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Years Later 10 Back?


The Pentagon memorial has 184 benches, one for each of the victims who perished there on 9/11.


9/11 weakened America. And such attitudes “may not be temporary,” says Stengel.


“Historically, we have been the great optimistic nation,” he says. Since 9/11, “we’re moving from a kind adolescence as a nation to more maturity, where we are looking at things in a more realistic light.” A plurality of Americans, 41 percent, say 9/11 was the defi ning moment of the past decade. It’s a long drop to second place, where 7 percent say the election of Barack Obama was the most important event; only 5 percent say it was the economic downturn.


Not even the death of Osama bin Laden improved attitudes, much. A majority of those polled think the killing of the al-Qaida leader put the country at greater risk for more ter- ror attacks. Only 2 in 5 said they felt some sense of closure as a result of his assassination, while 80 percent believe there will be a major terrorist attack in the next decade.


So who do Americans blame for


our dark post-9/11 malaise? Those polled were about evenly split be tween George W. Bush (23 percent) and Barack Obama (20 percent). Only 7 percent blame the terrorists.


“The political system is on the front lines of blame for the decade of decline for Americans. No question about that,” says Mark Penn, CEO of PR fi rm Burson-Marsteller and vice chairman of Penn Schoen Berland, which conducted the poll for Time and AIF. “Americans want their lead- ers to focus on domestic issues. “The voters are saying the biggest threat to our stability is if we don’t get our internal fi scal and political house in order,” Penn says. “What are the biggest threats? National debt, high government spending, budget defi - cit, rising health care costs, weaken- ing U.S. dollar. Pretty strong list.” The poll does reveal interesting perceptions about who lost the most as a result of the post-9/11 decline. Most felt that quality of life for work- ing- and middle-class Americans along with the elderly had been hurt the most. So what can America’s leaders do to help reverse the per- ceived post-9/11 decline?


“I think the country is really cry- ing out for a national narrative that shows how we go from this decade of decline towards a future that is bright but realistic. And that’s a hard thing to accomplish,” says Donald Baer, a former senior adviser to President


Bill Clinton and a vice chairman at Burson-Marsteller who contributed to the Time/AIF project. There have been some bright spots in the years since 9/11, of course. “We’ve seen tremendous progress in technology,” says Baer. “We’ve seen the rise of democracy in many places. Medical advances are changing the quality of life for people everywhere.” Offi cials had feared a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the wake of 9/11. But according to the FBI, after a brief spike in incidents in late 2001, the number of anti-Islam attacks fell back down to previous levels, on par with crimes against Catholics and other Christians. The


irman at ntributed ereer


r r ere have events of 9/11 were also


expected to drive more people toward organized religion. And they did — for a while. But the in decade since, church attendance, which spiked in 2002, has fallen back to pre-9/11 levels, according to the Barna Group, a research fi rm specializing in reli- gious issues.


In many ways, the more realisti- cally optimistic found their own way after 9/11. Carmen Nobel counts her- self in that camp. On Sept. 11, 2001, she landed in Atlanta and fi rst real- ized something was wrong when she saw a crowd gathered beneath the TV monitors in an airport bar. She looked up to see the fi rst tower fall. A pilot standing next to her said “this is war.” Nobel realized she was crying. The world had changed. But did the events of 9/11 change her? “Today, I’m an editor at Harvard Business School. I write about orga- nizational behavior studies,” she says. “I think that everything is a result of everything. Maybe 9/11 plant- ed the seed in my head that I’d rather be writing about humanity than technology.”


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