Published 08 September 05

9/11 and America's short memory

By Abigail R. Esman
World Defense Review columnist

"WE WILL NEVER FORGET!" declared the posters taped across the city, the banner strung above the massive hole that once had been the World Trade Center, in the months after 9/11. And for a year, anyway, tourists came to pay respects at Ground Zero while New Yorkers brought flowers to their local fire departments, contributed to funds benefiting the families of those killed, pasted American flags to the windshields of their cars, and somberly marked the eleventh day of every month that passed.

But four years later, to walk the streets of New York City – and even more, to visit any other part of the USA – we have, it seems to me, indeed forgotten. We have forgotten the fear. We have forgotten the anger. We have forgotten the pride. We have forgotten the love and the unity. We have, in too many ways, forgotten that it all could happen again, as early as tomorrow.

Or maybe "we" haven't forgotten so much as the government – those we entrust to keep us safe, who, in the effort to act as if we already are (an attempt, I guess, to make us think so, too, when most of us know better) – has endangered us. It's not just that the American flags are gone; these vanished with a combination of wind, rain, and disgust with a war in Iraq the Administration continues to defend at an obscene cost in human lives – never mind tax dollars – rather than continuing the search-and-destroy mission for Osama bin Laden, the guy who killed our husbands, fathers, brothers, wives, sisters, and neighbors, in the first place. (And in the wake of the dismal, catastrophic response to Hurricane Katrina, the toll this has taken on our security at home is more vivid than ever.)

It's not just the return of conspicuous consumption in the form of $4,000 pocketbooks and designer outfits for lapdogs, though that might have something to do with it.

More, it is the combination of complacency and disbelief, of a perhaps misplaced sense of entitlement (hence the miniature poodle playsuits) that have left us in many ways as vulnerable now as we were 48 long months ago.

Take, for instance, what I remember when I flew out of JFK on September 18, 2001, exactly one week after the attacks: Everyone – Business Class, Tourist Class, First Class passengers alike – showed their passports to airline employees before even entering the terminal. Military men, their shoulders draped with M-16s, stood at every corner of the building.

Not now. It was, in fact, only weeks before Business Class passengers were ushered through a faster, easier security line, with less stringent checks and examinations – this, when the 9/11 hijackers had all been flying Business Class themselves. Curbside check-in quickly reappeared. Fact is, anyone could approach an airport terminal fully loaded right now, and bomb more people waiting to check in than they'd likely get on a single airplane.

Think about that. There is no security there.

Nor is there any at Grand Central Station, where some 700,000 commuters pass through twice daily on their way to and from the office. Oh, occasionally you'll find a National Guardsman or two. But what's in all those briefcases? Why are there no X-ray scans to let us know?

Some argue that it would be "inconvenient." It would slow commuters down. Others point to privacy issues. But the fact is, most of those I've spoken to would prefer the delay to the risk that they're now taking – and note that cameras in clothing stores and taxi cabs are equally invasive. Mostly, it's the non-New Yorkers I hear complaining, people who come here once a year or less, people who didn't breathe the choking smell of death and smoke and fire in the New York City streets for weeks after the once great towers had become urban mountains of body parts and rubble.

Nevertheless, the debates continue everywhere, on online bulletin boards and cocktail parties and meetings and conventions. "They even took my tweezers," one woman will say of her airport security encounters, and another, "They didn't even bother with my pocketknife." And I wonder, are there no regulations for this? If not, why not? If so, how are inspectors getting away with breaking them?

It has gotten worse. After the London bombings of July 7, New York determined to increase security on subways and – at long last – commuter rail and bus stations. Knapsacks were to be examined randomly. Unattended luggage would be confiscated.

But in the past several weeks that I've been in New York, I haven't seen either of these things happen even once. Yes, three Guardsmen stood nearby the Port Authority recently one late afternoon, but they were hardly posted at the door. When I made my way to the gate, I found myself second in line: awaiting me when I arrived was a black vinyl duffel bag, zippered shut, alone. There were no policemen anywhere. I caught, finally, the eye of an orderly, but when I asked him what he knew of the abandoned bag, he simply shrugged and walked away. It was a good ten or twenty minutes before a young man came by and claimed it. Until then, no one did a thing.

Was it not important enough? Were fellow passengers afraid to be embarrassed? Are security forces so stretched on the battlefields of Iraq that there aren't enough to protect us here at home?

Is it inconvenience, disbelief, disinterest, that continues to put us at risk?

Truth is, I'm surprised there have not yet been suicide bombings or chemical attacks in New York. Certainly the opportunities abound: I've been expecting one at Bloomingdale's, for instance, for years. And New Yorkers know it. No longer do sirens in the afternoon signal, for us, just another car accident, heart attack victim, fire in a nearby building. You hear a siren, you anticipate another, and then another. Sometimes if you hear too many in a row, you switch on the TV and check the news. Because we know: Al Queda is still out there. No one ever found the guy who sent out all the anthrax, either (is anyone still looking?). Most of our protection is on another continent, fighting battles against people who never attacked us in the first place while those who did regroup, recruit, and surely giggle at how vulnerable we've made ourselves along the way.

Now, the city officials have proposed making cell phone service available in the subway. Never mind, as Clyde Haberman noted in The New York Times, the fact that in a real emergency, cell lines would be so jammed up no one could use them anyway. Never mind, as he also pointed out, that the train explosions in Madrid were likely set off by exactly such a device.

If that weren't enough, the FAA is relaxing its security rules for airplanes. Pocketknives may now be carried aboard commercial aircraft. So may razors, bows and arrows, and ice picks. A former Northwest Airlines security director told The Washington Post, last month, that he was against the measure, but that doesn't seem to have had much impact.

Oh, and you can keep your shoes on, too. Shoe bombing has apparently been decreed "passé."

As I write this, I am aware of sirens in the street below. Of course, by nature, New Yorkers are aware of most of what's around them, and now we're more hyper-vigilant than ever. But we have to be: No one else seems to be watching. And if this is where things are just four years later, where will we be ten years from now?

Alongside all the signs proclaiming, "We never will forget" after 9/11, hung those that vowed, "Never again."

We need to keep those promises. Are we doing all we can?

— Abigail R. Esman is an award-winning author-journalist who divides her time between New York and The Netherlands. In addition to her column in World Defense Review, her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Salon.com, Esquire, Vogue, Glamour, Town & Country, The Christian Science Monitor and many others. She is currently working on a book about Muslim extremism and democracy in the West.

Abigail R. Esman can be reached at esman@worlddefensereview.com.

Visit Esman on the web at abigailesman.com.

© 2005 Abigail R. Esman

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