Unity only grew into new divisions

On Monday, the leaders of Congress are set to gather with colleagues at noon for a bipartisan ceremony marking the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It will be reminiscent of the gathering on the night of the attacks, when members of Congress, many holding small American flags, stood on the Capitol steps and spontaneously sang “God Bless America.” But much has changed.

Twenty years ago, members of Congress were joined in a determined and resilient expression of national unity at an unprecedented moment in the nation’s history, a day that brought deaths and heroism but also shock, fear and confusion. Monday’s ceremony will no doubt be somber in its remembrance of what was lost that day, but it will come not as expression of a united America but simply as a momentary cessation in political wars that rage and have deepened in the years since those attacks.

In a video message to Americans released Friday, President Joe Biden spoke of how 9/11 had united the country and said that moment represented “America at its best.” He called such unity “our greatest strength” while noting it is “all too rare.” The unity that followed the attacks didn’t last long. Americans reverted more quickly than some analysts expected to older patterns of partisanship. With time, new divisions over new issues have emerged, and they make the prospect of a united nation ever more distant.

The question is often asked: As the United States has plunged deeper into division and discord, is there anything that could spark a change, anything big enough to become a catalyst for greater national unity? But if 9/11 doesn’t fit that model, what does? And look what happened in the aftermath of that trauma.

For a time, the shock of the attacks did bring the country together. President George W. Bush’s approval ratings spiked to 90 percent in a rally-round-the-flag reaction historically seen when the country is faced with external threats or crises.

One notable expression of the unity at the time came from Al Gore, the former vice president who had lost the bitter 2000 election to Bush after a disputed recount in Florida and a controversial Supreme Court decision.

Speaking at a Democratic Party dinner in Iowa less than a month after the attacks, Gore called Bush “my commander in chief,” adding, “We are united behind our president, George W. Bush, behind the effort to seek justice, not revenge, to make sure this will never, ever happen again. And to make sure we have the strongest unity in America that we have ever had.” The Democratic audience rose, applauding and cheering.

Trust in government rose in those days after the attacks. Shortly after 9/11, trust in government jumped to 64 percent, up from 30 percent before the attacks, according to Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm that was closely tracking public attitudes to the attacks. By the summer of 2002, the firm found that trust had fallen back, to 39 percent.

Five years after the attacks, then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., now deceased, was quoted as saying that America was “more divided and more partisan than I’ve ever seen us.” Today, after many contentious elections; political warfare over economic, cultural and social issues; and a domestic attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, many Americans would say things have become worse.

As he prepared the U.S. response to the attacks by al-Qaida in the fall of 2001, Bush made clear the United States would go it alone if necessary, assembling what was called a “coalition of the willing.” He put other nations on notice, saying the United States would hold them accountable in the campaign against the terrorists. “You’re either with us or against us in the fight,” he said.

Bush described the world in terms of good versus evil.

Today’s politics at home is often practiced that way. That phrase — “with us or against us” — could stand as a black-and-white expression of the way in which many Americans approach the political battles: all in with the team, red or blue, or not in at all. If you win, I lose. No middle ground.

Lack of imagination on the part of Americans had helped 9/11 to happen. No one in the upper reaches of government seemed to have envisioned foreign terrorists hijacking airplanes, turning them into massive jet fuel-filled weapons and crashing them into buildings, although there had been warnings.

If the response in the years that followed was often chaotic or ill-advised, if things seemed to get worse rather than better, the public demeanor of leaders remained one of total confidence.

That was true of one president after another about Afghanistan, as a history of the war has since shown. Eventually, as events told a story that contradicted official assurances, the certitude of the leaders gave way to disillusionment and cynicism on the part of citizens. It happened during the country’s Vietnam experience and happened again with Afghanistan and Iraq.

So much went wrong.

In the days after the attacks, politicians noted the United States’ vulnerability — two oceans were no longer protection against foreign attack — and vowed to make perpetrators pay. It was a time of extravagant predictions. Chuck Hagel, then a Republican senator from Nebraska and later defense secretary in the Obama administration, said, “We are forever changed.”

More Americans say now that the change was for the worse instead of for the better, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. Six months after the attacks, 2 in 3 said the country had changed for the better.

The mission in Afghanistan morphed from hunting terrorists, subduing the Taliban and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice to one of nation building and a 20-year commitment of U.S. forces that ended last month, amid controversy over Biden’s handling of the exit and a public conclusion that the war had not been worth fighting.

On the night of 9/11, George Tenet, then the CIA director, told Bush and other senior officials as they contemplated how to respond: It was time to tell the Taliban we’re finished with them. Today, the Taliban once again control Afghanistan.

If 9/11 could not sustain American unity for long, there were other events that tested whether the could break out of its divisions. Among them is the 2008-09 financial crash, an event that crushed many families and cried out for a united response. But Obama, whose election was hailed as a sign of racial progress, was able to inspire not unity but more division: a tea party revolt, GOP obstruction in Congress and, worse, a rise in racial resentment among some White voters and outright racism among others..

The 20th anniversary of the events that led to the invasion of Afghanistan finds the United States no longer in that conflict overseas but in a costly debate at home over how to wage a war against a virus.

The ceremonies commemorating 9/11 are wholly appropriate, designed as they are to mark the loss of innocent lives and the selfless heroism of firefighters and police and other first responders who threw themselves into efforts to rescue anyone who could be rescued and to recover the remains of those who could not, and the bravery of those on Flight 93 who gave their lives to save others. They remind all Americans of what is best about the country.

But it also should be noted that as the nation, and elected officials in Washington, hold these events, there is talk about reinstalling fencing around the Capitol in preparation for a rally next weekend in Washington in support of those arrested and jailed after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

This time, as Bush said Saturday, it is not international terrorism that poses the greatest threat to the homeland; it is domestic terrorism from white supremacists and others. Twenty years on from 9/11, that is the state of the country.