The Conservative Soldier

As my 11-year-old daughter was falling off to sleep on the eve of Sept. 11, 2008, I mentioned that today was an important one for all Americans. She recently entered sixth grade. I wondered aloud if an observance was planned at the local middle school. Her puzzled expression got my attention.

My kid has little recollection of 09/11/2001 and, apparently, no understanding of why 09/11 matters.

That’s not her fault. It’s mine and, to a degree, the fault of local public schools.

Parents well remember the dilemma we faced in the hours and days after the attacks of 09/11 seven years ago. What do you tell a four year old? Do you let her watch the endless television images? Surely not. How can we allow him to be potentially haunted by the World Trade Center jumpers on that tragic morning, or scenes of the collapsing towers, the billows of dust and smoke, the smoldering Pentagon? They haunt me still. What might they have done to the fragile psyche of a child?

It was too much for a child below a certain age — and we didn’t know what age, exactly — to comprehend words like “terrorist”, “hijacker”, or “attack”. How do you tell your precious son or daughter that the United States had been attacked this beautiful September day, not by an army or another country, but by an ideology rooted in violence and ruthless, large scale killing of innocents? How do you explain that people simply going to work died for no reason? That flight attendants and passengers on commercial jets had become front line soldiers in the new war on Islamic Radicalism?

We did not want to try to explain it then. I fear that as the years have gone by we have continued our silence. We make passing remarks about the post-09/11 world, or the “damn terrorists”, or the indignities of airport security checkpoints and bans on hair gel. We fly our flags on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day without pausing to remind our kids what these capital-D days are all about. Why would we bother with explicit narratives about The Day That Changed America?

We should end the silence. Today is a good day to start. Isn’t it sadly ironic that so many adults deplore the notion of leaving our kids an environmentally damaged, or energy challenged, planet, yet seem to think nothing of passing along a nation, and a way of life, that is viewed by Islamic Jihadists as one great big bulls-eye?

The numbers of educated parents and professional educators who view 09/11 as a fluke, an aberration, are incomprehensible. And there are legions who also believe that somehow the U.S “had it coming”. How dare we impose democracy or freedom on the world beyond our shores.

Our innocent sons and daughters are seven years older. I wish I could be certain they are seven years safer. I wish I could guarantee that they will never awaken on a September morning to TV images of next-generation terrorism, to mass destruction of America’s energy infrastructure. I pray they’ll never see another towering symbol of America’s promise blown off the face of the earth.

But I do know that silence about the events of 09/11/2001 is not an option. We should arm our children with a deep and somber understanding of how the attacks were orchestrated, how the victims died, how the airplanes-turned-missiles not only ended nearly 3,000 lives but shattered the lives of thousands and thousands more, and why 20 suicidal warriors were so motivated to wreak unthinkable terror on American soil.

Our children need to become intimately acquainted with the heroes of 09/11, too. There are countless heroes. The law enforcement and fire department crews that ran toward the World Trade Center even as hundreds ran the other way. The passengers aboard United 93 who charged the cockpit to avert the plane’s mission to destroy the U.S. Capitol or the White House. They never were going to save themselves but think how many hundreds they chose to save in that darkest hour?

If 09/11/2001 does not become a capital-D holiday, a day of solemn observance and remembrance, then it should at the very least become a day on which time is set aside in our schools and homes to repeat two powerful words: Never Forget.

If our memories of this day fade so, too, do our hopes that it will not happen again.