In “Aftermath,” a 1919 retrospective poem on his war, Siegfried Sassoon asked: “Have you forgotten yet?” “Look up,” he appealed, “and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.”[1] With the approach of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I have been reflecting on that terrible day and how we remember it. Specifically, I was comparing how we recall it with how we recall the only other comparable event in American history: Pearl Harbor. Admittedly, I was only nine years old in 1966 on the 25th anniversary of that attack and have no specific recall of December 7th of that year. But I do have clear memories of the atmosphere of that time and the tone that pervaded Americans’ collective honoring of the courage and sacrifice of those who fought in the Second World War. And I must admit being a bit unsettled by the comparison.
Even in an era of rising protest over the war in Vietnam, the vast majority of Americans commemorated the dead from the global conflict that preceded it and honored the veterans of it who walked among them. And perhaps that is part of the difference. Some 12.2 percent out of a total population of about 135 million 135 million—about one in eight Americans—donned their country’s uniforms during World War Two. There was scarcely an American family that did not have at least one member who served. In contrast, about five million Americans served in the post-9/11 era. Even when one adds to that total the relatively small numbers of Americans from Other Government Agencies such as CIA who served alongside them, this amounts to only some 0.9 percent of the U.S. population. Many Americans do not even know anyone who served. Indeed, all too many of our countrymen don’t seem to know much about 9/11, much less the twenty years of war thereafter.
Perhaps this dearth of knowledge is reflective of the state of the teaching of history and civics in our schools. But I suspect there are other factors at work. The first is an apparent reluctance on the part of sizeable swaths of the media to present to Americans, many of whom came of age after 9/11, the brutal realities of that day in the form of video of the attacks and their aftermath. The second is a seeming reluctance on the part of some public personalities to correctly portray what occurred, using phrases such as “some people did something” to describe the terrorists and the attack they carried out. We have even seen a few who outrageously assert that our country deserved 9/11.
Such perspectives were anathema to the post-Second World War era. My professor of ancient military history while I was at Valley Forge Military Academy, for example, had no such qualms in unequivocally characterizing the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as what it was and attributing responsibility for it. A veteran of the Pacific War, when he wanted to hit us with a pop quiz, he announced it by pinning his souvenir Japanese battle flag—riddled with bullet holes and stained with blood—up on the blackboard. The response of an Agency case officer to criticism by a Japanese diplomat’s wife of our decision to use the atomic bomb is likewise instructive. “Well, Madame,” he said, “you shouldn’t have sunk our damned ships.” Such incidents might seem insensitive to some today, but they are indicative of how that generation saw that infamous day.
Another reason for this seeming reluctance to speak to the realities of 9/11 and what came thereafter is the characterization by some of the actions undertaken by the U.S., and particularly by CIA, as somehow dishonorable if not illegal. Although we had, in fact, been told those actions were lawful, I can clearly recall discussions with colleagues at the time wherein all involved understood there was a risk - if not a likelihood - that others looking at those actions years later would judge us harshly. Yet my colleagues had the courage to act nonetheless. It is worth noting that some of the harshest critics of the Agency’s actions after 9/11 were the same political leaders who had been fully briefed on, and supported, those actions at the time.
Finally, there is the way it all ended. The disgraceful flight of the U.S. from Afghanistan was driven by a cynical attempt to politically exploit a withdrawal by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. It left a bad taste in the mouths of many Americans, not least among those who had given so much during twenty years of war. There was no signing ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri. But that end does not obviate what they accomplished. Nor does it dim the heroism they, like the first responders who rushed into mortal peril on 9/11, repeatedly displayed.
The men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces and other government agencies ran towards the sound of the guns after that terrible day in September. They deserve our lasting gratitude. In my own Agency, the two decades after 9/11 was a time of both victories and losses. Our successes can be measured by what did not happen. There was no large-scale follow-up terrorist attack on our country on the scale of 9/11 as was feared in its immediate wake. In a years-long—indeed ongoing—battle against jihadi terror, my colleagues and our military counterparts degraded our enemies’ ability to mount operations against the U.S. and its allies and delivered justice to the murderous architects of 9/11. The sanctimonious preening of critics of our actions after 9/11 cannot obviate the fact that we would not have prevented such an attack or gotten to Abbottabad without them.
The cost of those successes was steep. I have seen this as the number of stars on the wall in the lobby of our Headquarters Building has grown over the last twenty-five years. Just as the 2,977 souls taken on 9/11 must be remembered, we must keep all those who sacrificed their lives and bodies in the conflicts that followed in our hearts. “No day,” the inscription adapted from Virgil’s Aeneid on the National September 11 Memorial reads, “shall erase you from the memory of time.” We must do all we can to see to it that the generations born after 9/11 know its history, understand its significance and embrace their legacy.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views.
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