On this date I was in my office across the river from lower Manhattan. Suddenly a fellow worker came running in telling me that a plane had struck the Trade Tower. I and the rest of the staff rushed to the windows and looked at the smoke coming from the tower. We thought it was a random air crash when suddenly we watched the second plane hit. Those SOBs I shouted, not knowing exactly who I was referring too. Then the rumors began to fly about additional attacks, none of us could move; we just stood there fixed on the scene we were witnessing. Shortly after I realized that I was in the Marriott Hotel at the base of the Towers just a week before and I keep thinking would I have taken the call to run seriously sitting in a nice comfortable hotel?
Today I was listening to a radio show about 9/11 and they were discussing teaching this event as history and noted that less than half of the states included 9/11 in their history classes despite the fact that virtually none of today’s current students remember the date first hand. The experts were asked why 9/11 should be taught as history and they all gave similar answers such as it was a momentous event, it changed the world, etc.
But they miss the point, 9/11 and all other major events in history should be taught because they allow us to understand the present. How can you possibly understand the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the TSA or getting on an airplane if you don’t know about 9/11 and other similar events preceding it? How can you understand anything about Israel if you don’t know about the holocaust and World War II. How can you fathom the Middle East Muslim mindset if you never studied the Crusades or colonialism or understand a black American’s point of view if you never read “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass?
Perhaps someday if we learn the lessons of history, we can avoid creating the conditions that allow the inhumanity within us to manifest itself over and over… someday…
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 