I Miss the America We Once Were

The patriotism of those first few years after 9/11 has dwindled into something I no longer recognize today.

Twenty-four years ago tomorrow, September 11, we didn’t know what we would wake up to that day.

I recall vividly working in Louisville, where I served as the Information Technology Director for a small, family-owned corporation.

As the day was just getting started, my boss’s secretary said her husband had called and said that we needed to turn on the television. These days, we’d pull up CNN or something online, but that wasn’t an option back then. So, off to the breakroom we all scrambled. As many of us that could, probably about eight of us, crammed into the tiny breakroom to watch the 13” television to view the aftermath of the first tower being hit, then as we watched with horror, the second tower was hit. What was at first a mystery became clearer, and then a little later, we saw reports of the Pentagon crash and the plane going down in a Pennsylvania field.

America was under attack. Freedom and democracy were under attack. Our way of life was on the chopping block.

As the towers fell and the news announced more devastation, we began mourning as a nation. We lost about 3,000 people that day, and more later from complications related to rescue and relief efforts in New York.

Mourning turned to anger, and we quickly retaliated, albeit against the wrong people at first. We knew pretty quickly who the 19 terrorists were, but who they worked for and represented took a bit more time. Ultimately, Osama Bin Laden, who was determined to be the mastermind behind this and an attack years earlier on U.S. soil, was found and executed by our military.

Amid the anger and grief, our nation found a strong sense of patriotism. We stood tall, arm in arm, together. Globablly, the world knew we were hurt, but our resolve was made stronger and we were now more powerful than any time in recent history. The patriotism of those first few years after 9/11 has dwindled into something I no longer recognize today.

Our nation is not without significant problems. That is clear to anyone with eyes and a brain. But what it has never seen is our own troops on the ground, acting as a full-on quasi-police force. Sure, we’ve witnessed troops help with major unrest at times in history. It would be one thing to scold and encourage our law enforcement agencies to better police our large cities, but to put boots on the ground, accompanied by masked, non-uniformed people rounding up undocumented aliens and citizens alike, that’s not what the United States has ever been about. We are not a police state.

We need to stop the thug mentality and deal with law enforcement in sensible and humane ways, and we need to stop intervening in the affairs of wars across the globe. We have too much to worry about here. We must take care of our home first, so we can better help our global neighbors.