Written by, Joshua Patton

 

Like most of the country, I experienced the attacks on September 11, 2001 on television.  At the time, I knew no one who had been at the towers or at the Pentagon and the only real fear was the report that a plane crashed just outside of my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.  As the aftermath of the attacks unfolded for me on television, in a haze of booze and smoke, I remember thinking that this was my generation’s “JFK moment” – the moment we would all remember vividly where we were when we heard it happened and what we did afterwards.  Later, I thought that this was well above the assassination of a president, that this would have a lasting effect on the world.  I was half right.

 

America is now embroiled in two wars borne from the ashes of New York, D.C., and Shanksville.  In the weeks that followed the attacks, the entire world rushed to show their love for America.  The Flag waved in countries across the globe and it was a unique moment in which America could have firmly taken hold of the world with a message of hope and survival.  Only that didn’t happen.  Now, we find ourselves at the brink of disaster, our reputation as a nation in tatters.

 

America is a nation of marketing and the slogan that has become attached to these attacks is “Never Forget.”  It is simple and to the point, but perhaps it is too broad of a concept for the American public.  We will never forget what happened, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than that we have a decent memory.  The attack on Pearl Harbor is still memorialized on the day it happened some 63 years later.  Yet, Hitler and Hirohito were defeated and that chapter ended.  The memory persists, but the sting has faded.  With 9/11, the sting is still there, but unlike that nation that sprung back from the Pearl Harbor attacks to win the Big One, we’ve failed to bounce back from this attack.

 

Ten years after they were knocked down, Ground Zero still remains a construction site.  For far too long it was a vacant lot.  How nice it would have been to have memorialized the tenth anniversary of the attacks in front of a completed set of skyscrapers?  Also, those first responders in New York and those who came from across the country to clean up the rubble are dying.  They have diseases that almost certainly came from their work at Ground Zero and no one is willing to pay for it.  I understand that we are in a period of fiscal turmoil as a country.  Yet, these men and women came – on their own as volunteers mostly – and were there for America when she needed them most.  The least we can do as a country is to help them if they are dying – whether the disease came from Ground Zero or not.

 

The memorial spirit of 9/11 is disingenuous.  It has become a sad holiday, in which people mourn and reminisce, but throughout the rest of the year we forget.  We forget that in the days following 9/11 we cared little for partisanship or ideological differences.  We forget that beyond our borders there are so many who are opposed to our way of thinking that the differences between party or ideology almost vanish.  We forget that all that we enjoy in America comes at a price and there are those who died in the attacks and in the fields of battle of who have paid that price for all of us.  We forget that we have a responsibility to care for one another and sacrifice so that the promise of this country is kept for all.  For ten years we’ve lived in the world after 9/11/01, as we enter the world that is now a decade past that event let’s do our best to remember all that we’ve forgotten.