Text size:

Opinion: The first World Trade Center victims: Honor them

By Joseph Daniels | Guest columnist

February 26, 2008

Fifteen years ago today, at 12:18pm, Islamic terrorists detonated 1,500 pounds of explosives in a rental van in the parking garage of the World Trade Center, blasting a crater five stories deep and half-a-football-field wide. The terrorists fled after lighting the bomb's fuse, killing six people, including a pregnant woman, and injuring one thousand others.

The families of the victims will never forget what happened on February 26, 1993, but this date becomes increasingly forgotten as time passes. Should it?

1993 didn't capture the same public horror as 9/11 -- partially because the number of fatalities and the devastation were not on the same staggering scale. However, the intentions of those who committed the 1993 bombing were the same as those who would strike eight years later to kill as many innocent Americans as possible. To the families and friends of the murdered, the loss of life was no less tragic.

The phrase "the post-9/11 world" has become commonplace a way of referring to the impact that the attack has had on the way we live and view the world. While there is no doubt that 9/11 was a seminal point in history, it's essential that we recognize that day as a chapter in an ongoing story; Islamic terrorism existed well before then and continues well beyond.

9/11 must be viewed in the context of many other dates in addition to February 26, 1993. These dates include June 25, 1998; March 11, 2004; and July 7, 2005, when other Al-Qaeda perpetrated or linked attacks took place. The innocent people who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, rode the train in Madrid or boarded a bus in London were, like the victims of 1993 and 2001, simply leading everyday lives.

Bearing witness to the attacks of 1993 and 2001 and their connection to events around the world is to choose knowledge over ignorance and fear. Isolating or disregarding these indefensible crimes minimizes our understanding of the world and heightens our risk within it.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum will imbue our visitors with the essential truth that the victims of the attacks could have been any one of us. In doing so we hope to reinforce the universal human connections that make it harder for attacks like these to happen again.

By remembering the victims, perhaps particularly when we didn't personally know them, we eclipse the terrorists who sought to dehumanize the innocent and use murder as a weapon for a destructive ideology. In contrast to the fear and division which the terrorists sought to achieve, we show our deep respect for individual life that is at the core of our free society.

Today as we go about our everyday lives -- riding the subway, taking the bus, or having lunch with a co-worker, please take a moment to remember those who were simply going about their everyday lives when they were taken from us in 1993 - -- John DiGiovanni, Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen A. Knapp, William Macko, Wilfredo Mercado, and Monica Rodriguez Smith. By doing so, "we protest," as memorial scholar Ed Linenthal has said, "against the anonymity of mass death in our time." Let's ensure their memory is preserved with purpose.

"Joseph Daniels is the president of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center