September 11 is now etched firmly in the national consciousness of America. It is a day to honor the truly heroic efforts of many on that fateful day, and since, and also a day of mourning for those who were lost.
Somehow, the events of September 11 unalterably changed the way America views herself. In a way, we lost our national innocence, and realized how vulnerable we are. We were suffering from the delusion that somehow the violence and destruction going on in far reaches of the world couldn't reach us. We learned different, and in a big and horrible hurry.
Unlike most other national days of remembrance, there is really nothing to celebrate regarding 9-11. There are acts to honor, yes. And lives to remember. But you can't really celebrate a tragedy. Even though the wounds inflicted on that day are no longer open, they have left a large amount of fresh scar tissue behind. And it's not a clean, surgical scar. But rather a jagged and hideous scar, as though the wound was inflicted by a broken bottle in a dark alley. And every day, when we look in the mirror, there it is. We can cover it up, but it's still there.
America was mugged on September 11. And it's hard to know how to react to a mugging. All you can really do is be thankful you survived, and move on.
We now find ourselves involved in two wars that sprung from that mugging. Though the reasons for the wars have since become increasingly muddied. It's as though we felt in the immediate aftermath that we had to do something, even if it was wrong. And so we lashed out like a wounded beast, at whoever and whatever we could. And yet, the muggers, all these years later, for the most part remain at large.
Innocence is not something you can ever get back. America is young no more. America is middle aged, and as happens when you reach middle age, she has incurred some damage. She's feeling her years. The question that remains is how gracefully she will age. And that is up to us, who live here, to determine.
Bravo, David! One thing that strikes me about the commemoration/remembrance is that it's been nine years, and yet we still don't have a proper memorial for the folks who heroically gave their lives that day. The Flight 93 National Memorial has been stalled (but finally is moving forward), and there is no permanent memorial at Ground Zero--at least none that I'm aware of. Meanwhile, funds that could be used for those purposes are being diverted to fight two unwinnable wars.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, it's not like we "celebrate" December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor Day), or did we ever commemorate it like the remembrances being held today. I think the primary reason is because of the media coverage that day; I remember students crowded around the television set outside my classroom that morning (usually, it just showed a list of campus activities, but that day someone had changed the channel to CNN). Once I got back to my office, I immediately turned on the television, just in time to see the fall of the towers, the plane crash into the Pentagon, and the crash of United Flight 93 outside Shanksville. Needless to say, that night my immigration history class didn't talk about the scheduled topic but discussed how the events of the day would affect immigration (and increased scrutiny for aliens intending to relocate to the United States).
At that time, we did not fathom that what would result would be the creation of a new Cabinet-level agency to handle naturalization and citizenship and other matters of national security, a war on two fronts (or two wars, depending on how you look at it), and spiraling deficits that have led to a sizable portion of our national debt being owned by foreign countries. National intelligence (i.e., our spies) failed us that day, and in a way we've been acting like lost children ever since, because we really don't know who to trust--and, in many ways, overreacted to the situation. Indeed, your description that the nation was mugged that day hits the nail on the head.
Great job David. I agree that we felt that we had to do something. Unfortunatly not sure that it was the right thing but i am not a general. And today is a day of only rememberance not a celebration. 9/11 did bring us down to reality that we are in fact vunderable. I liked your grow old graceful metaphor. I hope she in fact does. Oh and the mugging, it feels that way. Let's hope no raping and pillaging comes next. Oh yeah, that was the oil spill. To late. I agree with Karen that our country is struggling to recover ever since that day.
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