Our lives stopped when the World Trade Center crumbled and the Pentagon burned. With eyes glued to CNN, our nation watched the replay of New York City and Washington, D.C., suffering some of the harshest attacks of our time. We waited for the next horror to come and stood united behind our President, who only days before suffered a strikingly low approval rating. Our legislators suddenly became bipartisan as they held hands and sang “God Bless America” on Capitol Hill. We quickly went from being an isolated consumer-happy society to a somber and cautious world participant.

However, after one year, we no longer check our mail for white powder or agree on every foreign policy. Our worries have shifted from terrorist attacks to who will win “American Idol.” As we carry on with our commercial lives and once again forget that there is a world outside of the United States, Sept. 11 seems to be a distant memory. I don’t think this transition back to normalcy is necessarily a bad thing. After all, the best way to cope with a tragedy is to try to attain a sense of routine. Recovering from Sept. 11 was the only way in which we could address the issues that caused the attacks in the first place.

The problem is that we’re not addressing the causes that led to the attacks. We have gone back to our day-to-day lives with beaming smiles, but in doing so we have not once questioned whether there is something wrong with the way we live in the United States. Ten months ago we were all following the war in Afghanistan, but now once again we are oblivious to the role that the Unites States is taking in the Middle East. Most of us don’t even know why our country is potentially going to overthrow the government in Iraq, and most of us don’t seem to care. It is this indifference, and these isolated lifestyles, that are responsible for a lot of the hatred towards the United States.

I do think it’s great that we’re all trying to get back to our routine lives. But we can’t forget that the tragedy of Sept. 11 happened for a reason. There is animosity towards our country, and to work against this animosity we must be active participants in the global community.

We must know what’s going on in this world and know how we are being represented by our government. Furthermore, we have to be willing to question our lifestyles and ask ourselves why our country is so hated.

I don’t think the U.S. is to blame for every evil in the world and I’m not asking anybody to turn against our country. But the truth is we are far from perfect and in order to protect ourselves we must acknowledge our flaws and try to make changes that benefit the global community. This requires us to pull away from our isolated routines and acknowledge global events, not just when they affect us but when they affect our world.

Emily Ehrhart is a sophomore studying English and political science.