CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – I breathe a sigh of relief when September 11th falls on a weekend, like it did yesterday. It means I don’t have to unpack all of the awful memories of that day.
I was onair by accident. I usually did the afternoon news back then. On that morning I filling-in on the morning show. Our studios were on the top floor of a high-rise building. On a clear day, you could look across Long Island Sound and see the New York City skyline. September 11 2001 was a clear day.
Something I’ve learned from then to now: While we will never forget, memories fade. How could they not? Almost everyone in school today wasn’t alive during the 9-11 attacks. Today’s college seniors would have been in daycare that morning. There’s nothing for young people to remember from that day. Over time 9-11 will become like Pearl Harbor Day: more history than actual in-person memories.
There’s also something I learned about myself that I don’t particularly like. After many years of broadcasting, I’ve developed the ability to turn off my emotions while delivering horrible news. 3,000 people died. In our audience that morning, everyone knew someone who wasn’t coming home that night. It turned out that I knew one person who died that day, and was friends with two other people who lost loved ones. Only that night did I process the enormity of that day’s news.
And there is the senselessness of it all. It did not spark a global uprising of muslin jihadists. Today the biggest impacts are the debacle of the U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan, and the inconvenience of enhanced airport security. Osama Bin Laden is long dead. The red crescent califait has been rolled back. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan lacked the political will to see the fight through, and were a waste of lives and money.
A very reasonable question is ‘why’?
Chris Conley
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