Random events are usually more indicative of the passage of time than any formal anniversaries, and for me, Sept. 11 is no different.
Last month, I was in an elevator and it started to shake wildly. At first, I assumed it was just on the fritz. When I got off and people started running toward the stairs and out of the building, I assumed there was a fire. When I saw none, I tossed around several other possibilities before finding out it was a rare Washington, D.C., earthquake.
Hours later, it struck me that there was one possibility I had never even considered. This is when I realized how much had changed in the 10 years since the worst attack on American soil.
I was in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, when two hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center. Living and working in Times Square in the months and years that followed, the biggest change was the assumption that any out-of-the-ordinary occurrence, even those that really weren’t even that abnormal for a big city, must be a terrorist attack.
When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, I hadn’t immediately thought it was act of terrorism. It took the second plane hitting. Yet suddenly, loud noises, blown transformers, popped manhole covers, and unexpected fireworks displays seemed like terrorism until proven otherwise.
It’s a part of human nature that the further removed we are from a traumatic event, the less threatened we feel. And there’s no doubt that, as the memories of the Sept. 11 attacks recede, so does the fear of terrorism. Last month, just 3 percent of Americans polled by CNN identified terrorism as the most important issue facing the country today.
In one sense, this is a good thing. Among the most effective responses to terrorism is to make sure it has as little effect on people’s day-to-day lives as possible and that people do not live in fear.
At the same time, there is also a danger, as time goes by without a major terrorist incident, that people will begin to assume that we’re out of the woods, and that no real threat remains. They’ll think that perhaps the terrorists got lucky 10 years ago, and that 9/11 was an aberration.
Yet this would be a mistake. One of the reasons that the Sept. 11 plot succeeded was that it caught the nation completely off guard. Even though there hasn’t been a major incident since, there still are Islamic terrorist groups conspiring to carry out attacks on America.
As Erick Stakelbeck documents in his book, “The Terrorist Next Door,” the biggest threat going forward may be of the homegrown variety. That is, the radicalization of Muslims within America, who become inspired to violence.
A prominent example is Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, who attended the sermons of and contacted Anwar Awlaki, the Yemeni terrorist who served as imam of a mosque in Falls Church, Va. — just miles outside of the nation’s capital.
The threat of homegrown terrorism is especially difficult to combat, because it isn’t always easy to draw the line between freedom of religion and radical rhetoric that crosses over into terrorist incitement.
So, as we reflect on the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, Americans shouldn’t live in fear, and should be thankful that a decade has passed without a major terrorist attack.
But at the same time, the nation must remain diligent in protecting against the very real possibility that our enemies may strike at any time — and likely will when we’re least expecting it.
Philip Klein is senior editorial writer for The Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
