Thoughts on 25 years of post-9/11 policies in America

25 years ago I was taking AP courses at a local community college early in the morning and then driving to my high school mid-morning for the rest of my classes. I recall arriving slightly before 10 AM and walking into an eerily quiet building. I proceeded to the band room for my next class only to find everyone staring at the television, watching a news broadcast. Keep in mind: back in 2001 we didn't have smart phones, we didn't have social media, and few folks even had broadband internet on their desktop computers - television and radio were the fastest ways to spread information. I sat down, and moments later watched thousands of my countrymen die before my eyes.

It was the first time I had felt such a sense of existential dread, from the realization that there were people out there who wanted to kill me. The dread was followed by intense anger that anyone would dare to harm innocent people. I knew that this was the beginning of a war, perhaps even the first war that would occur on American soil in 150 years. I, and many others, fully expected that there would be follow-up attacks with a similar level of creativity and asymmetry.

I'm ashamed to say that we Americans allowed those feelings of fear and anger to justify us causing orders of magnitude more harm (both to others and to ourselves) over the ensuing decades.

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