House Editorial: Remembering Sept. 11 — until we manage to forget
It is only a matter of time before the World Trade Center joins Pearl Harbor in the dusty annals of history textbooks
Posted on September 11, 2006

For the one, maybe two people who haven’t realized, today marks the fifth anniversary since Sept. 11, 2001, when three commercial planes struck the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. A fourth plane, possibly intended for the White House, never made it, and instead of landing on Pennsylvania Avenue, crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside because of a cabin full of brave human beings.

It is likely that most of us have not forgotten the events of that day; many consider it the JFK moment of our generation (“Where were you when the second plane hit?”). But fresh as our memories may be, they are apparently not fresh enough to prevent a major motion picture and a miniseries on ABC. Be it greed, propaganda, “Desperate Housewives” being in reruns or maybe even legitimate commemoration, the American entertainment industry has done its best to make sure the memory lingers for at least one more year.

But how long until the novelty wears off?

The last climactic attack on our soil before that Tuesday five years ago came on Dec. 7, 1941, a date barely remembered outside of high school history classes. World War II veterans become fewer and fewer every day, and with the lack of living memory comes the lack of living commemoration. There was a big to-do in 2001 for the 60th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor — burgeoned by the release of the aptly titled “Pearl Harbor,” but very little before or after.

In the immediate aftermath of the strike, there were films out in a mere three years like “The Purple Heart” and “30 Seconds over Tokyo.” Sept. 11 is seeing similar offerings — ABC’s controversial mini-series “The Path to 9/11,” “United 93” and Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” — though we’ve fallen short of Pearl Harbor’s rush to cellulite by two years.

Today, Pearl Harbor is an afterthought. Perhaps it’s the generational passing as each remembers its own wars better the wars of their fathers. Maybe it’s the age of political correctness and the collective feeling of consciousness in America that was not present following Pearl Harbor. The memorial for the U.S.S. Arizona, for example, was completed and dedicated over two decades after it was sunk.

And that could be the barometer. Maybe we need a memorial instead of a hole somewhere in Manhattan and a war somewhere in the Middle East. If Sept. 11 was as climactic as the movies and military actions have indicated — and it most certainly was — a memorial, as a focal point for the grief we rightfully feel, is long overdue. The victims of the attacks, and the rest of us left to pick up the pieces, deserve better than that.