Sunday, September 11, 2011

Remembering 9/11, Again

My thoughts after reading through the 9.11.11 New York Times.

The dominant themes of the paper this morning seem to be: 

1) It’s been ten years. Let’s make this the last big memorial and then let’s move on. Again, it’s been ten years. How long do we have to do this? 

And 2) Beginning September 12, 2001, America started down a path that has brought us unnecessary, prolonged wars in countries that are now more unstable than they were in 2001. In addition, anti-Americanism has flourished in a lot of the Middle East, which, in turn, hasn’t made it a safer world for anyone despite the homeland not being attacked in the last ten years.

And, on this 10th anniversary, I have found, not a new respect for, but a renewed respect for President Bush. This is simply a respect for the President of the United States of America. Being the president on that day and in the following weeks must have been an unimaginable burden and one Bush least expected to bear and one I am sure he will deal with for the rest of his life. As it turned out, I don’t agree with most of Bush’s reactions to 9/11, but I think we can all appreciate his stoicism on that day, his visit to the WTC site, and his speech from the rubble while he had his arm around a NYC Firefighter. 

With my breaks today from reading for grad school, I will be reading more of the Times and special editions of Time and The New Yorker that sit on my coffee table. I won't be watching much TV because the visual remembrance of 9/11 is the same every year because it can offer nothing new. Meaning, the images can't evolve like our reflections on that day can and so I think the best medium to reflect upon this day is, undoubtedly, the written word. 

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