I was working in Washington, DC at the time, my office was a few blocks from the White House and just a few miles from the Pentagon. As the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon smoldered in the wake of the terrorist attacks, people scrambled to get home, contact loved ones, and find safety from the unknown. People were more afraid than angry amidst the confusion.

I am struck by the similarities and differences between 9/11 and COVID-19. In the fall of 2001, people came together to grieve. Wallets and hearts opened for New York’s heroes and victims. Similarly, while there was some skepticism about the virus when it first hit in the spring of 2020, people were largely complying with stay-at-home orders and masking requirements.

By and large the public supported our initial response in Afghanistan, which was sold as a quick operation to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban. But President Bush took advantage of the anger and that rare faith in government to launch a long-sought war in Iraq.

As they say: history tends to repeat itself. Well we’ve been stuck in a sort of nightmare loop for the last two decades. It is a crying shame our country did not learn from those lessons. In the spring of 2020, I was hopeful that a pandemic would be one instance where political divisions might fall away and we would become a collective and unstoppable force to defeat COVID.

We have lost at least 650,000 Americans to this pandemic, an official statistic that might be half of the true number. Everyone of us has been touched by this pandemic in some way or other. If we truly want to honor the memory and legacy of 9/11, we must resolve to heed differently as an American people. We must find the fortitude to cast aside threats from within that divide Americans along partisan fault lines. And worse, those who exploit tragedy to advance political agendas at the expense of the health and well-being of our country.


Tom Nelson