Photo Credit: Eddie Codel

The triumph of terrorism: terrorphobia has pervaded American society for the last 10 years.

Though terrorists attacked our country a decade ago, the image of the Twin Towers collapsing in flames has left a scar on our national psyche. We remember 9/11, as we should, for the 3,000 men and women who lost their lives that day; but all too often, this remembrance instills in us a fear that dishonors these Americans’ memory.

For a relatively new phenomenon, terrorphobia seems strikingly familiar. Our nation is no stranger to hysteria; perhaps the déjà vu owes to our time’s parallel with the McCarthy Era. As in the post-World War II Red Scare, the American people have accepted and internalized a threat and decided that no measure is too costly, no risk too small, to protect ourselves from the looming peril.

In reality, the odds of an attack are as slim as the odds of Communist infiltration in the 1950s. Outside war zones, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups kill an average of 300 civilians worldwide – a tally that falls under the annual number of bathtub drownings in the US. Still, Americans dismiss their own statistical safety, instead choosing to wallow in what critics like to call a false sense of insecurity.

This unwarranted fear wastes time and energy and diverts government funds. Yet its harm goes deeper than that.

Every second we spend dreading these events, the perpetrators win.

Terrorists get their way when we steer clear of planes in favor of more-dangerous cars. They get their way when we use our security as an excuse to discriminate. And they get their way when our government tramples on our individual freedoms in the name of defending us against greatly-inflated homeland threats.

The national fear, which has infected public and foreign policy alike, shows the killers of al-Qaeda that their influence is alive and well in America: they took over our planes 10 years ago, and now they are taking over our minds.

Because terrorphobia is, like any fear, consuming. It enters our thoughts and it does not leave. It torments us and keeps us up at night. It inhibits us, and restrains us from reaching our potential.

Of course, this psychological destruction fulfills terrorists’ ultimate desire. They want us to panic; they want us to be scared. Above all else, they lust after the power to intimidate.

But the men and women of 9/11 refused to grant their killers that power. The passengers of Flight 93, storming their plane’s cockpit in an attempt to retake control from the hijackers, demonstrated their brave defiance in the most hellish of circumstances – and, in doing so, “they showed us what makes Americans different,” as Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania said at an anniversary commemoration.  “We refuse to be victims. We refuse to settle for the term ‘survivor.’ Captivity will not suit us.”

If the everyday Americans on that flight could say no to captivity, we can too.

In order to truly honor the 3,000 men and women who died, we can refuse to let our anxieties hold us prisoner. We can reject that irrational dread that preys on our minds; and we can cast aside those thoughts that too often threaten to paralyze us in fear.