Remembering 9.11.01

I was born 16 years after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, so my first memories were the iconic black and white photographs of the U.S. Navy fleet in flames. I'd see them every December on TV and in newspapers and magazines, along with remembrances for those lost and the tragic but decisive World War II that followed.

As powerful as those images continue to be, they do not carry the personal and visceral feelings I get when I see similarly iconic images of the 9/11 attack. Having seen it all that day, minute by minute, the jets striking the towers which then fell to the ground below, I was left with feelings of horror, powerlessness and anger. That two wars quickly followed in a region that now knows new depths of inhumanity and barbarity makes those feelings slip to hopelessness.

Photographs ~ Robert Clark

The Washington Post estimates more than 50 million Americans have been born since 9/11, about 18 percent of all Americans. Soon those numbers will grow and become the voting majority. Future generations will face similar if not more catastrophic attacks. And they will have to make difficult decisions informed by history and the moral and geopolitical zeitgeist in their time.

To wage conventional war against flagless and nationless enemies? To change regimes? To rebuild nations? To imprison non-enemy combatants? To torture? To kill from the skies with drones armed with Hellfire missles?

Or will we find another way? And if not us, who?

Photograph ~ George Steinmetz