What does it mean to heal? Is time, itself, enough? Can we remember, and still move on?
The permanent memorial to the victims of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, has thrown up confronting questions during its prolonged construction, and no simple answers were given at its Presidential dedication yesterday in New York City.
President Barack Obama and former president George W. Bush did not give speeches, but read a psalm and a letter from another wartime president, Abraham Lincoln, in front of thousands of relatives holding photos, posters and flowers.
Recent threats meant a massive police presence “froze” lower Manhattan — although the media cramped together on a riser did giggle when the presidents and their wives shuffled out and only the Obamas fitted behind the blast-proof glass panel erected as a security measure.
Mary Beth Dougherty, 49, was there to remember her brother, Kevin James Murray, the man she jokingly calls her “Irish twin”, because they were born less than a year apart.
“For me it’s not 10 years,” she said. “It’s how the kids have gotten older.” Murray’s children, aged 14 and 17, joined 25 members of his family from across America to view the memorial. It opened to relatives today, and to the public tomorrow.
“It’s not hard coming here,” she said, “It’s hard leaving. You feel like you’re leaving him.”
After a citywide moment of silence, the ceremony paused six times — twice to mark the times that each plane hit the towers, twice to mark the time when each tower fell and again to mark the moments of the attacks on the Pentagon and on Flight 93.
Almost 3000 people died in terrorist attacks centred here in 2001 and yesterday’s ceremony was as emotional as it was simple.
Pairs of readers read a short list of names, before adding a personal tribute to their lost soul. Previously unacquainted, the readers were often grouped — parents missing children, children missing parents, siblings missing siblings — and their trembling voices and simple statements of love washed over the crowd.
Holding the last known photo of her brother, firefighter Gary Box, Christina Box said the day didn’t feel 10 years away in her memory.
Box left behind two children after he was snapped running through Battery Tunnel towards the towers.
“Now we’ve got somewhere to go,” she said. “It felt like we didn’t have anywhere before. This is the place we need to be.”
Hopefully this tenth anniversary will cap a dismal decade in the home of the brave.
The country that built the Empire State Building in one year and 45 days couldn’t build their September 11 memorial in less than a decade. (The museum won’t be finished until next year).
The country that put the first man on the moon has astronauts that now have to hitch a Russian ride to the international space station.
The country that has provided the greatest medical advances has TV advertisements shilling special “extra strong” pain medication for workers … that already take regular pain medication every single day.
It gets worse: the new Superman is a Brit.
Each name read out yesterday could have lived another 10 fruitful years with their families, when they could make their own choices, mistakes and successes. They were taken — and much of America’s path in the past decade was set by the response to their deaths.
President Obama talks often about the promise of America, and after the 10 years they’ve had you can’t help but to wish them the best of luck.
Here is some quick, sobering perspective.
Ten years ago fewer than 3,000 perished in the Twin Towers incident, and this is hugely commemorated. Every year some 16,000 Americans are murdered by fellow Americans – there is no public commemoration for them. This year is the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, where over 1 million (3% of the then population) died at the hands of their compatriots – Americans are still very divided in their opinions of how (and even if) this should be commemorated.
And of course there is no commemoration of “enemy” killed in battle by Americans (or anyone else), or consideration given to their loved ones left behind.
Perhaps we can spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis slaughtered by us as a direct consequence of 9/11.
That’s innocent people in 2 countries that have never harmed us (or the USA and UK) but paid a dreadful price because of the USA’s wounded pride.
I do not think the memorials conducted either here or the USA have any meaning if we isolate the event from the calamities visited upon innocent people in the most savage revenge of the century.
For all the fine words spoken over the past few days, they do not honour those who died if the event is isolated and we continue to re-write history.
The postscript to the 11/9 event is its exploitation by the US militiary industrial complex (MIC) & neoconservatives who elected George W Bush and backed Obama.
The following You Tube post from US Senator Ron Paul gives a shocking insight into these anti-democratic war mongering Trotskyites of which Keith Rupert Murdoch is a prominent member.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0N0iqUiaTs&feature=related
I’ve spent the past 6 months researching Paul’s claims & they’re holding up to all scrutiny.
For the record, Senator Paul is the leading Republican contender for the 2012 Presidential race, but is being ignored by the mainstream US media. IF STone would be turning in his grave to see what’s happened to the US media over the past 20 years.
“The country that has provided the greatest medical advances has TV advertisements shilling special “extra strong” pain medication for workers … that already take regular pain medication every single day.”
Sorry I don’t get the relevance of this …. for someone who has pain, what other sort of medication do you advise? Something that stops itching, sneezing, constipation? You can take ‘regular pain medication every day’ (over the counter – paracetamol, aspirin, regular headache stuff, for example) and still not get the level you need. Ask lots of chronic pain patients.
Some people, through no fault of their own NEED extra strong medication in order to continue a quasi normal life. Would you be so scathing about people in USA still needing insulin for diabetes? Or is the USA supposed to have solved all these medical problems somehow bec they are so smart? dream on. (Yes I know some pharmaceutical companies like to pretend they have done so, that’s bec they have shareholders, and not all are based in USA.)
“… only the Obamas fitted behind the blast-proof glass panel erected as a security measure.”
Well maybe only the Obamas get something like 40 death threats per day (I read the number recently but it was so large my brain went into hyperspin and couldn’t remember it).
Besides as I remember the newscasts the Bushes were also behind the bullet-proof glass. Well you were there and maybe you saw different.
“The country that built the Empire State Building in one year and 45 days couldn’t build their September 11 memorial in less than a decade. ”
I think the construction of the new World Trade Tower and the memorial had a taxing blueprint and more OH&S rules than in former years. I watched a doco on the building of both and it seemed complex to me.
Just what is the point you are trying to make here? I have no particular axe to grind or flag to raise, I just know ‘9/11’ was awful, sad and dangerous and has affected many people. All those who planned and carried it out, and those who perished, grieved, and have become sick, are suffering now or will suffer in future lives. (IMHO)