September Eleventh: The New Tragedy Essay -- History Historical Terror

September Eleventh: The New Tragedy History is written from the tragedies that occur through time. Wars, plagues, famines, and economic crises punctuate references in history books. We refer to time in pre and post event terms, and how our thinking has changed since the occurrence. We measure our lives in relation to deep sorrow that causes us to reconsider our self worth and the lives we lead. There have been several of these happenings in this century, pre world war I, post world war I, the depression era, post world war II, the Cold War, the post cold war, and now we have post September 11th. A new tragedy has been identified as a cause for us to reconsider our place in the world. This new tragedy is distinctive because it took place on U.S. territory and nowhere else. It has global effects, but this tragedy is the United States’ own to grapple with. The reason for this lies in the nature of the attack. The dictionary definition of terrorism is the state of intense fear, or the act of inflicting or inspiring fear. This new word fills our t.v.screens our conversations and affects our everyday coming and going. History will look upon the terrorists’ events of September 11th as a pivotal point in our country’s direction of growth. The United States has entered the real world of terrorism. Although we have long been apart of the international community, we have been sheltered and overconfident in our belief that we are impenetrable. We have falsely believed that terrorism is a problem for someone else’s country; no one would dare attack us. That belief has been shattered. We now face a new perspective on the rest of the world and on ourselves. It is a very personal attack in the sense that the Unite... ...oes not induce such anger and resentment so as to act irrationally. Terrorism has immeasurable effects on people. Fear is something that cannot be measured quantitatively. It can lead to many psychological behaviors that affect the way we look at the world. Will fighting terrorism reduce our civil liberties and the things that make us who we are? Do we have the possibility of loosing our identity because of the fear? If that is the case, terrorism has succeeded and it really won’t matter how many bombs we drop or how many leaders we kill that are linked to terrorist organizations. We will have become so entrapped by our fears we will be immobile and incapable of being who we are. So we come to a point in the our history that we must choose which direction we will take to deal with this and the story will go on until a new punctuation occurs.