The Day After We Forgot

The skies were empty. It was calm, savagely serene. There was an ominous foreboding in the wind. None of us knew what to do, but we knew nothing would ever be the same when the dust settled.

It’s easy to reflect on that day of days. I imagine for those who were born after the smoke cleared, it’s just a footnote in a history book. But for those of us who watched the horrors unfold on live television, it isn’t just some day. It was THE day. The day it all changed.

In many ways, the events that transpired galvanized our resolve and united a fractured country. I long to see that sort of unity, but I pray it doesn’t take another tragedy to elicit common human decency again.

Still, I often think about that day. Not the one that streaked our faces with tears and filled our hearts with a new fear. No, I like to remember the next day, and the days that followed. We came together. We stood united. We were a nation indivisible, at least for a moment.

With our country now as splintered as ever, I relish the thought of true patriotism. Not the type of nationalism that debases our good nature. No, I yearn to see my countrymen standing shoulder to shoulder against tyranny and oppression, not complicit in its implementation. I wish to see a renewal of true unity, but somehow without the terrible cost that brought us there before.

With vociferous fervor, we demanded righteous punishment, an eye for an eye. We waged wars after that day. For twenty long years, we toiled in foreign soil to avenge those we lost. We fought an insurgency we created, chasing terrorists with acts of terror. The images of men and women leaping from burning towers were seared into our consciousness. Our rage knew no limit. The debt had to be repaid tenfold.

Two decades later, we saw our allies, desperately forgotten, rain down from loaded C-130s. We had abandoned them. We gifted our enemy with all of our weapons of war. We left as if none of it ever happened, as if nothing mattered. We left wearied, unvictorious, and broken. We had forgotten who we were.

Some say those wars were fought in bad faith. Our rationale didn’t matter much at the time. We were wounded, and a debt of blood had to be paid. Looking back, our justification doesn’t hold much water under the scrutiny of history. Yet none of us cared then. We were hurt. We wanted justice, but we didn’t know what that meant. We had no idea what victory would look like. We only learned the terrible cost of forcing democracy on an unwilling culture.

Year bled into year. America lost her taste for war, but we still died. We hemorrhaged a generation of volunteers who clung to that offense like a security blanket. We repeatedly went to those forlorn places, the places they said were the cause of our September pain. We never found those weapons of mass destruction, but in effect, we became them. By the end, we lost who we were. A new generation fought a war they were born into for reasons we could no longer define.

I miss the day after that day. I miss the unity we felt in those brief moments after the tragedy. I don’t miss what it cost us all. We swore we’d never forget, but maybe we’re remembering the wrong things. I can only hope we recognize that we were once a nation united, a house undivided. Can we get there again? I hope so.

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.