Reconsidering 9/11, or: Progress Yet?

Eight years later, US forces are still engaged in two wars overseas, and though President Obama has pledged to bring our troops home, he is currently seeking to augment our presence in Afghanistan with a contingency of troops that would bring our total commitment on the ground to over 80,000. Eight years later, although other top al-Qaida leaders have been allegedly captured or killed, Osama bin Laden still hasn't been found. Eight years later, the tarnished image of the United States abroad has not been rectified, despite having a new President who has taken great pains to bridge the gap between the Islamic world and the US.

On the home front, our nation is no more secure now than it was in 2001, despite having a Department of Homeland Security dedicated to mitigating and eliminating any threats within our national borders. Muslims in the US and abroad (including this writer) are still stereotyped as harboring fanatical religious ideals and encouraging violence within their communities.

So what have we learned from 9/11?

One thing I have learned is that while we as a nation could have allowed that horrifying day to fundamentally alter our worldview, we have instead found comfort in solidarity. And although the manifestation of that solidarity has not always been positive or nurturing (anti-Muslim sentiment at home, collective support against an unseen "enemy" somewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan justifying our military engagement there), I myself have learned just as much from my compatriots here at home. As an American Muslim born and raised in the US, I have had less difficulty in "proving my Americanism" than my equally patriotic American Muslim friends who were born abroad and came to the States at a very young age. Yet all of us have stories to share and perspectives from which we can learn. I have faced discrimination from both non-Muslim Americans and non-American Muslims -- the former for not being American enough, the latter for not being Muslim enough. Yet the only divide between Muslim and being American is an imaginary divide of perception, not an actual divide of ideology or dogma. For being Muslim and being American are not antithetic -- rather, they are very symbiotic. But it has taken me much reflection to realize that. It's important now that we learn from each other, rather than typecast.

Another thing I have learned is that despite the best intentions and efforts of our leaders and government, the United States will ultimately be no safer today or tomorrow than it was eight years ago. The reason is simple and can be found in that inherent American worldview: no one can truly be denied the right to come to the US and make a new life. America is the land of opportunity, and at the risk of sounding cheesy, I will quote the State of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Ultimately, we all are immigrants, and we have witnessed just as much homegrown violence and extremism as we have experienced from sources abroad. There is no way to completely and effectively guarantee the security of our soil. The best we can do is train to be as prepared as possible to respond to any emergency or disaster.

Finally -- and this point is to bring today's post back into the fold of the blog's overall theme -- I have learned that the possession of a tremendously powerful nuclear arsenal by the United States did not prevent six men with boxcutters from hijacking two planes and shattering our world. Had our stockpile been twice as large as it was, it would not have changed a thing. By the same token, an arsenal half the size of what it was would have made no difference either.

In the past eight years, those with the foresight (and hindsight) to understand how we can create a safer and more stable future have been advocating loudly not simply for non-proliferation measures, but for complete and total global disarmament. Nuclear deterrence, they argue, is no longer acceptable; Cold War tactics can no longer apply in a non-zero-sum global arena; and identifying the enemy against which nuclear weapons would be most effective is next to impossible in an environment of asymmetric warfare. Thus, nuclear terrorism has become an extremely salient and urgent matter on which government leaders worldwide must collaborate, in order to prevent even a single nuclear weapon from falling into the hands of a rogue nation, splinter group or non-aligned party.

To draw an analogy -- the most safe form of sex is abstinence. Likewise, the best guarantee against nuclear terrorism is to not have the nuclear weapons at all in the first place. No one in the Obama administration has ever advocated for unilateral disarmament. This would be a diplomatically and militarily risky move, not to mention politically foolish. Mutual reductions, however, based on a timeline that culminates in Global Zero, is not only morally right, it is logistically and politically possible.

So perhaps today, on the eighth anniversary of 9/11, the real lesson we can take away from that horrendous experience is this: If we ever want to make significant strides towards protecting our world and guaranteeing the security of humankind, we must take action now to get rid of nuclear weapons worldwide.