What is the legacy of 9/11?

Four years ago, I started my day as everyone else did. It was just a regular Tuesday, a day early in the school year when I was fresh and ready and optimistic as I readied for teaching. It would be the last Tuesday for a long time that seemed "regular."

That morning, at just a couple minutes after 7 a.m., I turned on the TV to watch a few minutes of the "Today" show while I made my lunch. I heard Tom Brokaw's voice. I knew something was up. I went to watch and see what was happening, and I saw one of the Twin Towers fall live on NBC. My eyes were literally riveted to the images, and I struggled to understand what was happening. I forced myself to finish my routine and get to school. I knew it was going to be a remarkable day for the news media.

As I came to understand the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the resulting chain of events that occurred -- in New York City, in Washington, D.C., in Afghanistan and around the world -- I knew that "regular" had a new meaning. Aaron Brown, who was pressed into service ahead of schedule in his CNN debut that month, on his new show began to refer to life as "the new normal."

Four years after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, we have returned to a sort of normalcy, a "new normal." What, then, is the legacy of 9/11?

The legacy of 9/11 is a perpetual state of fear. The government relies on people to be fearful, and it maneuvers to guarantee that people will not feel safe. The color-coded terror-alert level and the periodic bulletins about "credible threats" ramp up the population's fears. Playing on these fears is how the powerful maintain power.

The legacy of 9/11 is political gain from finding a new demon. American history is full of examples of enemies who were demonized and dehumanized. We know the terms: FOB. WOP. Kraut. Nip. Gook. Kike. Nigger. Fag. Spic. Camel jockey. Towel head. Politicians gain from the subtle and sinister association of anything bad in life with something that is evil. To paraphrase one of my favorite movies: They aren't interested in solving your problems. They're interested in just two things: Telling you who is to blame for it and making you afraid of it.

The legacy of 9/11 is opportunity to overreach in government. The USA PATRIOT Act, the Department of Homeland Security and a laundry list of federal regulations are examples of government's rapid and extensive expansion in the Bush Administration. But this expansion is an overreach; true conservatives oppose this expansion because they loath the massive federal bureaucracy while liberals oppose the expansion because it is against traditional liberal ideals.

The legacy of 9/11 is economic instability for decades under the guise of security now. The federal expansion is being paid for with borrowed money -- the funds our government owes me and people in my generation and the generations to come. The late 1990s saw balanced federal budgets. Certainly President Clinton deserves much of the credit for a balanced budget, but the Republican Congress voted for these fiscally responsible budgets. Just a few years later, the federal government operates under record defecits. Even winning the Cold War was cheaper than this. What will be left of the federal government to pass on to future generations if this habit is left unchecked?

The legacy of 9/11 is a noose tightening around the neck of civil liberties and no one to grant clemency. An expansion of secret federal investigations, prisoners being held without an opportunity to hear a charge or consult with legal counsel, invasive searches in order to use the mass-transit system of commercial flight -- these are just a few of the myriad ways where civil liberties have been restricted in the months after 9/11. Additionally, the chill on America's airwaves and in its print publications -- where anyone questioning the government's actions is shouted down as unpatriotic -- is shocking. The forum where people could debate and consider and think is down for the count.

The legacy of 9/11 is a huge federal bureaucracy with a euphemistic title that teeters under its own weight. Homeland Security? The federal government last week bungled the effort to do exactly what it was supposed to do -- keep the homeland secure. With eyes searching the horizon for the next 747 headed for a skyscraper, the department was caught completely off guard in this crisis. The message to the world is obvious: Our homeland is not secure from natural disaster, and the government cannot move quickly to save its own citizens domestically.

The legacy of 9/11 is a president whose effectiveness depends on the lustre of handling a crisis from four years ago. A few days after the terror attacks, President Bush stood on a heap of rubble, placed his arm around a firefighter and shouted into a bullhorn that the world hears us loud and clear. It was a clarion call that America was resilient and would not be defeated. We all stood proudly alongside our leaders and our fellow citizens, firmly resisting the terror that we could easily have succumbed to. But that president has squandered his ability to lead by tilting at windmills in the Persian Gulf region, by making every issue about terror and by burnishing his reputation with a response team that he did not put in place. Now, just four years later, he handled another domestic crisis miserably. There was no enemy to blame, no one to demonize, no thing to scapegoat. In fact, the people realized a new fear -- that their government would not be there for them when they needed it. And the President is the one to blame.

The legacy of 9/11 is greater insecurity in the world as rogues line up to oppose American interests and to punish American allies. Iraq's insurgency is constant and building. Terror groups have successfully bombed targets in Spain and Britain. Reasonable leaders and citizens around the world wonder how America could have steered away from its responsibility as the last remaining superpower.America is seen as a superbully.

The legacy of 9/11 is seeing the predictions of Orwell and Bradbury come true. Each described, though their literature, events similar to the ones we have witnessed in the last four years. Government controls life. Authority demands conformity. Do not think as an individual. Do not question. Go along and be safe. But Orwell and Bradbury wrote as warning. It remains to be seen if someone will stand as Montague and question and defy and spark a dissent.

The legacy of 9/11 is fear and control and mismanagement and insecurity. The legacy of 9/11 is irony.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.