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We Remember: When 9/11 Forged a Genuinely United States of America

Today, we remember.

We remember that the weather was perfect throughout nearly the entire country on that Tuesday morning. We remember where we were when we heard about the first plane hitting the tower. We remember what we thought as the new just began to trickle in. We remember our horror as we watched the second plane hit the South tower. We remember the evacuations -- people running out of our monuments of freedom and democracy, our centers of government and finance, and spilling out on to the streets of our nation’s capital. We remember the dust and debris chasing thousands of New Yorkers through the streets of our most iconic city. We remember the smoke rising from the Pentagon. We remember that impact site in Pennsylvania -- a smoldering hole in an empty field instead of the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building because Americans decided to fight back. We remember watching the towers fall.

We remember the fear, the chaos, the sadness, and the feeling of not knowing what was happening or when it would end. We remember a feeling that Americans were not used to experiencing up to September 11, 2001: the helpless feeling of being attacked as went about our normal lives. We no longer remember what it felt like on September 10th.

Do you remember pointing fingers? Do remember placing blame? Do you remember partisanship? I remember patriotism. Not bumper sticker and window decals. Genuine patriotism. I remember flags and candles and donating water and giving blood and having a new appreciation for first responders. I remember that, for at least one week, we weren’t Democrats or Republicans. I remember that we were Americans. I remember that we cared a little bit more about each other for at least a couple of weeks.

When Democrat Lyndon Johnson was the Senate Majority Leader and Republican Dwight Eisenhower was President of the United States, LBJ -- one of the most intense, passionate, partisan political animals in our history -- never attacked President Eisenhower. It wasn’t because LBJ agreed with Eisenhower’s policies. It wasn’t because LBJ was scared. It was because, as LBJ explained in 1953 in a comment that has an unfortunately haunting connection to 9/11, “If you’re in an airplane, and you’re flying somewhere, you don’t run up to the cockpit and attack the pilot. Mr. Eisenhower is the only President we’ve got.”

The only President we’ve got.

We all want to head in the same direction. We all want to move forward. We all want to progress and be happy and healthy and safe. But now, more than ever, our country’s prosperity is crippled by divisive partisanship. As World War I and World War II approached and the world realized that we are clearly connected on a global level, the people who seemed the most out-of-touch -- the people who were wrong -- were the isolationists. In both of those great wars, the isolationists were proven wrong. Yet, in the span of our grandparents’ lives we have regressed to the point where most Americans have become individual isolationists -- not isolationism on a national level, but on a personal level. We’ve tried to disconnect from the people in our own country -- especially if they look, love, or think differently than us. Don’t you remember how powerful it felt after 9/11 to be united? Don’t you remember how we helped each other in so many different ways?

I guess I could be cynical. I guess I could remember the look on President George W. Bush’s face when his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, whispered news of the attacks in the President’s ear as he sat in a Florida classroom. I guess I could remember The Pet Goat, and the fact that Bush didn’t immediately get up, sprint from the room, and change out of his Clark Kent clothes into the Superman suit. I guess I could remember Air Force One zig-zagging across the country, the only plane in the air besides military escorts and combat air patrols over our major cities. I guess I could remember the surveillance videos of the well-dressed hijackers walking through airport terminals that morning before they turned our planes into weapons. I guess I could remember that the passengers of Flight 93 didn’t actually get through the cockpit door and force the plane to crash into that Pennsylvania field. I guess I could remember our government’s alphabet agencies -- the FBI, CIA, NSA, and everyone else listening in on our world -- being unable to work together and stop the attacks from happening in the first place. I guess I could choose to remember those things, but that doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t make 9/11 anything but a success to those who tried to frighten and frustrate and intimidate us through terrorism.

This is what I choose to remember:

I remember that the passengers of Flight 93 tried to get into that cockpit. I remember that their plane didn’t make it to Washington, D.C., and even if they never actually breached the cockpit and physically forced the plane into that meadow in Pennsylvania themselves, they certainly fought back and forced the hijackers to abort the mission that they had planned. That plane didn’t crash into the White House or the Capitol, and that’s not because the hijackers got lost.

I remember driving to the wedding rehearsal for two of my best friends on the Friday after the attacks, feeling bad for them that they were getting married in the shadow of 9/11. I remember being amazed at thousands of people in the streets of Sacramento -- neighborhood after neighborhood, thousands of miles away from any of the attack sites -- holding a candlelight vigil. I remember that it was then, as I drove through the silence of these peaceful vigils, with flags and flames and tears all around me, that I thought, “We’re going to be okay.”

I remember George W. Bush -- a President I never voted for -- who, like all of us, was a bit unsteady with his words in the hours immediately following the attacks as he processed the magnitude of what we were living through. But I remember how he found his footing and found his voice quickly and began to speak for all of us. I remember him returning to Washington, D.C. that night, against the wishes of his government and his Secret Service protection. I remember how this President -- a President I didn’t agree with, a President I never cast a supportive ballot for or whose campaign I ever donated a cent to, a President whose beliefs were diametrically opposed to almost everything that I believe in -- went to Ground Zero and met with the families of those who were dead or missing, and gave them all the time they needed with him.

I remember how that President visited the rescue workers at Ground Zero. I remember, more than anything else, how President Bush climbed on to a pile of rubble from the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, grabbed a bullhorn and began to speak, but was interrupted by the workers yelling, “We can’t hear you!”

I remember that the President -- the only President we had at the time -- shouted to these exhausted, weary, grieving, heroic rescuers, “Well, I can hear you! And the people who knocked these buildings down are gonna hear from all of us soon!” I remember that it was genuine, that there was nothing manufactured about that moment, and that, despite all of his faults and deficiencies, George W. Bush said exactly what those people -- our people -- needed to hear. As the workers chanted, “USA! USA! USA!”, I remember thinking that I didn’t vote for him and I won’t vote for him in 2004, but at that moment he was my President and I was proud of him.

As we look back, we can’t help but think about everything else that has come out of 9/11 -- the interminable war in Afghanistan, the unjust and unnecessary war in Iraq, the humiliating and annoying experience that flying in an airplane became in this country -- but I think about that stuff pretty much every day, and I feel like this should always be a day where we think differently.

So, even if it’s just for this day, I’m going to think about those flags and candles and President Bush on top of the rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn. I’m going to think about being an American -- just like I was in the weeks following 9/11 -- rather than who I voted for or what team I like or any of the millions of things that divide us and can get back to tearing us apart tomorrow like they did yesterday.

I’m going to remember thinking, “That’s my President,” as President Bush spoke to the rescue workers, just as I did a few weeks later when he went to Yankee Stadium for Game 3 of the World Series, strapped on a bulky bulletproof vest under his FDNY jacket, walked to the pitcher’s mound, and with millions of Americans watching on television, with thousands of rabid New Yorkers watching in the stands, and with Derek Jeter’s words of warning (”Don’t bounce it or they’ll boo you”) rattling around in his head, threw a perfect strike.

I’ll remember thinking, “That’s my President,” about a guy I never voted for and didn’t agree with, and I’ll hope that you do that when the guy you didn’t vote for and didn’t agree with says the right words, does the right things, and throws a strike when our nation needs it -- not because you’re a Democrat or a Republican, but because you’re an American and that’s the only President we’ve got. We don’t have to disagree about everything just because we don’t agree about most things, and we don’t have to like everything about one another to understand that, sometimes, we need each other.

What do you remember?