Rarely do two presidential candidates pause their campaigns with less than two months until Election Day. But in honor of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have pledged to “put aside politics” and engage in an unprecedented display of bipartisanship across Manhattan. They come to Columbia thanks to ServiceNation, an organization dedicated to renewing national service and the “idea of shared sacrifice in pursuit of America’s boldest promise: liberty and justice for all.” We, the so-called service generation, will engage in what University President Lee Bollinger deems a “nonpartisan reflection on our obligations as citizens.” On Sept. 11, the presidential hopefuls claim, we will rise above our bitter political divisions to unite as Americans once again.
Heartening as this may sound, the notion that politics hibernate when it comes to Sept. 11 is spurious. The philosophical, religious, and strategic implications of the attacks seemed to divide adult Americans—those who had lived a substantial portion of their lives before Sept. 11—between liberal and conservative responses. Those who shifted to the right essentially concluded that the United States had entered a mortal struggle with radical Muslims bent on destroying Western civilization. They generally endorsed the Bush doctrine of preemptive military action against terrorist organizations and their state sponsors, convinced that the U.S. had to take any means necessary against the menace of terrorism.
Others, meanwhile, turned to the left and peered inward for answers. Some sympathized with those who argued that America’s actions in the Middle East, from its unwavering defense of Israel to its support for corrupt dictatorships, spurred resentment among Arabs. Many regarded the Iraq War—an extension of the War on Terror, in Bush’s eyes—as a monumental waste of effort, a distraction from the battle against al-Qaida, and a product of neoconservatives in the White House hardly discernible from bin Laden or Nasrallah in their ideological zealotry.
Indeed, McCain and Obama themselves drew highly divergent lessons from Sept. 11 and President Bush’s response to it, reflected in their differing strategies for confronting terrorism. Yet while reactions to Sept. 11 varied, the debate among our current leadership focused on questions of policy and politics. Liberals and conservatives both continued to believe that despite some blemishes, the U.S., as President Bush declared after the attacks, remained the “brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” Patriotism—love of country—unquestionably reigned.
As some of our parents heard the initial disjointed reports of a jet accidentally crashing into the North Tower on their way to work, most current undergraduates experienced the news from our middle-school classrooms. Few of us had any political consciousness before—at 13 and 14, we witnessed terrorists incinerate 3,000 people and render the indelible World Trade Center smoldering rubble. While the events of Sept. 11 may have driven older Americans to opposite ends of the political spectrum, the events of that day posed a far more fundamental question to us. The attacks divided us not by conventional political divisions of liberal and conservative, both essentially supporting the United States, but on the question of whether we continue to subscribe to the notion of America as the “brightest beacon”—whether we believe in America at all.
While McCain and Obama urge us to engage our civic responsibilities in the context of our post-Sept. 11 reality, will their message of civic duty resonate with us like it did our mothers and fathers? National service assumes a core belief in the nation. But the wrenching effects of Sept. 11 and the past seven years punctured an early hole in our relationship to our country, undermining our faith in it more than simply shifting us one way or another on the political spectrum. Many grew ashamed of the United States and embarrassed by the idea of patriotism, which they considered the primitive refrain of simpletons and an impediment to global harmony.
Indeed, the message of our two candidates and of ServiceNation—one of unabashed national devotion—may disturb those who abjure patriotism, believing it the cause of all our ills. The argument of right and left is an argument over how we fulfill the pledge of “liberty and justice for all” that supposedly defines this country. Our generation asks a far more shattering question: not how, but if we can or should.
The two presidential nominees will beckon us to public engagement today, extolling the virtues of patriotism and sacrifice. Yet Sept. 11 must be more than a call to national service for us. It is a referendum on whether we still believe in this country’s promise. If they both care about the future of our nation, McCain and Obama must in fact “put aside politics” when they come here—not to engage in a sanctimonious ode to unity, but to address our generation’s crisis of commitment.
The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in history. He is the editor in chief of The Current, Columbia’s journal of politics, culture, and Jewish affairs.
