On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, I called a man who lost his son in Baghdad for a story I was writing for CNN. Anniversaries of tragedies, he told me, were for people who did not suffer.
What he meant is that every day is an anniversary for those who have lost loved ones. Not a day went by, he told me, that he didn’t think of his son.
So as the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, I consumed the news with fear. I dreaded stories about a day on which nearly 3,000 people were killed in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a day that started two forever wars, a day that altered the history of the world. I dreaded them because so many have been cliché. So many were produced because every news outlet in America felt it simply had to say something on a landmark anniversary. My deepest condolences extend to all who suffered on 9/11. But I am yearning to read something that goes beyond: “He was my hero.”
That September 11 comes just weeks after the United States retreated from Afghanistan in rather humiliating fashion makes it all the more difficult. If some of the news about the anniversary is bordering on trite, then the stories coming from South Asia are even more so. It’s almost as though the American media has decided to recycle all that it had published two decades ago. About the Taliban’s medieval ways; women and burkas; and how Afghanistan remains the graveyard of empires. I even heard a NPR story about Deobandi Islam and its influence on the Taliban.
In 2001, I wrote many such stories for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I don’t think I could stand to read them now. They are shallow, misguided and often, not nuanced. They reflect American ignorance of a complex country and centuries of history. They perhaps are one reason for the U.S. failure in Afghanistan. If America had understood that nation better, maybe things might have been different.
I’ve been particularly choosey about the stories I listen to or watch and especially the ones I read. I am posting links to two that I found riveting by Jennifer Senior and Anand Gopal. They tell the stories of the 9/11 anniversary as well as the Afghan war through compelling characters and are reported and written really well. They also made me stop and think about all that has happened in the last 20 years. On this, the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and every day.