Dan

Calabrese

Read Dan's bio and previous columns here

September 13, 2007

Stop Commemorating 9/11

Two days removed from the latest 9/11 anniversary commemorations, I wonder if it’s too much to ask that this anniversary be the last.

Are we going to do this every year forever?

America loves anniversaries, and the news media find it easier to write stories about them than to report what’s happening, say, now. But the somber, sad, reverent ceremonies every year are not helping America win this battle. We don’t need any more moments of silence or roll calls of the dead. We’ve done it every year for five years now.

Enough already.

There are those who would like to see America forget 9/11 altogether, because the wellspring of patriotism and national resolve it inspired gives these folks the heebie jeebies. That’s not where I’m coming from at all. I think we’ve already lost our sense of what happened that day to an alarming degree, and the somber, annual ceremonies are likely exacerbating the problem.

By staging these events every September 11, we are elevating the terrorists’ accomplishment far beyond what it deserves, and far beyond that which serves our national interests.

Yes, they hit us hard that day. Yes, we lost a lot of people. Yes, it awakened us out of a national slumber that had seen us turn a blind eye to the real dangers of radical Islamic terrorism. For most Americans, barring some horrific occurrence affecting family and friends, it will likely be the most horrible day of their lives.

Fine. Somber ceremonies marking anniversaries are the wrong way to remember this. There is no value in standing around being sad.

For one thing, we have essentially conceded to the terrorists a day out of our calendar every year. Every September 11 becomes about them. It’s about what they did. Al Qaeda releases a video on or around September 11 every year – and that’s no surprise. It was their big moment of glory. You know the 40-year-old, former high school quarterback who still sits around the small-town tavern talking about his touchdown pass in the 1983 championship game? He’s a janitor now, but he’s got the story in his hip pocket whenever he can find someone to listen.

That’s Al Qaeda. “Did we ever tell you about the day we brought down the Great Satan’s massive financial towers and crippled the headquarters of its war machine? It started when we got past security . . . ”

Of course they’re going to talk about it. Our focus should not be on what they did to us, but on what we have done to them, and still need to do far more of. If we really must do the anniversary thing, let’s mark the day the Taliban fell, or the day we captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or the day Saddam fell, or the day Khadafy gave up his weapons, or the day we killed Zarqawi, or the day we convicted Jose Padilla, or the day we opened Guantanamo . . .

We do not lack for opportunities to remind ourselves of 9/11. We should do so every time we win a battle, capture or kill a terrorist or glean useful intelligence from a wiretap. What did we accomplish today? Excellent. Now roll that video of the towers collapsing again, so everyone remembers why we need to be doing this in the first place.

That way, we remember 9/11 on our terms, not on the terms of the bastards who started this war in the first place.

September 11, 2001 was a pivotal day in our nation’s history. But it’s worth remembering that we did not attack Afghanistan until nearly a month later, as President Bush vowed that our action would occur at the hour of our choosing, not the enemy’s.

Correct. The enemy chose to make September 11 an important day. We should choose to restore it to ordinary status, and recall their actions in the context of our campaign to destroy them. Next September 11, let’s just have a normal day. And instead of remembering 9/11 by letting them make us cry, let’s remember it while we create for the enemy its own days that will live in infamy.

Lots of them.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # DC109.  Request permission to publish here.