Three days ago we stopped as a nation, to recall our losses on 9/11/2001. It was altogether proper and fitting that we did this.

But today, rather than 9/11, is the day we ought to memorialize, teach to all school children and “never forget.”

For September 14th, 2001 was the day President Bush went to Ground Zero, heard chants of USA! USA! and said: “I can hear you, I can hear you. And soon the people who knocked these buildings down will hear you too.”

Of course we all knew what the President was really saying: “I hear you calling for revenge. I hear you saying ‘us’ against ‘them.’ Soon we will answer bombs with bombs. Soon someone else’s neighborhood will go up in flames. We will not turn the other cheek.”

9/11 was the first event all mankind viewed together, in real time.  Most of us in the West cried and yes, too many in the East cheered, but 9/11 still offered the world what every preacher depends on when standing in front of congregants, any teacher needs to offer up a lesson: a common text.

With the last twenty years as evidence, would any economist, any historian, any person of any faith, any Neo-con hawk or lefty-libtard honestly argue that the course begun on 9/14 served American interests? That we came up with a good homily? Offered the world, and ourselves, a useful lesson?

The United States might have been the first military power to demonstrate that revenge should never pose as justice and yesterday’s murder need not insure today’s killing. We had history’s best chance to speak globally with a voice of reason and maturity, to demonstrate practical and realistic value of charity, forgiveness and especially the rule of law.  Instead of parading our military strength we might have empowered a global police force to prosecute “anyone who kills citizens in the name of ideology” on behalf of “a new world order of peace.”  

Imagine how much better off we would be today had President Bush said: “I can hear you and am intent on proving to the world that America is strong and free because we govern by legal principles and can practice restraint rather than be ruled by vengeance.”

Imagine our moral standing (and monetary savings) had we committed to carpet bombing our enemies with books and water and generators rather than explosives? Had we invested any percentage of our Iraq and Afghan war budget on water and books and Ipods and generators, all dropped free of charge and without restriction into the Middle East, even to Bin Laden’s door step, could anyone argue that we would be worse off today economically?  Spiritually?  Morally?  Politically?

“I can hear you. I can hear you. And someday the people who knocked these buildings down will see us not as infidels and enemies, but as neighbors and friends.”

To suggest restraint would have been both the moral and realpolitik thing to do and to say so now is not some kind of 20-20 vision made possible only in hindsight. Osama Bin-Laden made it plain he wanted to drag us into a long, endless war. Our enemy sent us his playbook. We followed it. And Mr. Bush said it would take one hundred years to know if he did the right thing with the Iraq war. With that kind of time frame in mind, how could anyone conclude we should try killing people at great expense with much blood spilled rather than spending less, spilling little?

Nor am I am not being misty-eyed about Saddam Hussein.  He was a tyrant and a psychopath.  I know too that liberals in The West often act as if we caused 9/11, as if the hijackers were victims of geopolitics and not adherents to poisonous beliefs. Of course acting out of restraint rather than revenge would not have converted our enemies into friends overnight, if ever. The hate in those who hate us will not be drained because we act nicely.

But let’s be clear about the difference between crime and war, between fighting a nation and fighting an ideology, between what bullets can solve and what they exacerbate. To respond to stupidity, backwardness, and the genocidal belief God is on one’s side with the stupid, the backward, and the vengeful belief God is on our side was no way to move towards a stable global village, let alone remain a superpower.

Mr. Bush called Jesus his hero and the irony for all the Christians out there is that Mr. Bush might have said: “The text for how to handle this crisis is on my desk in the form of the gospels.” And by following Jesus rather than Halliburton Mr. Bush might have offered himself up as a far more credible advert for his church than the Falwells, the papal rapists, or those ministers who now preach prayer, not a vaccine, is what the world needs. H might have helped us understand why Martin Luther King Jr. meant claimed Jesus was not an “impractical idealist” but a “practical realist.”

In our grief and outrage, swept up by predictable national fervor, we needed a leader to calm our anger rather than stoke it, to remind us that every murder leads to more murders and that in a world in which everyone is connected and borders are meaningless the model we offer matters more than the land we conquer. Rather than singing along with the chorus of blood or fearing those critics at home and abroad who always fear “looking weak” Mr. Bush might have reminded us that that God blesses–who is it?–oh yeah, the peacemakers. Three days was time enough for Jesus to rise but it was not enough for a man who made political hay out of his faith to live up to it when it might have done us all the most good.

We turned a three crashed planes, a handful of downed buildings, and 3000 murders into the most effective military strike in history going from, in but two short decades, the world’s sole superpower to a dysfunctional mess.

Are there no dots to connect between the shortsightedness of insisting our bombs are made righteous by the narrowest of self-interest and Russia and China following suit? Even beyond the outrageous loss of treasure and blood that got us nowhere, even beyond our empowering ISIS and the Taliban, even beyond the divisions in America one can trace to this responding as petulant boys rather than measured adults, can anyone look back to that moment and all the moments that led from it and honestly wish to shout, with pride and conviction: USA! USA! Did our recent withdrawal from Afghanistan make anyone proud?

Of course, that unraveling not happen solely because of our response to 9/11. Gerrymandering, money in politics, the long term effects of NAFTA, Newt, Facebook and plenty of other actors on the scene before and after 9/11 played their role too. But surely our response was far more a factor in our decline than the attack itself. Surely we tumbled from global influence and internal strength because we insisted on teaching a lesson about American might rather than offering to the world a mighty example of our sacred values.

became this centuries most tragic missed opportunity and, not coincidentally, the moment America surrendered its position of leadership in the world.

Maybe we should start to remember that the God who blesses peacemakers also curses warmakers and that, as COVID has surely confirmed, God is not on anyone’s side.

September 14th, 2001 offered America history’s best chance to teach a new lesson about borders and boundaries, attack and defense, war and peace, right and wrong and why the rule of law is our only way forward, together.  We blew it.

For Americans, in particular for all those who lost family and friends on the day, September 11th marks a time to grieve.

For each of us as global citizens though, it is not that day but today we should always remember and from which we must learn.