My fellow Americans...

A reflection on 9/11

I wrote the following in 2004, as an 18-year-old in my senior year of high school. I lightly edited it in honor of the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, and shared it online. Today, with the presidential debate that just took place and the memorial tomorrow, I’d like to share it again.

In some alternate universe, this is the speech that President George W. Bush gave that evening, and I think the world would have looked very different afterward.

My fellow Americans,

I cannot quite bring myself to wish you a good evening. It has been a dark and difficult day, filled with loss and tragedy, and it is right and proper that we meet it with solemn faces and sober hearts.

Today, our nation was attacked. Cruelly, viciously, without warning and without provocation. We do not yet know the full toll, but we know that we have lost thousands of our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers and children, our friends and family and colleagues.

Four planes were hijacked this morning, resulting in the deaths of everyone aboard. Three of them struck targets on the ground—the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Early reports indicate that the fourth plane may have been brought down through the heroic actions of the passengers aboard, who, it seems, gave their lives to prevent it from reaching its intended target.

It is in moments like these that we learn who we truly are, as a people. Today, we watched as first responders and volunteers ran back into danger again and again, saving as many as they could—that effort continues tonight, and will continue for many days to come. We watched as cities and communities all over the nation opened their doors to the displaced, as air travel came to a halt. We witnessed the spontaneous mobilization of a vast logistical machine, as countless Americans began funneling donations of food, of money, of life-saving medical material. We have seen the people of New York and Washington come together as never before, with the rest of the nation behind them.

And the outpouring of care and sympathy and support has not been limited to our borders. We have drawn strength from the words and actions of our friends and allies all across the globe, and the near-unanimous condemnation of these acts from the peoples of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and South America and Oceania.

It will be long before America heals from this wound. Indeed, we will never fully heal—we will carry the scar and memory of it with us always, as we carry the scars of previous tragedies like the Oklahoma city bombing and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Rest assured that our military, our intelligence agencies, and our law enforcement will respond. The search is already under way for those responsible for this atrocity, and we will find them, wherever they may hide. I have taken steps to ensure that those directing our response have the full resources of our government at their disposal, so that they may move swiftly and decisively. For crimes like these, there can never truly be justice, but I give you my word as President and Commander-in-Chief: there will at least be a reckoning.

In this moment of grief and horror, though, it is also my duty to speak a word of caution, and restraint, and I beg the people of our great nation to listen.

Today, we have seen who and what we are, and it has filled us with grim pride.

Tomorrow, we will have the opportunity to choose who and what we will be. To make manifest our own vision of an America in mourning.

The aim of terrorism is simple. It is to create, and to take advantage of, fear.

To manipulate a population, corrupting their care and compassion and caution, twisting it into a weapon. The terrorist seeks to undermine that which he cannot defeat directly, to turn his victims against themselves, pitting their baser instincts against their deeply held values.

Today, you are outraged. It is right to be outraged—what has happened is outrageous.

Today, you are hurting. It is right to be hurting—we have been grievously wounded.

Today, you are afraid—

And there it is. Each and every American has felt fear in their heart this day. Fear for our loved ones. Fear for our children. Fear for our own safety. Fear for our future. Violence and destruction on a scale we never thought possible has visited us, on our own native soil, lightning out of a clear blue sky. Our confidence is understandably shaken. To feel fear, in response to these events, is entirely natural. I have been afraid myself, on this day.

But while the fear itself is natural, we must be suspicious of what comes after. Of our response to fear—of actions taken in fear, and emerging from fear. Those are the actions that our enemies have planned for us to take, are counting on us to take. Our enemies have put us in a state of fear, because they hope that an America that is afraid will do damage to itself—damage far in excess of anything that those enemies could inflict upon us themselves.

We shall not cooperate.

I say to you, and with you, and for you—we shall not cooperate.

I ask you to say it with me—we shall not cooperate.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither. Though it be hard, though it be frightening, this is what I ask of you, and what we must ask of each other:

Tomorrow, we must be greater than our fear. We must not hunker, we must not cower, we must not withdraw into ourselves. We must not panic, or lash out, must not let ourselves be driven by anxiety and mistrust. We must not give shelter to the parasite of terror that our enemy has tried to infect us with.

America—our America—our fundamental way of life—it works. We saw it in action today, as we pulled together, one nation, indivisible, in response to a desperate and cowardly attack. We are rightly proud of who we are.

Let us change nothing.

Our police, our firefighters, our military and intelligence services—they will rise to this occasion. The men and women in uniform, the men and women who serve as the eyes and hands and backbone of our nation—they will form the core of our response. They will learn what lessons need to be learned, and take what actions need to be taken. They are motivated, and capable, and we place our trust in them.

As for the rest of us—we must not let our faith in our way of life be shaken. We must not teach our enemy that attacks like this work—that they will produce in us the desired effect. We must allow ourselves to stand upright, despite the blow we have been dealt—must lift our voices in song and prayer, though our hearts be heavy with grief.

We do this in honor of those who fell, and those who helped, and those who came before, and those who will come after. We do this for the sake of our nation, and the ideals which lie at its heart—liberty, opportunity, justice, and equality. Tomorrow, go out and be the very same people you were today—the same people that these terrorists fear, and hate, and seek to undermine. Be Americans, and deny them their victory.

Thank you, and good night.

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Author’s note: Yes, there are other problems with America/were other problems with America in 2001 that this speech ignores entirely; my 2024 perspective winces a bit at the rah-rah. But it was/is correct to set them aside for the space of such a speech; attempting to include them would add nothing, and weaken much. And America twenty years down the road from this speech is, I posit, an America with less to be ashamed of, though there's still plenty of shame to go around.