Costa Resta ~ What Remains?

(English translation: Original Link Here In Italian: https://www.osservatoreromano.va/it/news/2021-09/quo-205/cosa-resta.html )

Per L’Osservatore Romano ~ Alessandro Gisotti

What remains twenty years after the bloodiest attack in history? First of all, an immense sense of loss. In those terrible hours of September 11, 2001, the lives of three thousand people were severed. Mothers, fathers, children, friends have been torn forever from the embrace of their loved ones. Lives broken by a murderous madness that made something real until then unimaginable: transforming airliners into missiles to sow death and destruction. In the twenty years since that tragic morning on the East Coast of the United States, young people have grown up orphans and parents continue to cry for their children who have never returned home. What is striking, now as then, in scrolling the names of the victims are the nationalities - over 70 - to which they belong. An attack therefore on the United States but at the same time on the world, on all humanity. So it was felt in those excited hours and perhaps even more so in the following days as the immense extent of the tragedy became clearer. Never Forget, “Never forget” is the warning that stands out today at the Ground Zero Memorial. Two words that have been repeated countless times in these twenty years to emphasize that memory cannot, must not fail when the pain is so great.

The sense of sacrifice remains indelible from that day, the testimony of those who gave their lives to save that of others. It is striking to think that one tenth of all 9/11 victims are firefighters. In New York, an entire generation of firefighters died that day. He found death to save lives. They climbed the stairs of the Twin Towers as people descended desperately. They knew what they were up against, climbing those stairs full of debris and shrouded in smoke, but they didn't stop. They knew that only their courage, only their sacrifice could save those trapped in skyscrapers gutted by planes. If the already tragic death toll has not taken on an even more catastrophic dimension it is thanks to them, to those firefighters and other rescuers who have embodied the power of good in the face of the unleashing of evil.

The bitter legacy of September 11, 2001, and this on a global level, is the sense of insecurity and fear with which today we are somehow used to living together. Taking a plane is no longer a "normal thing" from that day on. On the other hand, the Islamist terrorist attacks, which followed the terrifying one of 2001 by Al Qaeda, have given a hand to the theorists of the "clash of civilizations". Over the past twenty years xenophobic and anti-migratory movements have grown, a side effect of an instability that was among the objectives of those who brought the attack to the heart of the United States. Unfortunately, as has tragically emerged in recent weeks in Afghanistan, America and the West have not been able to offer a strategy that can equal the epochal challenge posed by the ideologues of global terrorism. Twenty years after 9/11, the Taliban - who had given refuge to Osama Bin Laden - are back in power in Kabul and the self-styled Islamic state (IS) has returned to strike in a dismal and, in many ways, surreal. remake. Today, therefore, there are far more questions than the loose knots about the future, while the costs, above all in human lives, of the reaction to those terrifying attacks are very high.

So what remains of September 11th? Twenty years later, we still remember the motto United We Stand, "United we stand", which became, also visually through flags and billboards hoisted in the streets of Manhattan, the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to the horror experienced there. 'Sept. 11. Over the years, that motto has taken on an ever broader and deeper meaning. Stand together despite the attempts to "bring down" our common humanity. Today that appeal to unity, to "human fraternity" - as Pope Francis tirelessly reminds us - becomes the only winning "strategy". A strategy that requires far-sightedness, courage and patience in the conviction, as John Paul II underlined immediately after the attacks, that "even if the force of darkness seems to prevail, the believer knows that evil and death do not have the last word". by ALESSANDRO GISOTTI ~ (my dear friend)….