It has been eight years, yet 9/11 is still a massive sore spot for the entire country. It certainly is for me… my blood boils every time I watch this video (especially at 2:50) . The closest event in American history with the same sort of impact as 9/11 was the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. But here’s the thing: eight years after that was December 7, 1949. This was some decades before I was born, but my understanding is that Americans were, as a whole, no longer thoroughly pissed off at the Japanese, and indeed were well on the way to making them fast friends. America was healing from 12/7 in a way we’re not from 9/11.
Why? What’s the difference?
To me, it’s simple: after 12/7… we won. We ground the Japs into the dirt. We spilled their blood on a massive scale. We invented new ways to kill to do it. We tapped into the fundamental forces of nature to do it; we seemingly broke the laws of time and space to lay a beatdown on the Japanese the likes of which the world has never seen, before or since. We slaked our thirst for vengeance… and then, the Japanese surrendered. Expecting to be further beaten into the ground, the Japanese were, instead, aided back up. We had gotten the rage out of our system by both extracting our pound of flesh and seeing them give up. We beat them. And having done so… we could be at peace.
But after 9/11, none of that happened. We did not carpet bomb whole nations. We did not parade captured enemy leaders before the press before stringing them up. We did not nuke their cities out of existence. We did not gain vengeance. Hell, we didn’t even *try.* Instead, we went to every effort to minimize collateral damage. We started helping them back up *before* the fighting was over. And, as it turns out, the fighting never was over. And it probably never will be. The Germans and the Japanese… they knew when they were beaten. They could do the calculus and realize that as bad as things might be under the thumb of the Americans, it would be far worse to remain under the bombsights of the Americans (and the Brits, Russians, Canucks, etc.). But in this war, we not only do not have a conventional enemy to fight, to defeat, and to see grovel in an official capacity before us, the general concensus of those who live in the culture that rained ruin down upon us 8 years ago seems to be that things are just fine, and there’s no need for capitulation. And why not? Their culture has sucked so bad for so long, that Americans coming in and dropping a very few bombs here and there and then handing out cash and goodies can well be understood to be an improvement.
We did not have a major propaganda campaign to remin ourselves who and why we were fighting. Instead, we had major propaganda campaigns against our own soldiers and intelligence officers. We learned to see ourselves as the enemy, rather than the enemy that actually wants to wipe out our way of life. “Abu Ghraib” and “Waterboarding” became more popular rallying cries for hate and vengeance than did “WTC” or “Pentagon.”
What did you see more of in the press?
This?
Or this?
This?
Or this?
What also does not help: after 12/7, the Naval and Army bases in Hawaii were rebuilt and re-armed as soon as possible. Except for the Arizona, all the ships that had been sunk were raised and either repaired and sent out to the fight or scrapped to make other ships to send out to the fight. But in New York City, rather than a pair of gleaming new towers where the old towers once stood, there are just two holes in the ground. That is a monumental failure on the part of politics. Rather than give Americans a symbol of hope and victory, politicians preferred to squabble, chasing their own petty ends.
Without victory, without even the symbols of victory, the US will continue to be mired in malaise over the events of 9/11. And so long as out government so massively misunderstands the messages of that day (here’s a heads-up: “A National Day Of Mourning/Anger/Rage” would make far more sense than “A National Day Of Service”), we never will truly heal.
