I was 5 years old when the Windows on the World collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
I didn’t know what terrorism was or that it could result in 2,996 deaths.
As I grew older, I realized that Sept. 11 isn’t a memory for my generation. It’s an event that we see written down on a paper. It has drifted from its specific time and place, losing part of its jarring nature.
Millenials cannot comprehend that Sept. 11 led to a nationwide sense of fear. In my junior year of high school, I interned for the nonprofit VOICES of September 11th and my eyes were opened to an entire new piece of history full of hope, despair and fear.
Today, I am extremely grateful for the invaluable experience my internship gave me. I interviewed emergency response personnel, religious figures and survivors — all ?true heroes.
I never saw the messy side of it all. I never spoke to the people on the forefront, the people who tortured others in order to bring about justice.
On Tuesday, the Senate Committee released a report on the CIA’s unnecessary use of torture following Sept. 11 under the Bush administration. It contains detailed accounts of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, a medical procedure called “rectal feeding” and one account of “suspected hypothermia.”
Even more unpleasant is the lack of critical response on our campus. The only people I’ve heard talking about the report are fellow columnists at the Indiana Daily Student. Other students haven’t felt deeply enough to voice a cry ?of dismay.
Maybe this is because Sept. 11 doesn’t matter to us like it matters to our parents, teachers and elders who watched the Twin Towers fall on repeat every day for weeks to follow.
This heedless behavior is almost a blessing in disguise. Our generation’s lack of internal grief from Sept. 11 leads us to absorb the catastrophic event as history — it didn’t happen to us, it happened to them.
Yes, we will always remember the lives lost and the heroes who sacrificed themselves. But we will never be able to exactly pinpoint the feeling of despair that arose in the days.
I am wholly ashamed that I live in a country where 26 out of the 119 known CIA detainees were wrongfully held for months after the CIA found them innocent. I remind myself that I didn’t know about this, and I couldn’t have stopped it from happening, even if I did.
My 11th grade American history teacher always quoted the phrase, “History repeats itself.” This has been evident countless times in the past. In World War II, 127,000 American citizens were imprisoned simply because of their Japanese heritage. Fear makes us do things we are not proud of.
Instead of remembering this terror by reading the Senate Committee’s report, I think it would be far more beneficial for us to concentrate on the future and not reminisce on a dark past.
Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” It’s our job to turn fear on its head. The report was simply an act of fear.
jlkarl@indiana.edu
