I Forgot it was September 11th

September 11, 2024

“Never forget.” We say that a lot in the military community. We say it about tragic events, and we say it about people we lost. We mean it when we say it… or at least we think we do. But like so many well-intentioned things, “never forget” never lasts.

I’ll just come out and say it: I forgot it was September 11th. It is hard for me to admit, but it happened today.

Outside of personal things like being born, my marriage, and the births of my two children, September 11th 2001 was the most significant thing that happened in my entire life. It fundamentally changed the entire trajectory of my life, as it did for millions of people around the world. September 11th started a chain of events that saw America start–and lose–two wars in the greater Middle East, the needless expenditure of trillions of US dollars, and most importantly, the lost of uncounted lives.

And yet, today, I forgot it even happened.

As explained in an earlier article I wrote for The Havok Journal, I was in Korea when America was attacked on September 11, 2001. I was there because in the pre-9/11 conventional Army, Korea is where you went if you wanted to do something “hard” in the Army. It was a place you went if you wanted to prove yourself. My perspective in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was, I’m sure, reflective of the way many young soldiers felt:

The September 11^th attacks happened when I was in command of D Company, 102 MI Battalion at Camp Essayons, a postage-stamp-size compound in the town of Uijongbu, a base that now no longer exists. When 9/11 happened I still had another year or so to go before I would return to the United States, by which time I was sure that I would have missed my war. My frame of reference up to that point was Panama, Grenada, and the Gulf War, all of which ended in a matter of days. We are America; I was sure we’d wreck a bunch of cave-dwelling terrorists in Afghanistan long before I was able to get a piece of the action.

Now, of course, we know differently. Our war in Afghanistan went on for another 20+ years. Our war in Iraq is, apparently, still going on. Our reaction to 9/11 was, in terms of American blood and treasure, far worse than the event itself. And yet somehow I managed to forget the event that precipitated the wars that came after.

I served four very short, very safe tours of duty in Afghanistan with US special operations forces (SOF) as well as another three in Iraq, also with SOF. The first three Afghanistan deployments, which were relatively early in the fight, I thought were important and meaningful. I was highly motivated at those times and was optimistic about the war’s outcome. But when I came back for the fourth time, several years later and more than 10 years before the war there actually ended, I felt that everyone was just kind of going through the motions. It was apparent that we were fighting the same types of people, combating the same Afghan government corruption, using the same failed national strategy, and largely chasing the same bad guys, some of whom not only survived the war but are now “governing” Afghanistan’s ashes. I still did my job to the best of my ability–as far as I could tell we all did–but in the back of my mind was the ever-growing question of “why?”

Why are we still doing this? Why are we still doing this the same way, that hasn’t worked for the last 10 years? Why are these people who have been on our target decks for a decade or more still alive, still free, and still working against us when we know who they are, where they are, and what they’re doing against us? And why are my friends and fellow Americans getting killed in wars that most Americans simply don’t care about in any meaningful sense?

That “why,” combined with the realization that as a nation we were never going to do what it took to actually win in either Iraq or Afghanistan, drove me to leave the Special Operations community and go to the place I felt would give me the best opportunity to influence the next generation of decision makers and hopefully help them make better national security decisions. That was the United States Military Academy at West Point.

I am not a West Point graduate. I came into the Army through the ROTC program at a little school called Mercer University, which is where I met my wife who also became an Army officer. But I served at West Point twice towards the end of my career and now work there in retirement. I think West Point is a great institution and contributes a lot to both the Army and to America as a whole.

It was already a busy September for me; I had returned days earlier from a short overseas business trip, my oldest daughter recently started at a new military college, that morning I concluded a lengthy discussion about leadership development, the presidential debate had occurred the night before, and I was trying to make arrangements for some physical therapy for a nagging shoulder injury. In short, I had a lot on my mind. I noticed the flag was at half staff, which in my distracted mind I somehow mentally attributed to a recent school shooting. As I pulled into the parking lot to start work for the day, I noticed some cadets jogging around campus, carrying an American flag on an aluminum flagpole. That was something that in previous years I only saw happen to commemorate one specific event.

That’s when it hit me: I forgot it was September 11th, something I said I would never do.

We think we won’t forget things. That we will always remember, that we will always honor, that we will always cherish. Many years ago I marked every September 11 by fasting the entire day. Those who know me know I love to eat. But the hunger that resulted from that minor sacrifice helped me remember the pain that 9/11, and everything that came after, inflicted on so many people around the world.

I ended the self-imposed annual fasting after we finally got Osama Bin Laden, partly with the rationale that I didn’t need fasting to remind me of why I was doing it in the first place. But apparently, I was wrong. I know that it’s not good to linger on negativity, but at the same time I think it’s OK–no, it’s important--to not memory-hole trauma, whether it’s personal, national, or world-wide. Forgetting is one of the reasons “never again” keeps happening.

23 years later, I forgot it was September 11. How soon we forget.

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on September 12, 2024.

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Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Charles Faint served 27 years in the US Army, including seven combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with various Special Operations Forces units.  He also completed operational assignments in Egypt, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea. He is the owner of The Havok Journal and the executive director of the Second Mission Foundation.  The views expressed in this article are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or any other person or entity.

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.