Shaken but steadfast

The killers who came from the sky on that fateful morning did more than take the lives of almost 3,000 people with their actions. They also brought suffering to countless families and shaped the psyche of an entire generation of Americans who had believed that their country was invulnerable to attack.

The terrorists struck a strong nation at its core that day, a country that nevertheless remains confident in itself. The ceremonies and speeches to mark the ten year anniversary of the attacks bore eloquent testimony to this.

America has changed, but, as President Barack Obama put it, it has preserved its character. The nation bowed in memory of the victims, demonstrating its humility and deep faith while standing firm against the attacks. The way that former President George W. Bush stood alongside President Obama seemed almost symbolic of this.

Bush launched the war on terror, which in the coming years would cost tens of thousands of people their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and push the US to its limits economically. According to the latest estimates, the two wars have cost Washington more than a trillion dollars in total.

Only future generations will be able to answer whether America and the world have become safer as a result. A more equitable world order - one that brings nations and societies of different religious creeds closer together - remains, at any rate, nowhere in sight.

New ideas of who America's enemies were also emerged from the gaping wound left by September 11. These ideas sometimes had curious consequences, like the war in Iraq, which can only be understood against the backdrop of an insecure America that had been shaken to its foundations.

A decade later, the danger does not seem so threatening and as it did immediately after the horrific attacks. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead and the terrorists' threat has not been able to destroy the West's fundamental values.

The terrorists have failed even if, at times, these values appear to have teetered dangerously on the brink.

Among those values is the notion that countries should never engage in torture and that prisoners of war must be treated in line with international law. Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were lapses in the decade-old war.

Meanwhile, the crater at Ground Zero is now filled. A monument now honors the dead at the site. The deeply felt sympathy for the victims and their relatives has endured. Soon, a new World Trade Center will grow upward into the Manhattan sky.

America has held its ground, even if it will never again be the same nation that it was before those attacks ten years ago.

Author: Daniel Scheschkewitz / rc
Editor: Holly Fox