By Ryan G. Banister
On a bright September morning in California, I was just a 10-year-old daydreaming in class when somebody dropped into the classroom saying, "A plane crashed in New York." Our teacher rushed to the remote, clicking on the news, where I first heard the report that planes had struck the World Trade Center towers. I was speechless and confused, watching black clouds billowing out of those buildings. Before I had a chance to decipher any of this information, the teacher made the decision to shut off the television and continue with the day's lesson. We did not watch any more for the rest of the day. At that point I was quite ignorant of what actually occurred on September 11th, 2001.
At that time, I remember hearing that buildings were destroyed, but I did not watch the destruction. Nobody encouraged me to watch what happened in Manhattan, and just like any other 10-year-old, war games and politics were the furthest from my mind. Being young, as well as having little to no access to a computer, I simply conformed to the understanding that planes destroyed the towers. At that time, it did not occur to me that it was important for me to review this event. I assumed the adults would take care to understand the event and act accordingly. I just directed my focus on schoolwork, skateboarding and socializing, as many other kids did. What role could I play in this attack on my country?
Some weeks later, I became aware that there was a similar attack on the Pentagon, and this was reportedly the work of hijackers that were able to take control of planes and strategically fly them into major landmarks in the United States. The adults around me seemed to avoid the topic of 9/11 at all cost. After all, who would want to discuss such a horrendous crime? I learned quickly that any discussion of these events left people with distaste and that my lack of understanding was better left unspoken. This brought me to do as the adults did, to go on about our lives without a worry, because somebody else will take care of it.
I went on year after year letting my mind drift away into the life of a young teenager. Thoughts of the attacks on the United States were far outside of my purview. Of course, at the time, this was not odd because it seemed that nobody was concerned about what was to come from these events. People were already greatly distracted by talk of war, without a single concern of what actually occurred in New York. It is as if September 11th was just a bad dream that many had forgotten about. Nobody seemed phased, and certainly nobody I know had been studying the information very closely. It seemed as if the politics of war was the only concern that grew out of that day, and the United States people were only concerned with where we would strike next.
Four years after the event, as a freshmen in high school, I resigned to never join into a war that had no stated enemy and no deliberate cause as to what it might solve. I could not have my hand in the blood of innocent people. It took me the next couple of years to actually analyze, with a careful eye, what occurred in Manhattan. I did not have the vocabulary nor the life experience to explain what happened, but I was very aware that no building should come apart in this way in a gravity-driven collapse. This was something different. I simply knew that without further data, I could not support a war based on a story. The war on terror has no stated enemy, and the idea of "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" did not sound like a cause for war in any sense of the word. How many other governments had weapons of mass destruction? And yet, nobody speaks of sending our troops to die on their land. I was not easily swayed by media spin. I quickly found that I was not alone in this idea. Many people did not agree with this war, and even when it was certified that no "weapons of mass destruction" were found, our government still sent our troops to die.
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