(Host) Commentator Nils Dauliare is marking the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks by traveling the same road he did on that day – with the same message.
(Daulaire) On this day two years ago I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire to catch a morning flight to Washington. Over the New London pass, the sunlight shone through broken clouds. I looked at my watch – a few minutes after nine – as the first reports started coming over the radio – of a plane hitting one of the Twin Towers. By the time I got to the TV in the Manchester departure lounge, I was just in time to see the towers collapsing, the towers I would have flown directly over an hour later.
This September 11, I have the same schedule, the same itinerary. Then, I was on my way to argue before Congress why it was in our nation’s and the world’s best interest to invest $10 billion in improving health in the world’s poorest countries. Hope, I was planning to say, pays rich dividends in peace and stability. But how could I talk about peace and stability over smoking rubble?
I have never been prouder as an American than I was in the days following September 11. We watched with awe the brave and selfless struggles of the rescue workers in New York and at the Pentagon. There was no calculation of gain and benefit in what they did, they simply did what was right. In those weeks, we showed our national character.
The challenge of rescuing, restoring and rebuilding is the hard work of the world. It is the task of the health provider saving the lives of mothers and children threatened by poverty and ignorance as much as it is that of the rescuer lifting twisted blocks to find the wounded. I was proud of the symbol we had become.
Today, I reflect on where we have come in these two years, and how our response has served our national interests. We have answered thunder with lightning. But what of human needs and human rights? And what about rebuilding? How will we reflect on our response in the years to come?
Al-Qaeda brought evil manifestly before us on September 11, and we will never forget it. Evil rests on a foundation of hatred and disregard for the other. Evil is easy, because – as we have seen – it can act so quickly and with such finality. Evil tries to draw us into its easy answers. But we aren’t like that.
For me, this anniversary means another trip to Washington, another effort to convince Congress to do what is right. Similar objectives, even the same flight – with construction of the memorial to the Twin Towers visible over the left wingtip on this crisp Fall day.
Love, compassion, a devotion to human life and human well-being are the foundation of what we do. And to prevail, ours must be the polar opposite of the terrorists’ world. In Iraq and Afghanistan as much as in New York.
America is deep and robust, and I am confident that our own search for easy answers, for using precision bombs in place of the hard work of rebuilding, will soon give way to what is true in our character. But in this, as in so much else, we are still the victims of September 11.
This is Nils Dauliare in Norwich.
Doctor Nils Daulaire is President of the Global Health Council, headquartered in White River Junction. He spoke from our studio in Norwich.