students in elementary and middle schools. In the way that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 shocked the nation or that the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 defined its era, 9/11 is the formative event for our generation. We’ve made changes to our daily routines to accommodate the threat of terror. Every day on TV, we’re assaulted with images of sectarian violence in Iraq, terror-related arrests in Europe, and the dangers of nuclear proliferation. We take our shoes off at the airport, surrender our water bottles, and submit to having our phones tapped in the name of security. However, we are not the first generation to live in a time of “war.” British children growing up during the Second World War endured unspeakable hardship. For example, when the war ended and the first shipment of bananas reached England, many schoolchildren didn’t realize they had to peel the fruit before eating it, since they hadn’t seen fresh produce for the duration of the conflict. In contrast, the “sacrifices” we’ve had to make seem insignificant. So what if there’s a little bit of inconvenience at the airport? The nation is at war, yet the president wants to cut taxes? And how many Andover students do you know who are planning to forgo college to serve in the armed forces? No doubt about it, the world today is a scary place. Still, with the hindsight that time affords us, we can step back and try to put things in perspective. It was the largest terror attack the world had ever seen, but life will go on in America. To parrot a cliché, if we give in to terrorism, then the terrorists have won. Life goes on, take a risk. Anyway, the world is probably safer than climbing on the scaffolding outside GW.
