Forgetting to Never Forget
BY JONATHAN ROBISON
Winding through the hills of Bergen County, NJ past strip malls, car dealerships, and diners, Route 17 could be any road in any American suburb. But as drivers crest a certain hill and look straight ahead, they can clearly see the New York skyline rising twenty-five miles in the distance. As a young child, I remember travelling this road and anticipating a vista crowned by the World Trade Center. In most of my memories, though, the Empire State Building dominates the New York skyline, reigning over a conspicuous and uncomfortable emptiness, a void left by what stood before. In the spring of 2012, the horizon changed once again. Today, the One World Trade Center’s sharp, boxy shape and tall center spire rise to occupy the physical and cultural space left by the its namesake.
Over a decade has passed since 9/11. The rebuilding of the World Trade Center is just one of many reminders of this growing distance. Photographs of 9/11 depicting clothes, technology, and other markers of everyday life, covered beneath soft gray soot, are already noticeably dated, distanced from the present by passing time and changing norms. But these changes—markers of progress and societal evolution—are expected. What is unexpected is the way in which the American memory of 9/11 has changed—and faded. We are forgetting 9/11.
Calls to ‘Never Forget’ in the aftermath of the attack ring rather hollow today. 9/11 is one of the defining moments of our time, yet just over a decade after the tragedy, its place in the American consciousness is already corroded. Explanations about closure, moving on, and stages of grief and acceptance are overly simplistic, and optimistic about the naturalness, and inevitability, of letting a national tragedy fade from memory.
9/11 became a casualty of war. Americans allowed the attacks to become a footnote to the controversies and carnage that came after. 9/11 is to the War on Terror as Archduke Ferdinand is to WWI–the perquisite one-line ‘cause’ in history books before pages of ‘effects’. We became focused on avenging the lost before we could properly mourn them. This revenge became a sprawling, morally ambiguous, and politically fraught beast unto itself. Our minds became consumed with things like IEDs in Kandahar, WMDs in Baghdad, and torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The wars, especially the War in Iraq, reminded us of the worst aspects of our nation–how quickly we could forget our own values, and how unexceptional we could be. Most tragically, the War on Terror required the sacrifice of more American blood. 6,735 men and woman, many barely into adulthood, lost their lives in wars that constituted the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. These two seemingly never-ending wars were filled with failures and disappointments. Americans want to forget this trauma and, by extension, the event that precipitated it.
To properly remember 9/11, we need to reclaim the tragedy from the baggage that came after. The victims of 9/11 are stuck in a limbo of sorts–not quite war dead, but also not victims of natural or quotidian causes. There are days in the American calendar to mourn and remember those who served and those who were lost in our wars, but none consecrated to victims of terrorist violence. The people taken on 9/11 deserve such a day, an occasion for the nation to recall their lives, and their unique loss and sacrifice.
So let us take pause and remember. Let us remember who was attacked and for what. It wasn’t just the bankers and traders and generals and office clerks of New York and Washington who were targeted, but all of us. It could have been any one of us in those offices or onboard those planes that day. The terrorists attacked not only individuals, but the essence of the American experience: the strange normality in which differences do not lead to sectarian bombings and civil war and genocide but to celebrations and union. What was attacked was the idea that anyone could drive a car down Route 17, anyone could eat at a diner on Route 17, and anyone could shop at a store on Route 17. Let us remember that this ideal, untainted by the darkness that followed 9/11, is the idea of America to which we must rededicate ourselves. But most importantly, let us remember the lives lost, the 2,977 egregiously and prematurely taken. Let us remember the heroism, the selflessness, and the sacrifice that these ordinary people exhibited in extraordinary circumstances–and aspire to replicate these qualities in our own lives. Let us take time to honor their lives and their loss, and to strive to make life just a little bit better in their memory.