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Viewpoints on WVPT examines the legacy of 9/11

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viewpoints 9/11Bob Johnson was called, in more ways than one, to New York City, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

A native New Yorker, Johnson had settled in Waynesboro, Va., was pastoring a church in Augusta County and was serving as a volunteer chaplain with the Waynesboro Police Department.

“I had a feeling we would be called,” said Johnson, who went back home to NYC in the days following the attacks, sharing his memories on this week’s Viewpoints on WVPT, which marked the 15-year anniversary of 9/11.

Johnson wrote a book about his experiences at Ground Zero – Where Was God? The World Trade Center Disaster As Seen Through a Chaplain’s Eyes, published on the five-year anniversary of the attacks.

Upon arriving at the scene, Johnson said he realized quickly that his job as a chaplain “wasn’t to preach, wasn’t to be there to do a sermon. I was there to provide two ears to listen to those folks.”

He immediately ran into two people who had lost loved ones, a brother and sister, “and they talked, and wanted to talk and get it out.”

“I realized right away what my job was going to be. It was just to be there, to be a presence, and to be a good listener,” said Johnson, who will never forget the attacks in terms of the memories implanted in his senses.

“The smells, the sights, the fires, the smoke, the people working, the firemen down there, the steelworkers, the cranes, I had absolutely no idea it was going to be like that,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the title of his book came from a question posed to him many times in the weeks and months following 9/11.

Where was God in all of this?

“I saw people working and digging and helping one another,” Johnson said. “And the great thing about that time was the unity. It didn’t matter who you were. It didn’t matter what gender you were, what color, your race. We were all just there to help and work together.”

For a brief time, we were one.

“That’s what I saw there, and I don’t see that now 15 years later. It’s missing, it’s deteriorating. And I feel bad about that, as a pastor, as a chaplain. It’s not rocket science. We can get back to where we were if we just stop hating. I wish we could get back to that, and I think we can, if we just try hard,” Johnson said.

The second guest on Viewpoints this week was Daryl Byler, the director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University.

Byler was in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, at a conference discussing what had gone wrong in the Middle East peace process.

He remembers attendees being asked to leave, “and as we walked out on the street, we could see the smoke billowing in the air from the Pentagon.”

“It was a surreal experience. People were all trying to get home. Folks were talking, and some were saying there’s more planes coming in. Others were saying, This is the end of the world. It was quite an interesting time,” said Byler, who put his thoughts on the day and the next steps to paper that night in an essay that seems almost too prescient now.

“I pray that we will not use this tragedy as an opportunity for retaliation but, rather, as an occasion to reflect on what truly makes for global security,” Byler wrote in concluding his essay. “Through the judicial process — not through military retaliation or declarations of war — let us seek to bring justice to those who perpetrated the horrendous slaughter of September 11. But let us also recommit ourselves to do justice in our global relationships. It is the only chance for building a more secure future.”

Byler lived in the Middle East for six years, from 2007-2013, and came back to the States with an appreciation for the impact that the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks had on that region and the world at large.

Many Middle Easterners have a deep admiration for the U.S., Byler said, but there is also frustration on what is perceived to be inconsistencies in U.S. policies.

“There’s frustration that they feel we talk about human rights, but we have unwittingly propped up some regimes in the Middle East that have engaged in serious human-rights abuses. Or they see a kind of duplicitous approach in terms of how we responded to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, and how we respond to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. They see those inconsistencies, and they find that frustrating from this country that is supposed to be a beacon of human rights and democracy,” Byler said.

The focus on military response “ended up playing into the narrative of the more extreme elements of Islam, and that is that the U.S. is out to get them, and to destroy the Islamic faith. So when we start large-scale military actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq, it feeds very much right into that narrative,” Byler said.

That said, Byler brought back with him from his residency in the Middle East a sense of optimism about the future.

“I think folks in this country need to understand that there is still goodwill for the United States in the Middle East. But we need to be more consistent in our upholding of human rights,” Byler said. “We need to do a little more positive job of modeling what democracy really looks like. When you’re living in the Middle East, and the U.S. is promoting democracy abroad, we’re not practicing it real well at home right now. There’s so much polarization.”

America, 15 years past 9/11, is at a crossroads in terms of what the long-term legacy of that day will be.

To Byler, it’s not a foregone conclusion that it has to be endless war.

“I think putting more of our national treasure into diplomacy and development, both domestically and internationally, would help to build positive relationships. We have spent more than $1.7 trillion in executing this war on terrorism, and we have painfully little that is positive to show for that,” Byler said.

Story by Chris Graham

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