Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, Volume 3

OK, this is my final essay on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11. I had hoped to finish this by 9/11 but that didn’t work.

In my last essay I spoke about how President Bush asked for and received Congressional approval to combat the “war on terror” without any way to measure either success or completion. This allowed him to avoid seeing 9/11 either as a criminal act or an act of war.

President Bush is and was a devout Christian. He credits his faith with his decision to stop drinking and change his life.

But he also believed that as Christians we struggle constantly with a world caught between good and evil. Among other things this caused him to proclaim the planners of 9/11 as part of the axis of evil in early 2002. He stated that Iran, Iraq and North Korea sought our destruction (interestingly omitting Afghanistan, the nation giving safe harbor to Osama bin Laden).

By articulating that we are “good” and those other nations are “evil” he set up a paradigm whereby only those who were on his side were worthy of God’s love. Opposing him wasn’t simply mistaken, it was sinful. And while he stated several times that we were not at war with Islam, he should have known he unleashed that very prejudice.

When he decided to invade Iraq in 2003 he justified it by claiming Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein were developing and stockpiling “weapons of mass destruction” intending to attack the United States. The only link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden lay in the fact that both identified as Muslim, though their practices were dramatically different. At the time I claimed that Hussein and bin Laden were both Muslims in the same way Bill Clinton and Pat Robertson were both Baptists.

President Bush also hinted that Hussein helped plan 9/11 without any evidence. Shortly after the invasion his administration admitted there were no weapons of mass destruction even though his administration claimed we knew where they were.

In any war we need to articulate why we are right and our enemies are wrong. But President Bush went farther and laid the groundwork for the belief among many that all Christians are good and all Muslims are evil. The 9/11 terrorists may have claimed to be Muslims but members of the Ku Klux Klan identify as Christians. Muslims who wish us evil constitute a minuscule percentage of Islam.

I prayed after 9/11 that these acts of terrorism would not only bring us together but unite us in our determination to choose love over hate, courage over fear. Alas, I feel we are going in the wrong direction. Prejudice against Muslims and anyone who appears to be Middle Eastern continues seemingly unabated. Our fear has emboldened some of us to reject the very values on which our nation was founded.

I was blessed to witness an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution called A Nation of Nations that celebrated our diverse past and shared future.

I pray we will be that again and that the 30th Anniversary of 9/11 points in a better direction.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *