"The Predicament of Aftermath": 19 April 1995 and 11 September 2001

Edward T. Linenthal

Some years ago, while I was working in the Oklahoma City National Memorial Archives, I came across a poem by a young woman in high school whose father, a Secret Service agent, had been murdered in the Oklahoma City bombing. She writes:

And I discover a dark and lonely place

Where no person should have to go

And I claw my way out as best I can.

I am reminded yet again of these haunting words in the aftermath of the horrors of September 11. So much reminds me of immediate reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing. In both New York City and Oklahoma City, for example, a progressive narrative--"yes, it was horrible, but . . ."--sought to contain the horror of the event by focusing on the courage and sacrifice of rescue and recovery workers, and proclaimed that the shock of mass murder brought communities and the nation together. In both places, part of this defiant response proclaimed the need to rebuild the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the World Trade Center twin towers as an act of protest against terrorism, refusing to allow the act to forever alter either city's skyline. In Oklahoma City, however, this voice soon gave way to the conviction that the site was "sacred ground,"and that to rebuild, to return to business as usual, would be an offense against memory.

These new toxic sites--New York City, the Pentagon, a field in rural Pennsylvania--are not Oklahoma City, of course, and it is too soon to be able to imagine how memorial sensibilities might develop. Within days of the attacks, however, a vibrant and ongoing conversation about memorialization began in New York City. And there is, in my opinion, no "should" in these conversations. Whatever happens at these sites, the process is at least as important as the end result. Who is enfranchised to make decisions about this? Given the scale of death in New York City, is the Oklahoma City process that privileged family member and survivor voices unworkable? Does an unprecedented act of terrorism call for an unprecedented use of some of the most valuable real estate in New York City or will the convictions of the progressive narrative carry the day?

I am reminded of the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing in the mindless use of debased terms from the rhetoric of pop psychology: "closure" and "healing process." Memorial services one month after September 11 sometimes assured listeners that the "mourning" was over, and that it was time to "get back to business." The desire to regulate and make predictable healing by envisioning it as a "process," to proclaim mourning "over" while thousands of bodies are still in the rubble reveals an enduring cultural conviction that one can "get over" any event, that trauma is an "illness" to be "cured," not a reality to be gradually incorporated into what people in Oklahoma City came to understand as a "new normal."

I am also reminded of how the shock of the Oklahoma City bombing engendered a vibrant cultural conversation about American identity. Were we, as was widely assumed in the forty-eight hours following the bombing, an innocent nation in a wicked world, besieged by foreign terrorists? Oklahoma City, so many observed, looked like Beirut, and the imposition of this alien landscape into America's "heartland" was, as so-called terrorism experts told the nation, the fault of Islamic terrorists.

After the arrest of Timothy McVeigh, and the realization that white male Gulf War veterans were responsible, there was an immediate shift in focus. No longer did public rhetoric envision an innocent nation in a wicked world, but a diseased nation with a rich history of violence, mass producing home-grown terrorists.

The events of September 11 have also sparked discussions about American identity. How should we balance our tradition of sacred civil liberties and the desire for security? Will the sudden global consciousness, represented by a military coalition underwritten by a nation that had, been pilloried for its neo-isolationism before September 11, be sustained beyond military imperatives? Can the enduring conviction of American innocence--expressed so clearly by President Bush's questioning of how anyone could hate America because we are so "good"--allow for sober reflection on the wisdom, folly and immense impact of American foreign policy decisions? Will the domestic impact of war transform the nation in ways yet unimaginable? As during past wars, will intolerance of voices seemingly out of step with martial enthusiasm constrict and impoverish civic argument?

Like so many others, I sought refuge in the immediate hours and days after September 11 in the rhetoric of the new and the unprecedented. In some ways, of course, it is an accurate assessment. But we bring to this new and dark landscape predictable habits of mind that seek out historical analogies--be they appropriate or not. We respond through predictable human emotions often at war within each of us and often seek resolution in the military resources of the nation and the recognizable if not altogether comforting myths, rituals and symbols of a nation at war. We even proclaim, though the term is not often used because of fear of its impact in the Muslim world, the necessity of a righteous "crusade" against clear and recognizable forces of evil.

I am not a fan of the term "lessons" of history. The aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing does, however, at least offer some guidelines as we seek to understand the embryonic stages of the "new normal." In addition to the progressive narrative that celebrates heroism and courage and envisions a nation brought together through tragedy, there will soon be a toxic narrative that focuses not on the saga of rescue and recovery and the solace of belonging to an imagined nationwide bereaved community. It will tell of the enduring impact of the event itself on the bodies, minds, and spirits of family members, survivors and rescue and recovery workers. It is a narrative that sadly observes that cities and nations are both brought together and torn apart by such events.

Oklahoma City helps us understand that there is no "old" self to put back together after an act of violence, only a new self to incorporate, the event in one's life, sometimes creatively, sometimes destructively. As for individuals, so for nations. We will all play a role in creating the social tissues of the "new normal" as we "claw [our] way out as best [we] can."

Edward T. Linenthal is the Edward M. Penson Professor of Religion and American Culture at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and the author of The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City In American Memory (Oxford University Press, 2001).