Slouching towards...

This is the view from the park next to the building where I now live. Of the restored Pentagon, with the Capitol building in the distance. I’m just across I-395, one Metro stop, from the nexus of American military power. Many of the very long-time residents here are either serving or retired officers.

As I sit in the living room, drinking a latte and listening to NPR this morning, I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like here 15 years ago. Standing on the balcony watching black smoke fill the air; making frantic calls to colleagues, friends, family; returning to the balcony; watching TV.

My daily commute takes me past the Pentagon twice a day. It’s morbid, of course, but at least once a week I wonder what that morning must have been like for the people on Yellow and Blue Line trains headed through that corridor.

I was far away at the time, working in the UK for a company crumbling under its own arrogance, preparing for a last holiday to Florence and Siena before I was to be returned to Northern Virginia and laid off. The canteen manager told us, “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center”, and all I could think of was a civil aircraft must have got terribly off course. I could not have created the picture of a 767 flying deliberately into the WTC.

When we found out the enormity of the first strike, I thought, “Busboys are setting up for lunch at that restaurant. Who hurts busboys?”

And then there was the second hit, and the one here at the Pentagon. I couldn’t get to any US news sites—Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, NY Times—the sites were all crashing from the traffic.

One of the telecoms spinoffs on the second floor had a wall of TV screens, and I watched the same video loops again and again, all across that wall. Finally I went home, where again I watched the same video loops again and again. Colleagues from France, Wales, England and Ireland called to check on me; they told me to call them whenever I needed to talk.

It was the next day, when driving home to pick up my luggage and head to Gatwick for the flight to Italy, that the tears came. The Glaxo-Smith-Kline headquarters in west London had lowered its three flags to half-staff; seeing that I began to sob.

A friend of mine, who was working at the Pentagon on that day (and still is), posts an essay on his experience every year. Every year I weep.

What cuts me the most deeply today is wondering what progress we might have made in these 15 years, as opposed to where we are now. In this decade and a half it seems like we’ve become entrenched in our fragmented viewpoints; everyone shouting and shoving to proclaim their truth. September 11^th has been reduced to a week’s worth of intensely painful media focus and an occasion for political photo opps and fundraisers. Starting the next week, it’s shelved for another year.

Meanwhile, London, Madrid, Brussels, Paris and Istanbul have experienced the same kinds of attacks; we’ve become enmired in wars that have lasted longer than even Vietnam (with not dissimilar results); and the Middle East (extending through Afghanistan and Pakistan) is an indescribable nightmare.

So here’s my question. How do we turn this around?