Do you pause on December 7th to remember Pearl Harbor Day? I don’t. And that’s my ambition for 9/11, too. I feel like everytime we memorialize the day, the terrorists win all over again. It was an attack on my city and my people. My neighbors died. My co-workers’ kin died. I still take those attacks very personally. But I want the day back. You can’t wash all of Bush and Guiliani’s ball-sweat off the day. They humped it for so long that it became a Republican political slogan. I’m done with it. And the last thing I want is to turn it into some permanent national day of service. Screw that. Put the flags at half-mast. Let people gather at the crash sites. And move the hell on.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Amen…
And Amen!
Of course, it is too late.
I dunno, BooMan, how old were you when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and you heard about it on the radio? My parents certainly paused every December 7th and mentioned the day that changed their lives! My father promptly enlisted and my mother ended up, miserable and alone, on a military base in Texas. It still got mentioned in the media every year when I was a child. Their generation is dead and dying but some people do still hold memorial services for that event.
As a nation we weren’t mobilized to war; we were told to go shopping! But, we shared in the shock, horror and, yes, terror of 9/11 in ways our parents and grandparents didn’t have to endure on 12/7. And, afterwards, we had cause to feel anger towards our own government in a way they never did.
I can’t wake up on September 11th and not give a fuck! The emotions of that day are still with me and the fear in the weeks after and the outrage that built up until I was screaming at my tv during the opening “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq.
So, okay, they’re trying to “heal” the country and I resent it, too. Instead of “National Service Day,” it ought to be “We Hate Cheney Day… and his little bitch, Bush, too!” As long as people are still dying because of 9/11, we can not move the hell on!
It’s not that I don’t give a fuck. It’s that I don’t want my grief politicized, marketed, or made into some rote obligation.
Too late! That already happened — the product was “War on Terror”(TM). This “National Service” product doesn’t kill people, at least. The brand slogan is “Let’s Help Others” instead of “Let’s Kill Muslims.” That’s an improvement.
Like I said, I share your resentment. I hate today being any kind of product at all.
Strongly agree with that.
Or worse, used as a chance to reinforce a narrative lacking in the appropriate detail.
Bob Parry over at ConsortiumNews.com has a terrific piece on the failures that enabled 9/11. This is the best, sanest piece on 9/11 I’ve read yet:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/091109.html
I’ve been thinking the exact same thing all morning – and steering clear of TV news so I don’t have to watch the uninterrupted video coverage again…
Same here– save only to flip through photos from the day.
I do the same on Dec. 7, June 6, VE day, VJ day, etc….I’m sentimental that way.
I whole-heartedly agree with Booman, though….Tragedy should never be politicised or marketed, as that action usually ends up to the benefit of a few, excluding many.
every time the american people have been asked to remember, and rally behind, such an event it’s been used as a cudgel to spur peoples blood lust and used as a casus belli for further imperialistic ventures…examples that immediately come to mind are:
remember the alamo = the mexican american war
remember the maine = the spanish american war
remember 9.11 = the irag and afghanistan wars.
additionally, l think trying to compare 9.11 with pearl harbour is a false equivalency. pearl harbour was an aggression by one state against another…ergo, an act of war; although it was used as a casus foederis for entering the war with germany.
9.11 was a terrorist act perpetuated by a small conspiracy…ergo, a criminal act….and should have been treated as such.
that it was, and continues to be, used as justification…hyped with an almost pseudo-religious, madison avenue fervor… for all the evils it spawned is a profound statement about the gullibility, hubris, and cravenness that much of american society now represents.
Hitler declared war on us after 12/7.
That’s exactly what I think, but I never quite realized it in so many words until you said it. Amen.
Pearl Harbor was an act of war that brought the US into a horrific conflict where we (well, some of us) grew out of our adolescence as a nation. For all its horror we can look back on that war as a time our country united not only to defend ourselves but to stand with free nations against a foe bent on their ruin. There were abuses and deceptions involved, but in the end we had much to be proud of in accomplishing a great victory against a monstrous enemy despite daunting odds.
Sept 11 was a criminal act that was seized upon to justify an act of war. Our government’s response left us nothing to be proud about. History will see it as a time the nation split apart after a brief moment of national mourning only to suffer a legacy of repression, corruption, and imperialism. It left us deep lessons in the selfless heroism of individual Americans in and out of the military, but gave us nothing to be proud of as a nation. It gave us only one dispiriting moral: placing the stupid, the corrupt, and the evil in high office is a joke that turns tragic when things go bad.
Let’s pause to quietly remember the heroes and victims of the terrible crime of September 11. Let’s further honor their memories by refusing to buy into the pomposity and gross marketing that will be offered as a substitute for reflection.
Very good synopsis of what is the reality of the day, Sept 11.
I was just thinking something very similar this morning. The republican party made it very clear that they were the ones who owned 9/11. The rest of us were told to just keep our not-holy-enough hands off. A day that could have been a symbol of national unity was turned into a cudgel for partisan division. I find the treacly sentimentality that has grown up around 9/11 extremely off-putting and false.
i actually DO pause to remember pearl harbor day. My fifth grade teacher survived the attacks, and I always think of him. Also, a large number of my friends from the bluegrass and old-time community are veterans. i don’t think the “terorists win again” anymore than i think the japanese empire wins when people remember pearl harbor, or that the confederate states win when we celebrate memorial day.
I’m sorry that you feel the way you do, but hey, thanks for the traffic!
I don’t think that we should let Pearl Harbor Day be forgotten. It’s important on a grand scale. History has to be taught in schools without a bunch of beliefs getting in the way.
We lose our sense of being a nation when sacrifice is dismissed as old news.
I do think about Pearl Harbor every Dec.7th.
9/11 is different. A crime was committed. The reaction by Bush was shameful.
Cheney was ordering shoot downs, how crazy was that?
The wars have demeaned our country.
In Iraq, we are now doing a lot better and will get out.
Afghanistan is harder. I don’t see Obama wanting to keep the US there very long. They can’t say, oh, at 5 o’clock on Tuesday, we are leaving.
The president has to have to have enough information about the situation to decide what to do.
Listen for statements by Holbrook. He is really good and there have been changes.
It’s about training security forces and trying to clean up the awful mess Bush left behind.
9/11 reminds me of our troops in Afghanistan. Iraq had no connection to the tragedy.
The wall to wall coverage needs to stop. A moment of silence is enough.
…adding that in no way do i encourage having september 11 “politicized, marketed, or made into some rote obligation.”
I don’t know how you read that into my piece.
A national day of service is rote obligation.
no it’s not. that would be a “mandatory day of service”.
mlk day is also a national day of service. no one is obligated to do anything though.
i realize that the wingers seem to think memorializing 9/11 is their domain, and that they used the carnage to get their war on. And I can understand your feeling that it’s better to let it go.
I prefer not to, and feel comfortable arguing in favor of something better than the cries for vengeance that are still echoing from those troglodytes. rather than let them have their say every year, and god knows they’ll wave the bloody flag every fuckin’ time the day rolles around, I would rather have something that speaks to the better part of our national whatever-the-fuck-it-is.
so we’re going to disagree on this one.
Yes, I do.
I agree 9/11 need not be mourned but remembered. At this point in time it seems it should be a private ceremony for those who died and their family members. Erect a monument, say your prayers, remember but it is better not live in the past but to look forward for a better future.
Because in the end 9/11 is a failure. The day we found out in a National emergency the Bush Admin. was holding their wanker all day and days before 9/11. When the Attorney General of the U.S. would not take a public airline because of etc…..etc…
http://www.wanttoknow.info/9-11cover-up10pg
The speed with which the events of September 11, 2001 became ‘911’ still astounds me.
In NYC we were confronted with actual, practical concerns — travel restricted, checkpoints established, run-of-the-mill paranoia — while simultaneously experiencing the manufacture of a politically expedient narrative via the media feedback loop. Bizarre to see individuals responding sanely to actual, first-person events, yet losing it to the relentless drumbeat hype.
Then we were told we’d been ‘brought to our knees’. Because as a city we’d been ‘brought to our knees’, we had been saved by a fearless & competent leader. Saved by a fearless & competent government. Like children, protected forever.
All of which was news to me — coming too late upon actual experience to be believed.
I wanted to forget 911 by the end of the same goddamn day.
By the end of that day, the actuality of events & our individual direct experience, if any, apart of that communal media experience, was lost to us completely & forever; a personal understanding of the day’s events was forever nullified. So, 911 as a brand is what we have left to recall & honor.
Unfortunately, some of us don’t honor fantasies appropriately.
Btw – twice this week, low-flying planes made a pass through Downtown Los Angeles on a route no commercial airline takes. Both were accompanied by helicopter escort.
The first two were bi-wing planes, but they were flying very low and very quiet – bizarre in itself.
But today, some long skinny planes of a type I’d never seen before flew through with what looked like missiles strapped on above them. These appeared to be a strange sort of helicopter. Again – it was a pair, accompanied by a train of helicopters. Bizarre. What the hell is going on here?
It’s a tragic happening and the world mourns for it lets remember the people who died on 9/11 tragedy.
9/11 will never be forgotten. Sadly thousands of soldiers have lost their lives or have been wounded since that tragic event. For many years forward the impact of 9/11 will be felt by the military families that must cope with the effects of war and Bush’s major military blunders. And is Bin Laden caught yet? No. The wars are pointless as the main target was allowed to elude the USA and he now will live his last days in hiding – kind of like Dick Cheney’s entire Vice Presidency.
I am glad that I am not living in the US because this terrible accident is hard to forget even if while I live other side of ocean.