AP September 11th, 2011 Special

An Awesome Press Special Report:

The Day That Freedom Died

A Retrospective on the Decade of Terror

Ten years ago today - plus ten hours precisely, at this commencement of writing - American Airlines Flight 11 impacted the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

I had just begun my final year of high school, and was in my social studies class; our teacher brought us all down to the school cafeteria so we could watch the news live on television (So, yes, I'm one of the "do you remember where you were?" crowd).

We got there just in time to see the second aircraft, United Airlines Flight 175, disappear into the south tower.

What I remember most strongly is what it looked like when Flight 175 hit the south tower. It looked bizarre to me - not at all what I expected of an aircraft that large introducing itself to a structure that massive. It was more like...a soaring bird slipping beneath the surface of water, not even causing a ripple. The face of the building just opened up and the plane vanished inside, leaving only a shadowy structural wound and a cloud of black and red blasting out of the far side.

As young as I was then, I knew clearly that I was seeing history unfold in real-time before my eyes. It was a strange feeling.

The world changed.

I won't pore over it in terrible detail. Speeches were made; war had been declared, and war was declared in turn. Two countries ended up invaded; one rather clearly justified, the other far more muddled; neither of them terribly well handled overall, but then, it's difficult to handle any war well, let alone one so ephemeral as the "war on terror".

Those two wars continue to this day, ten years later. They've drawn down, yes, and visible change has occurred in both nations. Can it be said that they were "won"? Well, in Afghanistan, women and girls can now attend school, drive cars, attain public office, even go outside without requiring a man to escort them. This alone, to me, justifies the effort expent there. But on the other hand, the body that the west went into that country to destroy, the Taliban, made an attack on a coalition base just yesterday that injured almost eighty people.

As for Iraq, well, that's far more of a mess, and one that I'm less familiar with, being Canadian, so I'll let it be. It's beside my point, in any case. I didn't set out to talk about the countries that were invaded in pursuing the war on terror. Rather, I want to talk about the country that was attacked in its beginning.

2, 977 people - just a hair under three thousand, the sum population of many a small town - died on the morning of September 11th, 2001. This morning, ten years later, a memorial was held for them where many people spoke of courage, of rising above adversity, of moving on, and of the enduring spirit of America - and the American way of life.

During his speech on the occasion, Vice President Joe Biden said, among many things, that the September 11th, 2001 attacks were "a declaration of war by stateless actors bent on changing our way of life ... But they did not know us. Instead, that same American instinct ... galvanized a new generation of patriots."

It's a stirring passage, and the meaning is good and clear enough. There's just one problem.

The September 11th, 2001 attacks did change the American way of life.

These changes include, but are not limited to, new government arms such as the Department of Homeland Security, and the Transportation Security Administration; arms of the government of the United States, elected and endowed by her people. Departments whose sole raison d'etre, when you get down to it, is to assume that the American people, and anyone who wants to enter the country, is a terrorist - until proven innocent.

Legislation, such as the Patriot Act. Granting sweeping expansions of law enforcement powers. Easing legal restrictions on deportations of immigrants, legally permitting "roving wiretaps" - tapping any phone, anywhere, without further court permission - and even easing restrictions on foreign intelligence activity within the United States. As of this writing, several aspects of the Patriot Act are still in force.

The AUMF, "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists", wherein on September 14th, 2001 sitting President George W. Bush signed a presidential order allowing for terrorism suspects to be detained as "enemy combatants" - held indefinitely, possibly without charges, in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. Thankfully this died in the Supreme Court in 2008; still, for seven years, the United States Government sanctioned soviet gulag-style 'disappearance'.

These have been the big things, the things that you heard about. But the smaller, slower erosion of freedom has been harder to see - more insidious, quietly edging the free world toward the abyss of police statehood. If you want to see it, just go to your nearest airport. But remember - as soon as you walk in, you're a terrorist until proven innocent.

On September 10th, 2001, you walked into an airport, claimed your ticket, checked your bags, and waited to board the plane. But today? Now you go through medically questionable X-ray body scanners - hoping the person watching you isn't a pervert, like in Colorado. Or perhaps government-sanctioned sexual assault pat-downs like in Chicago, which by the way, are made more aggressive and violating if you opt out of the scanner, as a matter of TSA policy? Oh, and don't forget to take off your shoes, because we know Nike started using Semtex to make the soles last decade. (And should I mention the irony? That Americans going through security now do the same thing muslims do before entering a mosque to pray?)

But these things aren't the worst of it. The worst things of all? So very few people have any problem with these things. Their freedoms are being taken away in the name of so-called 'national security' - and the majority seem happy to sign them off.

This seems a good time to quote from the Declaration of Independence, wherein the people decided that they would have no more of the oppressive rule being imposed upon them by an increasingly distant and disconnected government:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

Certain inalienable rights - rights that cannot be compromised or limited. Certain departments of the modern United States Government would perhaps disagree, regardless of their flagrant contravention of the document that inaugurated their nation.

For that matter, one of the founding fathers of the United States, indeed one of the very signatories to the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin, once said something that sums up the past ten years nicely: "He who is willing to trade a little liberty for a little security deserves neither, and will lose both." Still, the American people seem overall all too willing to surrender their rights and freedoms.

It's been ten years since the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States. The land of the free, insofar as the government permits; the home of the brave, assuming you have the credentials to be so.

Two countries were invaded. The Taliban was thrown from power and chased into the desert mountains on the Pakistani border. The regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was torn down, the man himself hunted down and found in a hole in a dirty shed. Osama bin Laden was forced to live in virtual isolation for years, his dreams of a grand 'holy war' against America reduced to sitting around watching old pornography in a windowless concrete tomb - until the SEALs came to take him out. al Qaeda, long since severed from his true command, has since fractured and split across the Middle East and Africa, and is even now fighting amongst itself.

So it seems to me that now would be a good time to reflect on the past ten years. To consider what's been accomplished - and what's been lost in exchange.

Perhaps, just maybe, it's time to scale back the draconian security and return to the kind of freedom and liberty since lost - you know, the freedom and liberty that were a beacon to the world, that were the target of the jealous, envious, small-minded zealots in the first place. Now that it's been so heavily driven home that any attacker will get hit back a hundred times worse, I think the point's been made.

But somehow, I don't think it's going to happen.

Because when you start stripping away freedoms to declare war on an idea, you need to remember that ideas are bulletproof.

If liberty dies? Expect thunderous applause.

And do remember that the price of freedom has inflated a hell of a lot since 1776.