In the run-up to the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks,
the Monterey County Herald conducted an online poll. The paper
wanted to know: How important to you is the fifth anniversary of
the attack?
Online polls are inherently unscientific, but the results were
surprising nonetheless.
In the run-up to the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Monterey County Herald conducted an online poll. The paper wanted to know: How important to you is the fifth anniversary of the attack?
Online polls are inherently unscientific, but the results were surprising nonetheless.
Of 499 votes – a large sample for a week-long poll at the paper – 76 percent said the anniversary was not important at all. Only 17 percent said it was very important.
Polls elsewhere tended to pose questions like: Do you feel safer? Do you think the United States is adequately prepared to prevent another attack? But while the questions were different, the results tended to confirm something revealed by The Herald’s readers: Sept. 11 is losing its grip on the national imagination. And that’s a good thing.
A more scientific poll released Thursday by the New York Times provided similar results – at least for non-New York residents, who understandably have a different view of the anniversary from New Yorkers.
Seventy-eight percent of Americans – compared to 30 percent of New Yorkers – said they are not worried about a terrorist attack on the area where they live.
Majorities of non-New Yorkers said they felt safe and were never nervous about another attack – even though, the poll revealed, almost half said that the country was “very” or “somewhat” likely to experience another attack in the next few months.
Evidently they simply believe that, if it happens, it will take place somewhere else.
Like the 76 percent of Monterey County readers for whom the anniversary is unimportant, the vast majority of Americans believe today what they have always believed: that the problems of the world are an a ocean – or at least a state – away.
Security experts will bemoan this attitude. But the fact that the anniversary of Sept. 11 is already old news, and that we tend to feel safe in our personal lives, if not as a nation, means something essential, it seems to me.
It means that the terrorists have lost.
The occasion of the five-year anniversary reveals some evidence to suggest that life, at least outside of New York, is returning to normal. Isn’t this what we’ve been trying to determine for the past five years?
We told ourselves that if we do this, believe that, it would mean the terrorists have won. But isn’t normality the standard by which we declare at least a provisional victory? (Provisional, as we all understand, because we will never know when the “war” on terrorism is truly over.
Achieving normalcy appears to have been a fear of the terrorists themselves. British officials who recently broke up a plot to bomb transatlantic airliners say the plot was probably timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11. They failed, and anxiety levels spiked momentarily, but our biggest sacrifice was a few expensive cosmetics. Life went on.
Except, of course, in Iraq, where we are living out the international equivalent of the China Shop rule: You break it, you buy it.
Imagine if President Bush’s fevered imagination had not concocted a threat there, had he not plunged us into a fruitless and tragic adventure. We might be able to enjoy this moment of triumph more fully.
So with a weather eye on Iraq, let’s celebrate this anniversary by ignoring it. It is an opportunity to say to the world: Whatever mistakes we’ve made, however poor our judgment has been since Sept. 11, 2001, one thing is certain: In the history of the world, there has been no greater gift to humankind than American democracy.
Let’s not pretend that the world has not changed in fundamental ways. Our ports and largely open borders may still be inviting targets for people who wish us harm. But the blase attitude of Americans about this fifth anniversary is wonderful news. It suggests Americans’ strongest suits – our optimism, can-do attitude, and faith in the future over most of the world’s obsession with the past – are intact. These are what make this country a beacon to the world, and in a way what makes us a target.
And if, five years after getting kicked in the teeth, we are back on our feet and, well, being
Americans again, what better evidence of victory over terrorism is there?
