“I should have been there,” Eneida DelValle says, pausing to control her emotion. Twenty-two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, it is still difficult for this former television producer, then a university student, to talk about what happened that day.
“They canceled classes and turned my university into a screening center,” he said. “One of my doctors said everyone was rushing there. They had a triage center, but no one came,” he recalls. “They were all dead.”
Eneida attended the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) and met with a professor in the Fiterman Building, just 800 feet from where the towers collapsed. But the professor rescheduled the meeting at the last minute and Eneida went to another part of the city. When the pirate planes crashing into the World Trade Center caused the towers to collapse, Building 7 fell on part of Fiterman, where Eneida would have been had the meeting not been moved.
“The fallout from September 11th continues to impact New Yorkers in profound ways,” he said. “A lot of people have moved on, but New Yorkers can’t do that,” he continues. “It’s very difficult for me to go to that area. I’ve never been to the 9/11 Memorial, I can’t do that.”
The consequences of the attacks are not limited to painful memories and collective post-traumatic stress in New York.
“People are still dying as a result of 9/11,” emphasizes Eneida DelValle, who now lives in another part of the city. “They developed cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other types of diseases caused by inhalation and exposure to the debris or proximity of the affected buildings.”
This was recognized last week when 43 names were added to the official list of victims on the New York City Fire Department’s World Trade Center Memorial Wall. This wall commemorates the firefighters, paramedics and emergency responders who died as a result of the recovery work.
“There is no comfort, there are no words. “There is nothing we can say to replace the pain they have endured over the years as we grieve further away from the September 11 attacks,” the spokesperson said. mayor from New York, Eric Adams, during the naming ceremony. “But they are heroes, not just those who were in the building, but those who responded afterwards.”
The preservation of memory in New York, which bore the brunt of the 2001 terrorist attacks, does not seem to be resonating in other parts of the country, something actor David Villar, who lives on the other side of the West Coast, considers as is expected.
“The further we are from a tragedy, the fewer people point it out, celebrate it and pay tribute,” he tells DN. “But perhaps even more importantly, much of the country, on both political sides, looks back with great disdain on that time and what followed – Iraq, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and so on.”
That has not always been the case, as Portuguese-American political scientist Daniela Melo, professor at Boston University, explains.
“9/11 had a huge and immediate impact on American foreign policy,” the expert recalls. “The administration of George W. Bush has reshaped American foreign policy to confront a new type of enemy: non-state, transnational entities that use weak or failed states as a haven for their activities.”
The attacks set off two protracted and unsuccessful wars in all respects, with American troops drawn into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The Bush administration used September 11 as an excuse to pass legislation like the Patriot Act,” says Eneida DelValle. “He used it for the war in Iraq, when in fact the bombers came from Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis are allies of the Americans, so they were never convicted and he went after Saddam Hussein.”
The war in Iraq lasted eight years and the war in Afghanistan for 20 years, ending with a disastrous withdrawal during Joe Biden’s administration.
“The usefulness of September 11 as a mobilizing issue for American voters lost momentum during the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations,” says Daniela Melo. This happened in part because the decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq were made more or less by consensus in the United States at the time.
“In other words, both Democrats and Republicans voted in favor of these interventions, which, however, were perceived as strategic mistakes in the long term,” he points out. “During recent election cycles, there has been talk about the product of September 11 – the wars.”
This was evident in Joe Biden’s virulent criticism of the way the US military withdrew from Afghanistan and power almost immediately fell back into the hands of the Taliban extremists in the summer of 2021. It was at this time that Biden’s popularity then, While they enjoyed a certain state of grace under the new government, things began to sink. The current president celebrates September 11 today at a military base in Alaska, after a presidential trip to India.
On this anniversary of the attacks, Ron DeSantis is one of the (few) politicians who will publicly mark the date. The governor will meet with seven families of 9/11 victims in Manhattan.
“The departure from Afghanistan ended a political cycle directly linked to September 11,” says Daniela Melo. “Guantánamo is no longer often in the news,” he says, referring to the controversial detention camp where dozens of people accused of involvement in terrorism are imprisoned.
The political scientist points out that this Guantanamo Bay prison could return to the spotlight if Republican candidate Ron DeSantis manages to overtake Donald Trump and win the presidential nomination. This is unlikely, but it would reignite the discussion because the current governor of Florida served in Guantánamo Bay seventeen years ago when he was in the Navy.
On this anniversary of the attacks, Ron DeSantis is one of the (few) politicians who will publicly mark the date. The governor will meet with seven families of 9/11 victims in Manhattan, something that doesn’t sit well with Eneida DelValle.
“Republicans like to use September 11th, but they opposed federal funding for health care for the victims,” he criticizes. ‘Before 9/11 it was an excuse, now it’s an accessory. DeSantis will meet with families for political gain.”
But what will dominate voters’ minds in the 2024 presidential campaign is not this 22-year-old past, says Daniela Melo.
“Right now, it is China’s ascendancy as a global power and Russia’s belligerence that most worry political elites and excite the American electorate,” he said. “This turn toward Asia was already evident in Obama’s foreign policy and I expect it will be a theme in the next presidential cycle.”
A desert in Hollywood
Citizens’ perceptions of historical conflicts, from World Wars I and II to the Vietnam War, have been largely shaped by Hollywood’s relentless retelling of events. But unlike other bloody tragedies, September 11 has rarely appeared on the big screen in the past 22 years. With the exception of United 93 (2006), World trade center (2006) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), the attacks were not a focus of the Hollywood machine.
“It’s interesting to see how we dealt with Vietnam cinematically in the 80s and 90s,” says David Villar. “I find it fascinating that we haven’t had the same reverence for films about September 11, Iraq and Afghanistan,” he notes. “I think that reflects the blasé attitude we have now toward September 11.”
The actor believes this is due to a certain “shame” about the reaction the United States had after the attacks and the “blatant lie” that led to the invasion of Iraq.
“And maybe it also has to do with the fact that films have much less cultural weight than they used to,” he says. “Movies were the focus of much of the cultural discussion at the time, but when films about the war on terror began to appear, television and the Internet flourished.”
Eneida DelValle adds a different perspective. The New Yorker points out that the previous tragedies occurred on foreign soil and this one at home.
“One of the biggest problems is that America and Americans refuse to acknowledge their history and what they did wrong,” he says, pointing to the current controversy over teaching the history of slavery.
“In the world wars and in Vietnam there is a lot of horror, but also heroism,” he continues. “There are also many heroes in 9/11. They are simply not alive to tell their stories.”
Source: DN
