The Chuseok holidays kept Korean newspapers from editorially remembering the 9/11 terror on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, but we now join the Americans in renewing the resolve to make the world safer from violence and freer from hatred.
From reports of memorial ceremonies at Ground Zero in New York City, at the Pentagon and the Shanksville field in Pennsylvania, we saw and heard the families of the victims speak of the sorrow that has filled their hearts over the past 10 years and the proud memory of the loved ones that will keep them in strong hope for the future. A lot of tears were shed, but there was also laughter from youngsters frolicking around the 9/11 memorial waterfalls.
Diane Sawyer and ABC News produced an impressive video program with 17 “9/11 babies” who were born after their fathers were killed in the World Trade Center attacks. “I never met him but I know I love him,” one of the 10-year-olds said on the eve of the anniversary. The souls of the dead seemed to live on in their children whose features bore a striking resemblance to the pictures of their fathers.
History will make judgments not only on the al-Qaida terror that left 2,983 innocent people dead but on the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that the United States started after 9/11. Official statistics reveal that 2,528 U.S. and allied military personnel were killed in Afghanistan and another 4,784 died in Iraq as of last week, with civilian casualties reaching many times these numbers in the two Muslim countries. War costs have passed the $1 trillion mark. Korean troops have returned from Iraq but an engineering unit is still stationed in Afghanistan.
The world has changed a lot since 2011, particularly with the uprisings in North Africa that ousted dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Everyone now hopes that, when the 9/11 tragedy is commemorated a decade later, further changes in the region and elsewhere will have eliminated much of the hatred, ignorance and prejudice that produce the worst kind of human activity ― terrorism.
