Have we forgotten Sept. 11?

Today marks the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the crash of United Flight 93. Last year, during the landmark 10th anniversary, the event was widely covered, and there was talk for days, weeks, about "never forgetting the tragedy of Sept. 11." This year, the observance has been much more muted. Attendance at memorial events is down noticeably from last year, and there is talk that we have begun to forget the painful lessons learned that fateful Tuesday morning. Worse, there is talk that we have begun to forget those who died, and those heroes who fought to save others. So have we REALLY begun to forget 9/11? I don't think so.
   I agree with my friend, Jason Tippitt's theory. He believes that less mention of 9/11 this year isn't a sign of disrespect, but a sign of healing. According to his theory, we haven't forgotten those who died that day. Instead, we have simply begun to move on with our lives, something the heroes of 9/11 would have wanted. To remain in a perpetual state of grief and anger only keeps us stuck in that horrific moment and paralyzes us as a people. This, Tippitt says, would represent the ultimate victory for the hijackers. He's right.
   I don't think anyone who was alive and fully conscious on Sept. 11, 2001, could ever forget where they were or what they were doing when the first plane hit. As for me, I was walking to work after having breakfast with my best friend. Suddenly, I saw a co-worker come tearing around the corner. He told me what had happened, and I hurried on to work in stunned disbelief, arriving just after the second plane had hit. That's all I really remember until that evening. My boss was on vacation for two weeks, having signed up to do a "civilian ride along" with his son, who is in the Navy. Once I got there, I was thrown into a whirlwind of activity that didn't stop until I got home a little over 12 hours later. It was then, when I turned on the TV and started watching coverage, that I fully realized the horror of what had happened that day
   I believe anyone old enough to really remember 9/11 has a story similar to mine. We remember where we were and what we were doing when the attacks happened, just like our parents remember where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated, or where they were during the moon landing. Just like our grandparents remember where they were and what they were doing when World War II finally came to an end. Events like these leave an indelible impression on our national and our individual consciousness. They are not events that are easily, if ever forgotten.
   The question I think we should be asking ourselves today is whether we have forgotten the hard lessons learned as a result of the terrorist attacks. What are those lessons?
   1. We are not immune to terrorism: Growing up, and even into my early adulthood, I shared in the national delusion that America was somehow protected from terrorist attacks. Even in light of the first attempt to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, I still thought of terrorism as something that happened in other parts of the world, to other people. "Surely no one would be dumb enough to attack us on our own soil," I thought. "It will never happen here. Not in my lifetime."
   With one, well-coordinated attack on Sept. 11, 2001, that illusion of safety was shattered forever. The truth is, no amount of distance or ocean can protect us from fanatics who are determined to get us. The truth is, it's not a matter of IF we'll be attacked again, but WHEN.
   2. We are not as beloved in the world as we like to think we are, and our actions have consequences: America's hubris is perhaps its greatest weakness. As Americans, we are raised to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world. We like to cast ourselves as the "white knight" on  the world stage, always riding to the rescue of some poor, downtrodden nation. We like to think that we will be greeted as heroes wherever we go, that we are universally beloved. Unfortunately, that's not even close to true. The truth is, our unabashed, unrelenting support of Israel has made us plenty of enemies in the Middle East. There, we're derided as "The Great Satan." And not every country we try to help is appreciative of that aid. Some look at it as interference. Some just want to be left alone to handle their own affairs.
 For our own safety, we need to learn that our foreign policy doesn't take place in a vacuum. Our actions will generate consequences. We need to learn that although it is OK to offer our help to another country, not everyone wants it. If that's the case, we should bow out quietly. We should, in short, learn to show other countries the very same respect that we demand.
   3. The "War on Terror" is an endless war that can never be won: Remember in the days following 9/11, when President George W. Bush spoke glowingly about waging "war on terror," and about making the world safe for democracy? It's a beautiful dream, but it's a goal that can never, ever be reached. That's because what Bush was talking about wasn't waging war against a country -- say Afghanistan or Iraq. This isn't a matter of flexing our military muscle and beating another country into submission. What Bush proposed was a war against a PHILOSOPHY, terrorism. He talked about defeating terrorism and making the world safe for freedom. Again, beautiful dream, but impossible to achieve.
 The reality is, no matter how many men we send to fight, no matter how much money we spend, we have no hope of winning against such a vague and shadowy enemy. We could kill terrorist leaders every day for the next 100 years, and there will always be someone waiting in the wings to replace them. We can torture suspected terrorists as much as we want for information, and all we'll accomplish is to create the next generation of terrorists who are willing to die to hurt us.
   Terrorism has been used  as a political tool since long before the United States was even though of, and it will continue to be around long after we're gone. If we are to have any hope of changing this, we need to look at ourselves first. We need to realize that we are at least partly responsible for the hatred other nations feel toward us. Our actions DO have consequences, and failure to change our thinking and our actions will only guarantee that we keep getting the same results.
 If we want to defeat terrorism, we need to start showing other countries the same respect we demand. We need to realize that the American style of democracy is unique to us. It can't be duplicated anywhere else with any success, so we should stop trying to force it on others. Not every democracy in the world is going to look like ours. Some countries are going to choose leaders we don't like, and who don't like us. Some countries are going to choose alternate forms of government we don't like (i.e., socialism).
   If we truly believe in freedom for the world, doesn't that mean people should be free to choose their own form of government and their own leaders, even if we don't like them? Doesn't it mean they should be free to worship as they choose, even if we don't agree with their chosen religion? Doesn't it mean that they are due our respect?
   The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a national tragedy, no doubt. And it is right that we should pause each year to remember both the heroes and the victims of that day. But if we end our reflection just remembering the tragedy, it's victims and heroes; if we fail to remember the lessons their sacrifices should have taught us, then they will have died in vain.
  

Handicapping Election 2012

It's hard to believe, but in a little less than two months, we'll know the answer to the question of who will be president for the next four years. Will it be "golden boy" Mitt Romney, whose life has been a chain of largely uninterrupted successes? Or will Barack Obama, who shocked the world in 2008 by completing his meteoric rise from state senator from Illinois to the White House, be able to hold on to his job?
   Looking at this objectively, I'd say we have a fairly even race between two appealing, well-financed candidates. So who wins in November? That's the question I'm going to attempt to answer. Let's get started with the challenger.
   Mitt Romney: Romney would appear to have it all. He has the pedigree. His father, George, was the governor of Michigan in the 1960s, as well as a former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He's been a successful businessman, with a current personal worth of almost $200 million. He helped turn around the ailing Salt Lake Winter Olympics in the 1990s (though some say the games weren't in as much trouble as he claimed.) And he managed the near impossible feat of being elected governor of Massachusetts as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. From that position, he showed an ability to govern from the political middle. He even managed to pass health care reform similar to "Obamacare," which he now says he wants to repeal. In fact, the only glitches on his otherwise sterling resume are a failed U.S. Senate run against Ted Kennedy and a failed presidential bid four years ago.
   This year was ripe for a Romney run. In the early going, he stood out, head and shoulders above a field of glaringly weak candidates composed of no-names (Herman Cain, John Huntsman) and has-beens (Newt Gingrich). In the Republican debates earlier this year, Romney appeared the most presidential and the most prepared. He even managed to cast himself as the most moderate of the candidates.
   So could he beat Obama? Most definitely. Romney's biggest strengths are his business acumen, his ability to raise funds (he has often ranked among the leaders in fund-raising in other races) and his ability to appear moderate. In fact, he has shown he has the ability to govern as a moderate when called upon (or when he's forced to -- see Massachusetts). That ability to govern from the middle may represent the biggest threat to Obama, since it will certainly appeal to undecided and "swing" voters.
   But as much as Romney brings to this race, his weaknesses are just as glaring. Chief among these is his tendency to change his mind on positions important to the GOP. Romney was a pro-choice Republican until 2005, when he had a change of heart and became pro-life. While governor of Massachusetts, he declared that he was against gay marriage, but in favor of civil unions. In fact, he even ordered the county clerks of his state to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Now, he has cast himself as being against both gay marriage and civil unions. While I understand that people sometimes have changes of heart (it happens to us all), these "flip-flops" on important positions strike me as disingenuous at best, blatantly opportunistic at worst. Whether he intended it or not, Romney has made it appear as if he has no core convictions of his own, that he simply adopts the position that is most popular at the moment, and that will help him get ahead. That's slimy. And it makes it hard for voters to know what Romney will do if elected.
   Romney's other glaring weakness is his pick for vice president, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. As I've noted before, Ryan is an extremist of the worst kind. He has shown that he doesn't like women, having voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, declaring that he is against all abortions, even those that result from rape or incest, and wanting to deny over-the-counter status to emergency contraception. His forte is supposedly the budget, but his proposals would damage both Social Security and Medicare. Ryan's nomination will likely appeal to the most hardcore, radical parts of the Republican Party, but it will do nothing to burnish Romney's reputation as a moderate who can govern from the middle. When it comes to making that case, Ryan is a definite liability.
   Barack Obama: Obama's biggest strength is, ironically, also his biggest weakness. Obama is the incumbent, and historically, incumbents are extremely difficult to beat. Being the incumbent means that Obama has a built-in bully pulpit to get his message out to voters that Romney doesn't have. When Obama speaks, everyone stops and listens. But that is also his biggest weakness, since Obama now has a record he has to defend to voters.
  In grading Obama's first term, I think he deserves credit on two fronts. First, Obama has largely lived up to the promises he made to voters four years ago. Obama promised to put an end to the unpopular Iraq war, and he has done so. Although we still have troops in Afghanistan, we now have a timetable in place for bringing them home.
   Obama promised to put an end to the misguided "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring gays from serving openly in the military, and he did so.
   Obama promised to pass health care reform, and he did so, even though "Obamacare," as it is derisively called by Republicans, has now become a rallying point for the GOP in this election.
   Obama deserves credit for thinking outside the box. Whether you agree with his health care plan or not, and it is by no means perfect, it is at least something markedly different from the status quo, which has been proven not to work. And if the Republicans don't like it, where's their plan? It's not enough to just criticize Obama's plan to fix health care. If the GOP succeeds in repealing the Affordable Care Act, then what's their plan? To go back to the status quo? That's hardly progress, and it would be unacceptable.
   Obama's weakness, of course, is the economy. While the stock market has recovered nicely in the past four years (remember it was down below 10,000 when he took office), and while certain key indicators have bounced back, the truth is, unemployment has remained largely unchanged. There are still millions of people out of work, or who have just given up on even trying to gain employment. Voters tend to "vote their wallets," so if job growth remains stagnant, Obama could be in serious trouble. If, however, voters perceive that, though the economy isn't full recovered, it is headed in the right direction, they might be willing to give Obama four more years to see what happens.
   So to the big question: Who wins in November? For myself, I hope Obama gets another term. Sure, he hasn't done everything he promised. In some ways, he's been a disappointment to those of us who bought into "Hope and Change" and "Yes, we Can!" But I don't think he's done enough wrong to justify a change, even though he hasn't accomplished everything yet.
   Who do I think will actually win? At this point, I would give the slightest edge to Romney. I think people are angry. They're tired of government spending and deficits and debts. And they're worried about employment and the continuing lack of jobs. I think Romney will take advantage of that, just as Bill Clinton did in 1992, when "it's the economy, stupid" became his rally cry.
   If Romney manages to unseat Obama, he will face a stiff challenge that will require every bit of his business acumen and diplomacy. He has shown he has the ability to govern from the middle when he needs to. The question is, will he? Or will he kowtow to the most extreme elements of his party? I remain hopeful, but only time will tell.