Never Forget
EDITORIAL Never Forget Six-month anniversaries are rarely noted, except for babies. Yet President Bush staged an elaborate ceremony at the White House on March 11 to commemorate the deaths of...
...No one needed to be reminded to remember Pearl Harbor...
...These may be legitimate questions...
...They declared war, on behalf of radical Islam, on our democracy, our culture, our religious tolerance, our economic success, our attempt to play an active, benign role in the world, our civilization...
...America is such a vibrant and energetic country, with so much going on at all levels of society, that the memory of September 11 is bound to fade as the rest of life intrudes...
...The problem is that as the memory of September 11 grows hazy, the determination to carry on the war on terrorism may gradually dissolve as well...
...America and the civilized world were "stirred to anger and to action...
...Fortunately there's an appropriate way to remind Americans of the worthiness of their cause and the need for fortitude...
...Did American air attacks kill too many innocent civilians in Afghanistan...
...The point is to recognize September 11 as a watershed event in American history that launched the nation on a new and difficult mission to defeat terrorism and depose dangerously hostile regimes...
...The Japanese in World War II only reached Hawaii and the remote Aleutian Islands in Alaska...
...Over time, the media and political correctness are likely to take a toll...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...It's by making sure that September 11 is remembered as vividly as Pearl Harbor was in another time...
...Is the Bush administration being too secretive...
...Look what happened, for example, when a lull in the war occurred after the defeat of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan this winter...
...Now, only a sliver of America is engaged in the war on terrorism...
...The press hastily turned to stories that raised Vietnam-era questions about the war...
...Despite analogies between September 11 and Pearl Harbor, we face a completely different domestic situation now...
...But the problem is not that Americans will forget but that they'll be distracted...
...Yet President Bush staged an elaborate ceremony at the White House on March 11 to commemorate the deaths of 3,000 Americans in terrorist attacks six months earlier on the World Trade Center and Pentagon...
...American society is not mobilized today as it was then...
...Kelly declared recently, Americans should strive to keep the events of September 11 in their daily thoughts...
...As former Marine commandant EX...
...The continental United States, after all, hadn't been attacked since the War of 1812...
...Advances in military technology mean that a tiny fraction of the number of troops who fought in World War II are needed now...
...And while Soviet missiles threatened us during the Cold War, they were checked by America's nuclear force...
...And our country was culturally homogenous in those days...
...And so far America hasn't...
...But the truth is that the war is just, moral, and worth fighting—for years, if necessary...
...The point is not to wallow in the sorrow of September 11 or indulge in flag-waving bluster or super-patriotism...
...Support for the war never flagged...
...And what about the treatment of Arab Americans...
...But as Bush noted at the White House ceremony, September 11 was "a day of decision" as well as a "day of tragedy...
...But if they are allowed to dominate America's thinking about the war on terrorism, we're in trouble...
...America will not forget the lives that were taken and the justice their death requires," he said...
...Families of victims were there, along with the military and representatives of countries that have aided, however little, America's war on terrorism...
...The event prompted murmurs of criticism, most notably by columnist Walter Shapiro of USA Today...
...In the 1940s, American society was mobilized to fight the war...
...He said there was "something strange about the collective determination not to wait until September 11 [2002] to commemorate the worst day of terror in American history...
...There is a moral cause we've taken up...
...Men served in the military, millions and millions of them...
...We need more remembrances, more prime time TV documentaries like CBS's 9/11, more memorials, more days of prayer and moments of silence...
...Women worked in defense plants...
...Taken by themselves, they lead to the conclusion that the war is unjust or morally tainted or at least not worth fighting...
...Why are the al Qaeda soldiers imprisoned in the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba forced to live in "cages...
...Shapiro was wrong...
...It's quite natural...
...Aren't they facing cruel discrimination because of their ethnicity...
...On September 11, the terrorists did far more than just destroy two buildings...
...We need more commemorations of September 11, not fewer...
...According to Bush, the answer is no...
...This is not wrong...
...But would Americans really forget September 11...
...It's by commemorating the horrible day when a peaceful nation was attacked by an evil force and a just war was begun...
...We must, he declared, "never forget September 11...
Vol. 7 • March 2002 • No. 27
