Captain Ed gets a second link from me today. The first was because of stout agreement. This second one [1], not so much.
It’s doubtful that any newspaper outside of New York City could raise this question, but the Times asks [2] whether we should set aside the anniversaries of 9/11 as a collective mourning date for the nation. How long should the remembrances dominate the day, and how many years should the city and nation conduct the familiar ceremonies of grief?
Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.”I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”
Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.
But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.
“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”
It’s a difficult question, one framed responsibly and thoughtfully by N. R. Kleinfield. Some anniversaries stay in the national consciousness for decades, such as December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, and June 6th, D-Day. Others tend to fade with time; as Kleinfield points out, no one recalls the date of the sinking of the Maine (February 15th) or the Kent State Massacre (May 4th). Is six years too soon to ask that the official grieving come to an end?
In this case, no, I don’t think so. Ed goes on…
Rick Moran [3] has a long and thoughtful post on this question:
But 9/11 stands alone as a date that tears at our souls and requires us to re-examine uncomfortable truths. We are at war. Remembering or not remembering 9/11 won’t change that fact nor will denying the reality of that statement make it less true. The reason is simple. It takes two sides to make war. And our enemies will find ways to remind us that our denial is silly, stupid, and self defeating as often and as painfully as we let them.It may be a different kind of war but war it is and pushing the proximate cause of the conflict into the recesses of our memory because remembering is too painful, or too much a bother, or gives political advantage to one side or another is simply putting off the day of reckoning when those in denial will be forced once again to look 9/11 full in the face and realize the overwhelming truth that America is in danger. And if we are vouchsafed the time to allow the emotional scars of 9/11 to heal, we should also use that time to prepare for the next onslaught while doing everything in our power to prevent it.
I’ll disagree with Rick on his views about partisanship playing a role in attempting to tamp down the outrage over 9/11, and therefore the imperative of continuous memorialization. The questions over how long to continue the official grieving have more to do with the blessing and curse of American culture, partly as seen through the recitation of other anniversaries that faded away almost immediately. We are not a culture that tends to focus on the past. For better and worse, each generation discounts the past and focuses on the future, and part of that dynamic is letting go of anniversaries such as the firing on Fort Sumter, the Maine, and the sinking of the Lusitania.
However, 9/11 still has as much relevance to this generation as it did six years ago. The reminders of the deaths of thousands of Americans still have meaning as long as the same conditions that allowed them continue to exist today.
I’ll stoutly disagree with Ed, on this one. He is quite correct, when he suggests that it is vital for us to keep that memory alive, so long as the job is unfinished. However, he’s got it wrong as far as what’s driving all of this. The partisan politics are in the largest degree, what is driving these questions. It’s a question of which political party, and which political line of thinking, prevails, because so much of these activities bear on our national consciousness… Which party gets to choose what our national identity is, or will be. Allow me to explain this point by drawing your attention to my comments of last week in one of the Nightly Rambles [4],, as regards Princess Dianna, and the continuous memorials surrounding her.
In that situation, I didn’t say to the time , but I was a little uncomfortable with Dalrymple, [5]though not so much with Billy Beck. [6] The reason, there, has to do with national identity. There is an awful lot of national identity wrapped up in the royals. On that basis, the kind of spectacle that has been going on over there this past week as regards the anniversary of her death is far more understandable, than it is here in America. it was the British national identity that was delivered a blow that day, not Americas. Thus my objection to the wall to wall coverage that the mainstream media put up on the subject week.
The reverse side of that coin, is that the attacks an America, on 9/11 were an attack on not only the people of America, and her institutions, but her NATIONAL IDENTITY. Don’t think for a minute, that the targets chosen by the terrorists on that day were idle ones. It’s not just the people that died that we’re memorializing, we are memorializing them also, and perhaps more importantly, why they died.
I submit that the very reason the left is trying to tamp down the memorializing of 9/11 is that they’re about trying to prevent the recognition of the damage done to the American soul on that day. To acknowledge it, means that the attack must be taken seriously, and provides only one avenue of redress to the attackers. The left does not like the answer that line of thinking gives us, so they try to ignore the damage done on that day. And, as a natural extension of that, they tried to get the rest of us to ignore it as well.
Ironically, it is Ed himself who backs this line of thought:
. When we have defeated the jihadists and ended that threat, then we can allow 9/11 to slip slowly from our collective consciousness, but not until then. In fact, I’d argue that we have already watered it down too much, by shelving the footage of the attacks, of the people that plunged to their deaths before the collapse of the towers, and of the heroic final moments of United 93.
At this point, remembrance is crucial. We cannot forget while the job is left incomplete.
I submit that this is precisely what the left is about; leaving the job incomplete. The left is invested in our defeat… it is vital for them and their political survival that we fail in Iraq. The only way they can get away with that, is if our remembrance goes away.
Trust me, dear reader, when I tell you that’s precisely what they’re hitting the prayer mats for every single evening… They want us to forget this scene to the left.
So, it still comes down to the question “Have You Forgotten ? “