There is much that is terrible to remember from seven years ago today. But in, as they say, the fullness of time, there are two things that really seem to stick with me.
One is the utter quiet of that night, looking up at very bright stars untroubled by airplane traffic. The soft rustle of the trees seemed nudged into being by a primordial air. Nature just went on with its impenetrable and faceless permanence. The stars and whatever worlds circle them remained unmoved. I took comfort in that.
The other thing that I remember well is that Le Monde headline, "We Are All Americans Now." That time, with its primordial breeze and its breaking down of long-entrenched barriers, was a window of sorts. It was a chance to move forward with the good will of most of the world, to build something better, to find those who wished us all harm and deal with them in a united fashion. Instead, not even two years later, we were renaming French fries "freedom fries" because those same Frenchmen didn’t want us to precipitously invade Iraq.
With different leaders, with bigger imaginations, that rare, probably unique moment could have led to a better world. Call me idealistic if you’d like–I am. Idealism is merely thinking of what’s possible instead of what is. You can’t reach ideals without having them. Instead of creating a better world, we’ve concretized the sentiment of much of the world against us in ways that will take generations to undo. Sept. 11 was a tragedy in terms of lives lost, but its historical legacy will be a diminished America. It could have been different.
