Coming from the US, the topic of 9/11 holds a certain meaning. It is synonymous with remembrance and resilience and bravery. It’s a major event in American history and because most people were alive when in happened it has great personal impact on many. The September 11th master narrative focuses on individuals specific tragedies. It is a day of great loss and tragedy for working class Americans and their families. Every year in school we watched documentary videos about that specific day; the hours and minutes after the attack. Our master narrative includes only about 24 hours of the entire story. Videos of people jumping from the top floors to escape the fire, first responders digging through rubble, sound clips of the last calls people made to their loved ones tugged on the deepest heart strings. Bush later goes down as one of the worst presidents for starting the Iraq war, but I will always picture the clip of him reading to a group of preschoolers while a secret service agent whispers the horrific news into his ear. That is how George Bush will be remembered on September 11th. The master narrative in the United States is heavily skewed to the singular day of tragedy and personal loss. It ignores the aftermath and the reasons for the attack.

My experience about learning of the Iraq war is very limited. It mostly came from my parents or from news outlets, but in school we never talked about it. In my public school we watched videos of the twin towers collapsing, but never learned the history before or the outcome after. No one tried to justify the war to me specifically, but that seemed to be what was happening. If asked why the US was involved in the Middle East (not Iraq or Afghanistan specifically) my peers and I would respond “because of 9/11”. We learned the complexities of the Vietnam war and the atrocities the US participated in, but perhaps the screw ups in the Middle East are too fresh to be examined so heavily. Everybody has a 9/11 story and the memories associated with it are so upsetting, that Americans are willing to accept the master narrative.

I wonder if Americans purposely perpetuate the master narrative as opposed to just living in it? I just live in a world where the narrative of the Middle East and war on terror is handed to me, but for other Americans, they still feel personally upset by the events because they lived through it. I believe that although master narratives are very skewed representations of events, they are based in truth and emotion. September 11th was such a major event that it will influence people’s ideologies on the conflict over seas. For my generation and younger, we do not have this attachment to 9/11 and therefore we oppose the war. It must be an interesting time because it has been almost 20 years since the event and the firsthand opinions are becoming more objective as the population gets older and sees this event as history.

It took a long time for people to distance themselves from september 11th 2001 and see the islamophobia associated with it. People accepted the racism and encouraged it because everyone was so astounded by the news, the whole country was unified in outrage. The master narrative antagonizes the entire Middle East and all muslims without differentiation. People didn’t see the difference between an Afghani and a Saudi Arabian and still don’t. Bush created another us against them narrative, much like the cold war against the soviets.

9/11 is a crazy example of how only the atrocities we experience can make an impact on our behavior. There is a lot to process in the news, and so many horrific events that don’t even get covered for longer than a week. These are out of sight and out of mind truly. But the world trade towers were right in our back yard, the terrorists flew from Boston Logan airport and they had driven down the road which passed to the side of my high school. I remember my teacher pointing out the window and saying the terrorists must have driven past right there toward Portland Maine and flew from the jetport there only a day before they watched the towers fall that afternoon during class. He had remembered that day so well, and I sometimes got an eerie feeling driving on that road. I listen to my parents talk about the shock and horror of hearing about the events while we were out of country that September. The master narrative is fueled by personal accounts, which makes it so strong and inescapable.