9/11 @ 24
Memories are fading, as they are wont to do.
General Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sent out a message across the Defense Department this afternoon:
24 years ago today, terrorists attacked our nation. That morning, and in the days, months, and years that followed, you each answered the call to service without hesitation.
The courage of our first responders, teammates who ran into the Pentagon to help others, and the heroic passengers of Flight 93 carried us through times of fear and uncertainty, reminding us that America’s strength lies in those willing to serve and sacrifice for others. America fought back within minutes of the attack. Every sacrifice they made that day and that you’ve made has safeguarded the promise of a safer tomorrow.
May we always remember the 2,977 Americans that perished on September 11th and the nearly 7,000 killed and 60,000 wounded in combat since then.
On this anniversary of a horrible day for our nation, I ask you to take a moment today to remember. Remember their names and I thank you and your families for your continued service and devotion to our nation.
There’s also a video with a similar message.
My late co-blogger, Doug Mataconis, and I have written a lot of posts reflecting on 9/11 anniversaries over the years:
- “9/11 Convention,” James Joyner, 2004
- “Remembering 911,” James Joyner, 2005
- “Fifth Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks,” James Joyner, 2006
- “Remembering 9/11 Without Obsessing Over It,” Doug Mataconis, 2007
- “Have We Forgotten 9/11?” James Joyner, 2008
- “Commemorating Anniversaries,” James Joyner, 2009
- “December 7, 1951 v. September 11, 2011,” Doug Mataconis, 2011 (10th anniversary)
- “A Decade of Lost Freedom,” Doug Mataconis, 2011
- “No Football On 9/11?” Doug Mataconis, 2011
- “9/11’s Legacy Of Fear,” Doug Mataconis, 2012
- “The Lost National ‘Unity’ Of September 11th,” Doug Mataconis, 2016
- “9/11 And America’s Forever War,” Doug Mataconis, 2018
- “9/11/01, Eighteen Years Later,” Doug Mataconis, 2019
- “9/11 at 20,” James Joyner, 2021
- “9/11 at 22“, James Joyner, 2023
A constant theme throughout was that, as time went on, we’d soon start forgetting, never mind the Never Forget banners. Indeed, the first of those posts—20 years ago now!—concluded:
[I]t’s unlikely that there will be all that much coverage of the 9/11 anniversary, anyway. The first one was an event. The second one, not so much. Once the immediacy of an event is over, commemorations fade. The 5th, 10th, 20th, and 25th anniversaries of major events get some nostalgic coverage. Three isn’t a particularly celebrated number. My guess is the attention will be focused on the Major League penant races and the start of football season, not 9/11.
My two children were born roughly seven and ten years after the attacks. My two oldest stepchildren were still in diapers, while the youngest was born two years after. None, therefore, have any personal recollection. Indeed, plenty of veterans of the Global War in Terror, including the Afghanistan War, were born after the attacks or otherwise have no memory of it.
Nobody remembers the Maine or the Alamo anymore. While the Pearl Harbor attacks may live in infamy, relatively few Americans will have personal memories when we commemorate the 84th anniversary in a couple of months.
Indeed, almost an identical span separated Pearl Harbor and my birth as 9/11 and today.
Caine’s rightly urges, “May we always remember the 2,977 Americans that perished on September 11th and the nearly 7,000 killed and 60,000 wounded in combat since then.”
But the numbers are sobering: our response to the attacks cost us two-and-a-third times more American dead than the attacks themselves. I absolutely supported going into Afghanistan and otherwise wreaking vengeance on Al Qaeda and the Taliban for their parts in the attack. But the mission morphed into something more elusive and costly.
It’s about time we forget it, honestly we’ll past time. For decades country has been using 9/11 either directly or obliquely to justify a wide assortment of terrible decisions destabilizing the Middle East. And our right wing has been using the myth of 9/11 (savage mooslims attacking America because they hate our freedom!) to propagate white supremacy and both sides have used it to support creeping fascism at home with the Patriot Act.
Toppling governments with the assumption that it will somehow turn out fine when we are greeted as liberators was, in retrospect, a terrible idea. And at the time, many thought it was a terrible idea. But we can’t change the past, just lessons we learn from it, and the future.
So, let it go. Memory hole it like we do with right wing violence — violence that was and remains a far greater existential threat to our country. We don’t remember the Oklahoma City bombing as a cultural milestone after all.
Also, the World Trade Center was ugly. Two big boxes dominating the skyline, devoid of any artistry or character. It never looked better than when it was wreckage — the image of the twisted facade standing a couple stories high among the rubble was genuinely moving.
Let’s just tell the next generation that it was caused by an accident while filming The Towering Inferno II: The Twin Towering Infernos. We tell enough other lies about our history, what’s one more?
(I would also accept a meet cute movie about a firefighter and a paramedic discovering true love on the stairway of one of the towers— who are this generation’s Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan?)
And let’s kill the myths that Rudy Giuliani was “America’s Mayor.” He was that weird guy who inspired a police riot because the previous mayor was black and then went on to the Trump administration. History doesn’t repeat, but it sure does rhyme. Just destroy the myths he built up, and let him fade into obscurity*. Also, he had a podcast where he ranted about people who own ferrets have a mental disease because they love weasels. That and the Four Seasons should be his legacy.
——
*: Better than he deserves. In a real accounting of 9/11, we would be talking about him overruling a decision to put the emergency coordination center in Brooklyn, and instead put it in the World Trade Center, which had already been the target of terrorism once before. And the failure to replace the radios. God, that man is a pustule.
https://outsidethebeltway.com/9-11-at-22/#comment-2825262
Two years later… It still sucks.
@EddieInCA: National tragedies fade in a way personal ones don’t. One of my grad school professors, John Oneal, lost a brother in the towers. The 2,977 who lost their lives that day were survived by maybe 50,000 people who suffered a deep, personal loss. That’s such a very different thing than the shock those experiencing it all on TV suffered.
@EddieInCA: 29 years old…
Words fail.
After all this time I am still not sure why we went and invaded Iraq.
Steve
Shout out the South Bronx where my mom hails from
Right next to High Bridge across from Harlem
To the Grand Concourse where my mom and dad met
Before they moved on down to the Upper West
I see you’re still strong after all that’s gone on
Life long we dedicate this song
Just a little something to show some respect
To the city that blends and mends and tests
Since 9/11, we’re still livin’
And lovin’, life we’ve been given
Ain’t nothing gonna’ take that away from us
Were lookin’ pretty and gritty cause in the city we trust
Dear New York, I know a lot has changed
2 towers down, but you’re still in the game
Home to the many, rejecting no one
Accepting peoples of all places, wherever they’re from
Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, and Staten
From the Battery to the top of Manhattan
Asian, Middle-Eastern, and Latin
Black, White, New York you make it happen
@steve222:
Because frightened powers make terrible decisions.
A lot has to do with how easy and cheap the neocons thought establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be. You may want to read Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power by Fred Kaplan.
@James Joyner:
That sounds about right. I’d add that perhaps 100’s of thousands more were left with the personal impact of being a friend or relative of a someone who was profoundly affected, such as the first responders and the 50,000 or so who worked in the World Trade Center complex but survived that day. Some large number of people are also a couple of degrees separated from someone who was lost in the attacks. I have both a relative who was fortunately not in their WTC office when the planes hit and a colleague at the time who lost a relative on one of the flights.