The Clipboard: No need to recall a battle we lost; anniversary of 9/11 overblown

From an article¹:

Today there are people, including children, who need help. Today there are problems yet unresolved. Today we all have duties more pressing than morbidly moping about an event that is already down the drain of history. (link)

Charley Reese has a practical turn of mind that I like. Yes, 9/11 was a great tragedy, but other people have suffered worse without making as big a deal out of their suffering as American culture tends to. My God, the rest of the world must think we're spoiled.

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Complete text of the article, No need to recall a battle we lost, by Charley Reese

The postmodern United States seems culturally addicted to anniversaries, but why we should wish to make Sept. 11 an anniversary worth noting is beyond me. After all, Sept. 11 marks a failure and a defeat. It is not a cause for celebration.

Perhaps if postmodern man would look to the past, he would note that our saner ancestors marked the anniversaries of victories and triumphs, not those of defeats. We used to celebrate the birthdays of great men, not the dates of their deaths. We used to celebrate the dates of battles won, not those of battles lost.

Part of the problem is the media. Since the invention of videotape and the 24-hour broadcast, stations look for opportunities to drag out video already shot and replay it to the point of nausea. Actually, they are just filling airtime, but really, how many thousands of times do you wish to see pictures of the World Trade Center collapsing? Stunned and weeping survivors? Dust-covered firemen? Is it not time to move on?

Nor is there any reason to remember those lost on that day. They haven’t been forgotten for a single moment, and their survivors are, as we write and read, engaged in ... well, I won’t say exploiting, but certainly in getting everything they think they have coming.

I thought at the time that it was a mistake to give government grants to victims of terrorism, even though it was really done in an effort to keep the airlines from being sued into bankruptcy. (The law states that you have to agree not to sue in order to get the grant.) That scheme seems to be a failure, but we now have a precedent of giving taxpayers’ money to people who are random victims of violence. Shall we continue? What about the people who were victims in the recent past, such as those who were in the federal building in Oklahoma? What about, for that matter, those who died in the anthrax attack?

I don’t intend to pay the least bit of attention to Sept. 11, any more than I pay attention to the anniversary dates of airline crashes, earthquakes, floods, fires and other random disasters. A few terrorists caught us with our britches down and gave us a hard smack. It was not the end of the world or even a day when the largest number of Americans died (see several War Between the States battles).

The only positive aspect of the attack was that it shook us out of our unwarranted complacency and smug belief that we were invulnerable to attack. Instead of making us alert and firm, however, it seems to be making some people anxious, neurotic and fearful.

I think politicians and the media have exploited that tragic day enough, and it’s time to get on with the business of America. We have far more important things to do than to dwell on what has already happened and cannot be changed.

Let’s remember Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Persian poet Omar Khayyám: “Strike from the calendar Unborn Tomorrow and Dead Yesterday; The moving finger writes and having writ moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.”

Today there are people, including children, who need help. Today there are problems yet unresolved. Today we all have duties more pressing than morbidly moping about an event that is already down the drain of history. As Larry McMurtry’s great philosopher, Gus McRae, said at the grave of a young boy, “Life is short, shorter for some than for others. Now we best be moving on to Montana.”

reference=http://www.enterprise-journal.com/NF/omf/ejournal/ssiuname=WebOSTTN/ssipwd=TTNA92C2245/news/news_story.html?rkey=0018476 sid=20020822103332.B05E9 cat=opinions