9/11

22 Years Later

/ Peter Martuneac / 2 Comments

Sometimes, I long for the days when I didn’t even know what the word ‘hijacked’ meant. Just 10 and a half years old on September 11th of 2001, when my 5th grade teacher told us that two planes had been hijacked by terrorists, I had to ask my friend next to me what it even meant to hijack a plane.

My school made the decision to only show the live news to the high schoolers and middle schoolers. Us elementary kids had our Tuesday go on as normal. It wasn’t until I returned home from school and my parents turned on the news that I saw the true devastation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

22 years later, and the national grief finally seems to have abated somewhat. We more or less go on with our day, stopping once or twice to remember the tragedy, the loss of life, and the deep, profound wounds it left on our society. For those who did not lose a loved one that day, the wound seems to have healed, though the scar remains.

Personally, I tend to mark the occasion with some somber reflection in the morning. I sit with my coffee and think about it all, from the moment the first plane struck the World Trade Center towers to the crushing retreat from Afghanistan in the face of a total Taliban victory.

But I’m much older now than the 10-year-old who saw those attacks, and I can no longer dwell too long on the grief of that day, nor even on how it impacted my life. I have a family, and two young children, one as old as I was on that day. Now I try to tell them each about the 9/11 attacks and what it meant to me personally and to my generation, how it changed us and our world. I want them to understand not only the tragedy of that day but also the consequences of lashing out in anger, as we collectively did in the years that followed.

But most importantly, I want them to see the hope borne of tragedy. It’s a cruel, cold world we live in, full of bloodshed and hatred, but there is also hope. More than the mass murder of that day, I want them to know about the heroism. Of the police and firefighters who died so that others may live. Of the New York Fire Department group that lost every member they sent to the towers on 9/11.

Every day you can flip on the news and find tragedy, and that usually is what dominates the headlines. But look a little deeper, and you’ll find a million little silver linings, too. And that’s what we need to cling to and fight for. The islands of hope that exist amongst seas of sorrow.

Remembering 9/11

/ Peter Martuneac / 2 Comments

September 11th, 2001 was a historic day not only in American history but in the history of my own life. As a 10 year old who grew up knowing relative peace, who believed war was generally a thing of the past, the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that day rocked me to my very core. I wasn’t old enough to understand the intricacies of politics and history in the Middle East. I didn’t know anything about extremist Muslim groups or American involvement in their countries.

All I saw that day was evil men murdering thousands of my countrymen for no reason whatsoever.

All I knew that day was that it was my responsibility to make those men pay for what they did and to protect country. I decided then and there as a 4th grader watching the news at home that I was going to become a United States Marine.

21 years later, I’d like to think I learned a thing or two. Having deployed to Afghanistan twice, having been shot at and shot back, I learned that war is not as simple as ‘go get the bad guys’. I learned about terms like ‘blowback’ and the law of unintended consequences.

Worst of all, I learned that our efforts in Afghanistan post-9/11 were in vain. The Taliban won that war, and they once again run the country, to the detriment of every Afghan.

It’s impossible to say how differently the course of American history may have run if 9/11 never occurred, and the same can be said for my life. I like to think that, ultimately, the choices I made for myself were the best ones. I think the military changed me for the better and gave me opportunities to learn and grow in ways that nothing else could have. With that in mind, I’m proud of my service and would never do it differently if given the chance to go back.

But that pride cannot exist without the tragedy of 9/11, without the loss of brothers in arms in a war that proved fruitless. It’s a maelstrom of emotions that I feel every year on this day, and it’s difficult to describe exactly how I feel. All I know is that I will never forget the lives lost 21 years ago, on a crisp Tuesday morning in September. Nor will I forget the Americans who died fighting for what they believed in in the years that followed.

No one should.