December 07, 2003

Remembering Pearl Harbor

Today is Pearl Harbor Day and Michele is saddened because she's found little media coverage. Part of it is time. As one of commenter wrote, many WWII veterans are dead. People who had direct experience with those events are gone. Another reason for the lack of Big Media coverage no hook to the anniversary. 1941 is 62 years ago, an odd number for anniversary coverage. Contrast this to the 40th anniversary of JFK's assassination. There was lots and lots of coverage on television and newspapers as well as a bunch of new books.

We don't honor every anniversary of infamous events. If we did we'd have no time to live our lives and make our own history. We'd be too busy honoring the dead at the expense of the living. We'd become a culture of historians.

I don't want the memory of the awful Tuesday to be a day of over sentimentality. Every Sep. 11 should not be a day where America cries and laments how some evil men killed 3,000. That day should be remembered as the beginning of the Islamist War where the United States took on its biggest nemesis since the Cold War and in the process brought freedom and opportunity to the Middle East.

Michele worries that Sep. 11 will be "forgotten" eventually like Pearl Harbor. But history's perception changes with the culture and distance. I hope it isn't forever a day of saddness, but of rebirth. Out of the ashes of Ground Zero a new urban center will be built (despite the bad Libeskind plan). Hopefully vitality can rise from the ashes of death. If it happens people in the future will remember Sep. 11 as a day of transition for New York City and the U.S.

"December 7th: How Long Does Infamy Last, Then?" [via Jay Solo]