I didn’t just feel fear or anger on 9/11. I also had to reckon with something else: my own sense of failure and shame.
The 25th anniversary of 9/11 is upon us. It is a memory I have sought to put as far in the past as possible, for all the obvious reasons, as well as some less immediately apparent. As to the obvious ones: Simply put, there is the world “before 9/11” — from the Reagan Eighties to the Clinton “peace dividend” in the ’90s, a great time to be born and raised — and the world “after 9/11,” with all that implies. That day, 2,977 people died, and our world changed irrevocably. Nearly every other writer here at NR old enough to have remembered the day has contributed something weighty or thoughtful to its memory this week.
Of what use, then, is a private reflection from a preternaturally aged cynic like me? I was a 20-year-old fool on September 11, 2001 — mere days away from my 21st birthday, as it happens, and not even an adult yet. Of course that nightmarish day (and its aftermath) had an immense effect on the man I became; it’s arguably the single most important historical event of my lifetime.
But the same can be said for all who were in college at the time — that trauma didn’t hit me alone, it hit us all collectively. What I remember most from those days, in fact, was our shared sense of grief and determination in the face of unimaginable horror . . . my one comfort during a uniquely dark period. For I didn’t just feel fear or anger on 9/11. I also had to reckon with something else: my own sense of failure and shame.
* * *
I was a bit different than most kids my age. In August of 2001, I had just finished up my third summer internship stint at what (I would tell my friends with pride) was the coolest job a college kid could ever hope to have: the Central Intelligence Agency, where the mysterious Hogwarts “sorting hat” had placed me in the Counterterrorism Center, assigned to the division chasing the most dangerous man in the world, Usama bin Laden. (Yes, it was “UBL” back then — that was the acronym for the division, in fact.) Nobody else in the world seemed to know the guy’s name (even though he already had the African embassy bombings and the USS Cole to his credit), but we did.
What was it like, as a kid? Intimidating. Hard as it is to believe nowadays, back then I was a sober-minded, eager young beaver, well aware that we were doing some of the most important work in the world. Much of it flew miles over my head — I was a teenager, after all. Norm Macdonald once rattled off a great line in reaction to hearing a tale from a guest on his show about sitting down with comedy legends Johnny Carson and Steve Martin for a round of poker: “Can you imagine being a fly on the wall for that?” Norm mused. “I mean, you wouldn’t understand a word, on account of being a fly and all. You’d just be worried about spiders and sh**.”
That’s basically what it felt like to summer at the CTC. I knew we were chasing after a true supervillain — I would bore my friends about UBL constantly, flush with self-serious pride about the importance of “our” task, and how we were going to get him, by gum. The day I left to go back to school, we celebrated with margaritas underneath a “LET’S EAT USAMA BIN LADEN’S LUNCH!” banner in the conference room. (I wasn’t 21 yet, but they let me drink a little anyway.) I returned to Baltimore, confident and committed to return later to a cause I truly believed in. This would be my career.
I shouldn’t need to explain what happened next. When 9/11 hit, I shared in all the rage and despair of the nation. But on some sublime level of horror, beyond that which most ever contemplate, I felt something far harder to explain, yet more immediate: direct cosmic rebuke. I remember checking my answering machine that night and hearing two separate messages from “friends” sarcastically congratulating me on doing such a good job of “keeping America safe.” I suppose they thought it was a joke. (For my part, I never spoke to either again.)
But I recognized the bitter truth in the barbs, which drilled a hole through the over-inflamed heart of my puffed-up juvenile pretense: All that big talk, kid. But you’re useless, you’re nothing. Doesn’t it feel good to be alive, though, when so many others are dead? Some guardians you were. I know I was being irrational in taking it all so personally — young men on the edge of 21 are not known for their emotional continence — but then again a young man’s identity is also often formed around a core belief in the value of his chosen work. And, without getting into any more detail, that was my private loss on the day.
* * *
An enormous amount changed for me from 9/11 forward — thankfully, NR is not the place for bildungsroman — but perhaps the most remarkable thing about it isn’t that I came out on the other side of all of this as a lawyer (many make the same mistake) or as a conservative (I was conservative going in, more so now), but rather as an adult. Most of us are lucky enough to only be gently stripped of their youthful illusions of superheroic self-importance gradually. Few are immediately confronted with the collective and unbearable weight of a decade of intelligence failures — as a stupid small child.
And when those illusions collapse, crumbling into a dust that still chokes American history, you either find yourself stuck in a moment you can’t get out of, or you move on. As they say, “child is father to the man.” And that is what 9/11 has always meant to me, the same thing I believe it still means to all who were my age (albeit for less personal reasons): childhood’s end.