Watching 9/11
NRO writers react to the 9/11 documentary on CBS.

An NRO Symposium, compiled by Kathryn Jean Lopez
March 11, 2002 8:30 a.m.

S. T. Karnick, editor-in-chief, American Outlook magazine, published by the Hudson Institute

In 9/11, filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet wisely do not go over old ground by telling us what motivated the villains behind the September 11 attacks. Instead, they do something equally valuable: They show us what makes a hero.

We have already heard, of course, much about the heroic acts New York City firefighters, policemen, and emergency crews performed on that day, but just how they summoned up the courage had never been fully explained — until now. It is an amazingly simple thing. We see a rookie firefighter as he impatiently waits several weeks for his first fire and wonders whether he'll be good enough when the time finally comes. He has chosen his career in response to a generalized desire to help people. He has no image of himself as a hero, and this attitude is clearly pervasive among his fellow firefighters. They see themselves as just regular guys who want to help people.

But when that desire puts their own lives in mortal danger, the rookie firefighter, his fellow crewmembers, and even the filmmakers don't think twice; they just move forward. They enter a burning building because people there need their help. The new footage from inside the World Trade Center doesn't tell us anything original about the events of that day, but it enables us to see these men up close as they knowingly charge into a very possibly lethal situation to deliver others from certain death.

"We sure didn't feel like heroes," says the rookie late in the film. "I'm just a person who tries to do good. Just like every other person in the fire department."

Like a hero.

Stanley Kurtz, fellow, the Hudson Institute & NRO contributing editor

We're good at forgetting. I write about the post-Sept. 11 world, supposedly, yet somehow I'd forgotten. You feel a bit ashamed. The black blotches mucking up the camera lens stick in my mind. Pollution, desecration. That's what I kept feeling-that my country had been desecrated. New York city streets (still somehow themselves even when filled with gaping horrified people) emptied out and smothered in dead white ash. That was a desecration. A beautiful wonderful city that I love killed off. But it wasn't killed off. The Internet can be a lonely place. So can books and magazines. Something about a firehouse where men are brothers and joke and eat with each other every night is the opposite of all that. Soldiers and firemen who live like brothers seem more able to give their lives to each other — and to us. You feel a bit ashamed. (There's a siren now just outside my window.) I'm grateful to be an American. I'm sad for my country. I'm angry at the people who did this. I wish those men hadn't died. Evil has its reasons, and yet it is evil still. I want to win this war.

Robert A. George, editorial writer, New York Post

Considering that the French are the object of much ridicule from Americans, it's a supreme irony that film footage from two French cameramen manages to capture the essence of America on one of its darkest days.

Jules and Gedeon Naudet came up with an offbeat idea: Follow rookie New York firefighter Tony Benetatos of Engine 7, Ladder 1 and see what happens. How could they know they would end up on the ground level as the Big Apple sustained a terrorist attack?

So much has happened since That Day that a reminder was needed. This was a story of more than just planes and buildings — though Gedeon's camera was the only one to catch the first plane hitting.

It was a story of humanity at its most vulnerable and heroic.

It's caught in the eyes. Jules's camera went from face to face and concentrated on the eyes of the firefighters as they set up their command center in the north tower. The awe, puzzlement, and uncertainty in their eyes spoke far louder than anything verbal could.

Gedeon's camera also captures the universality of the catastrophe in an unassuming manner, by zeroing in on the reactions of regular New Yorkers. The varied accents tell a story themselves: African, Asian, Brooklyn Irish, they're all there. New York is under attack, but the world bears witness.

One sympathizes with the feelings of surviving families, who didn't want this footage aired at this time, but something that comes through in this film is that our private emotions no longer belong to us alone.

After the towers collapse, each brother believes the other is dead. As Gedeon tries to come to grips with the fact that his brother is likely dead, he asks each firefighter; most walk by, almost ignoring him, stunned as they all are. Finally, one of them says, "He's right behind you." Gedeon turns and the brothers embrace in an intimate, European way that probably makes the average American feel a bit awkward. Shortly thereafter, one firefighter says words to the fact that Gedeon started the day with one brother, but now has many. Gedeon and Jules had suddenly been accepted into an exclusive fraternity.

It's a perfect moment.

Rich Lowry, NR editor

It's so strange to see the inside of the lobby of the north tower again. When the firefighters show up, horrific things have already happened in that lobby — a fireball has already crashed through it. But it is still, relatively, so normal, so solid, so there. Even after the south tower collapses, briefly plunging the lobby into darkness, it is still recognizable, still of this world. Then, in a moment, it will be gone, crushed to nothingness.

Victor Davis Hanson, in Carnage and Culture, describes this terrible tipping point in war, when an army and its equipment — gleaming and orderly — can in a matter of minutes be scrambled and cut to pieces. This is exactly what happened to the World Trade Center, so that the early pictures in 9/11 of the towers still standing are the ones that now seem surreal and not quite possible.

But, of course, that was normality. And it took an act of extreme perversity to change it. The film of the planes hitting the towers, even after all this time and all the replays, are still gasp-inducing in their full-frontal, steel-shattering violence. It shouldn't surprise that an engine of the plane that hit the south tower ended up blocks away on the other side of the building — but it is still shocking to see it, another awful reminder of the sheer force with which the planes slammed into their targets.

The main contribution of 9/11 is the footage of the looks on the faces of chief and the other firefighters while inside the north-tower lobby. They are, by turns, determined, worried, confused, and occasionally startled by the awful sounds and events all around them. Then, there is the terrible fact that they — the bravest New York City has to offer, so determined just to do their job — have to turn and run for their lives as the tower collapses around them, an achievement of civilization ground to ashes and dust by civilization's enemies.

John Podhoretz, columnist, New York Post & NRO contributing editor

This is a true story: In the 1960s in New York City, thugs would pull fire alarms even though there was no fire — and when the firefighters arrived, they'd get ambushed and beaten.

Can you imagine? Men who make their living running into fire to save others getting attacked simply for wearing the uniform that indicated they were public servants there to help?

Watching the almost unimaginably heroic firefighters do their nightmarish work in the documentary 9/11, I was filled with a hatred for those vicious punks from the Lindsay era — a hatred not all that different from the hatred I feel for Osama bin Laden. And just as I hope Osama is dead or soon will be, I hope those punks have already gone to meet their maker — and that God, in His infinite wisdom, lets them have it.