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I approach this column with much trepidation. There are certain subjects that are prone to misinterpretation, and 9/11 is one of them. On Sunday, it will be 10 years since the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Television has addressed the terrible events of that day with numerous specials. Civic events held in remembrance have been ongoing for weeks. Anyone suggesting we approach the anniversary differently is susceptible to the charge of forgetting what happened on that fateful day, but it is time not only to commemorate its anniversary, but also get to heal our nation.
I understand the slogan “Never Forget.” I don’t see any evidence that we have forgotten or will forget soon. We haven’t forgotten what happened Dec. 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Though there are Holocaust deniers, for the most part, we haven’t forgotten the Nazis’ extermination of six million Jews. The issue really isn’t about whether we ever will forget 9/11, but how we best honor the memory of those who died that day.
In the 10 years since terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon, we have killed Osama bin Laden and greatly weakened al-Qaida. There should be no minimizing these accomplishments. But we also have done some incredibly stupid things in the name of 9/11 such as invading Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attack on our country, and getting ourselves bogged down in the longest war in our history in Afghanistan, where we no longer are certain about accomplishing our goals or even what they are. An independent investigating committee last week estimated that the government wasted $60 billion of taxpayer’s money in these wars because of fraudulent and wasteful practices. If you consider the entire Iraq war may not have been necessary and the Afghanistan war has been unduly prolonged, that figure is much higher. More importantly, the toll in human life is the most tragic figure of all.
We often celebrate how the 9/11 events brought us together as a country. Ultimately, those events have driven us apart. Despite President Bush’s and Obama’s pleas, there has been a tendency for Americans to blame on the entire Muslim community. The fact that American Muslims also died in the 9/11 attacks is often glossed over. The controversy over what type of memorial should be built at the site of the attack was a disservice to those who died there. The same can be said for the furor over a Muslim community center being built a few blocks from Ground Zero in the shadow of seedy bars and abandoned buildings.
In the heat of war, we often do horrible things. President Roosevelt interred innocent Japanese-Americans during World War II, disrupting their lives and confiscating their property. Germans who weren’t even alive during Hitler’s reign of terror were wrongly tarred with the same brush as Nazis and their sympathizers. But we eventually repaired those wrongs and all of us have moved on, while still taking care not to forget the events that triggered those feelings. It is time we do the same a decade after 9/11. No more torture. No more imprisonments without being charged with a crime. Whether these things ever had a legitimate purpose is a fit subject for disagreement, but there should be no disagreement about the need to end these practices today. Not today. Not in America.
Understand the point of this column is not to assess blame. There is a time for partisanship, but this is not one of them. There is a time to look back, but there is also a time to look ahead. This is such a time. It is not enough to mourn our dead; we must honor them in a way that rights the wrongs of the past 10 years and ensures they don’t happen again. We are great at commemoration in this country, but not so great at introspection. We can’t allow the legacy of bin Laden to be that he won by splitting us apart, destroying our own traditions and ensuing generations of Americans remember 9/11 as the date in history that was the beginning of the end of our greatness as a nation.
This is not a plea to paper over our political differences. We have some very real differences, but we have always been able to overcome those that act as obstacles toward moving forward as a nation. We did so after the nation was rent asunder by the Civil War; we did so after the unspeakable horrors of World War II and the ensuing witch hunt of the McCarthy era; we did so after Vietnam when violence flared on the campuses and the streets of America and our cities burned; and it is time that we begin to do so on 9/11’s 10th anniversary.
No political party should claim patriotism as its own. The brave heroes of 9/11 who went into those burning buildings did not question whether they were trying to rescue the lives of Republicans or Democrats; Christians, Jews or Muslims; or those of a different color. We rid the world of bin Laden and we have al-Qaida on the run. Now it is time to bind our national wounds and figure out a way to get by this tragedy.
In remembering 9/11, it is also time to remember who we are as a people. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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