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thedrifter
05-10-06, 07:25 AM
We shouldn’t forget 9/11...
Terri Choate
5/9/2006 03:48 pm

There wasn’t a sound in Sparks’ Century Theatre #7 as “United 93” ended last Tuesday afternoon. I just wanted to get up quietly and leave, and I think the scattered few—perhaps 30 of us at the screening—felt the same way. Before the movie began, there’d been quiet chatter and even the scraping of popcorn boxes, but now no one spoke.

I’d come alone, and I’d felt oddly nervous before the film began. That was unnecessary. Even the Kleenex I’d brought was unnecessary. Only a solitary tear rolled down my cheek. I’d felt the horror in real time on September 11, 2001, when I’d watched open-jawed the thick black smoke rolling from the first WTC tower and watched in disbelief a second plane strike the second tower.

I’d known immediately that a small plane could not have caused that damage. I’d known instantly that the second plane was not an accident as the talking heads on the Today Show suggested haltingly.

We all have memories of 9/11. I suspect most of us keep them buried beneath the everyday concerns of our daily lives, which is, of course, one way people move on past tragedy. But we shouldn’t forget 9/11. People have asked if it’s too early to have released the story of United 93. It’s not.

Throughout WWII, people said to themselves “Remember Pearl Harbor,” and they carried on the burdens and sacrifices of the war effort. The time to “forget” Pearl Harbor came on September 2, 1945, when General Douglas MacArthur accepted the formal surrender of the Japanese empire on the deck of the battleship Missouri. The war in Europe had ended earlier on May 8.

The time to forget 9/11 has not arrived. “Someone,” the United 93 film notes, declared war on us that day, and we have yet to triumph in that war. It will be many years down the road before we do. Many of us are likely not to see that day, and those that do may not recognize it easily from a formal surrender ceremony.

David Beamer, whose son Todd was killed aboard flight 93, said as the movie opened on April 28, “This enemy is on a fanatical mission to take away our lives and liberty...The passengers and crew of United 93 had the blessed opportunity to understand the nature of the attack and to launch a counterattack against the enemy. This was our first successful counterattack in our homeland in this new global war.” He reminded Americans, many of whom expressed reluctance to see the movie, that they knew the ending, but didn’t know the story of the flight.

Forty unlikely warriors died on United 93 as it plummeted into a field in Shanksville, Pa. At the World Trade Center, 2,801 lives were taken, 92 died on American Airlines flight 11, which hit the first tower; 62 on United flight 275, which hit the second tower, 343 firemen and 75 police officers lost their lives in the rescue effort, and at the Pentagon 124 died, not including the 64 deaths on American flight 77, which had been piloted into the building.

Since 9/11, we’ve lost some 2400 soldiers, airmen, marines, and sailors in Iraq and hundreds more in Afghanistan. And we will lose many more because the world remains unstable and because we have vicious enemies and timid friends. It’s certain America can not be timid. We must not be rash, but we must be strong and determined to defend all that we believe in. I went to see United 93 to remind myself of this fact.

And although I must respect our jury system, I believe 12 of my peers forgot these many deaths when they sentenced the single 9/11 conspirator in custody to life in prison. How many must a person kill to deserve death? Apparently this jury felt Zacarias Moussaoui had not actively killed anyone because he’d been prevented from playing his role in the plot by an untimely arrest for overstaying his visa 25 days earlier. I wonder whatever happened to being an accessory before the fact?

Moussaoui also received the sympathy of nine of the 12 jurors because he’d had a rough childhood. Perhaps they thought his mother and abusive father should have been on trial in his stead. Unfortunately, what is on trial around the world is American will, gumption, steadfastness, determination, grit, pluck, and character. “America, you lost,” Moussaoui cried out after the verdict. He’s not quite right there, but he’s on mark as to how radical Islam will interpret the jury’s reluctance to impose the ultimate sentence on a dangerous, hate-filled murderous enemy.

Writing in Canada’s MacLeans magazine, Mark Steyn defines the dilemma we’ve created for ourselves: “Our tolerant multicultural society is so tolerant and multicultural we’ll tolerate your intolerant uniculturalism. Your antipathy to diversity is just another form of diversity for us to celebrate.”

In Sweden, the country’s largest Muslim organization has demanded separate laws for Muslims and demanded imams be allowed to go into public schools to teach Islam to Muslim children in their parents’ languages (“The Local” 4/28/06). In Germany, The Wall Street Journal reports (5/2/06) public schools already offer religious education to Muslim children in Turkish and Arabic and neglect to teach them the German needed to receive a certificate of any kind. Non-assimilation into the larger culture, whether because of the prejudice of the majority (as has been the case in Germany) or the intransigence of the minority (as is the case with Muslim minorities throughout Europe), is not a call for celebration but a signal of trouble.

America stands out, despite our decades old flirtation with multiculturalism, as an assimilative society. In the past we’ve had the simple clear confidence that American values and the American way of life are the best in the world. Many of us are afraid to say that categorically anymore, yet proof that we’ve been right are the millions of immigrants who’ve come to our shores to share in it. And they still come.

It is we who are not quite so confident now in our excellence, not quite so assured in our welcome, not quite so at ease that we will make newcomers like ourselves, not quite so unafraid to expect respect for our laws, language, and traditions at home and around the world. Indeed, we seem to like ourselves a little less. Where once we were unselfconsciously brash, we are now self consciously diffident. Fortunately, our open, vibrant culture of opportunity overpowers the excessive self-examination. The rest of the world may love, admire, envy, or hate us, but we must continue to believe in the confident dream of our founding, and we must keep it alive to remain Americans.

And the dream remains alive in unsung and even unexpected places. If the jury in Virginia didn’t feel its strength and thrill, perhaps they are over used to it. Last week also saw marches by immigrants, many of them illegal, in our nation’s cities. There was much to be offensive in the marches-violence in California, the choice of Marxist May Day, the presence of Mexican and Guatemalan flags, and the tone of demand rather than request, but let’s look a little deeper.

Writing on alainsnewsletter.com on April 28, Marie Jon tells the story of Marine Lance Corporal Juana Navarro, 20, of California’s Joaquin Valley who died in Iraq on April 8 from gunshot wounds as she guarded fellow Marines from a helicopter near Fallujah. Cpl. Navarro was known to her friends as Chica; Jons describes her as a “classic’ beauty whose grace was combined with strength. She was the “iron woman” and awarded the company honor graduate award for excellence in leadership at boot camp. Chica is survived by her mother and twin brothers, Marine Lance Cpls. Lorenzo and Raul Navarro.

Before he died on March 28, former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger completed a book (“Home of the Brave”) that chronicles the stories of heroes in the War on Terror. Once such is Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who has been recommended posthumously for the Medal of Honor. Sgt. Peralta died on Nov. 15, 2004, during the second battle of Fallujah. During house to house searches, he entered a room and was shot in the face and chest by insurgents, yet jumped aside to give the Marines behind him a clear line of fire. When an insurgent tossed a grenade, Sgt. Peralta pulled it under his own body and smothered it, saving his fellow Marines.

Sgt. Peralta was not a U.S. citizen. He’d enlisted in the Marines when he received his green card, and he wrote his brother in the only letter he ever wrote him: “Be proud of being an American.” Jack Kelly, national security writer for the Toledo Ohio Post Gazette and Blade, reports that of the 19 heroes whose stories are told in Weinberger’s book, three others besides Sgt. Peralta are Hispanic. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Stephan Haber, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, reminds that “[t]he impact of immigration on American culture is not determined by what immigrants do, but by what their children and grandchildren do. Here the evidence is unambiguous: The children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants assimilate and move up the income ladder.”

As we remember 9/11, we need to remember ours is a nation that commands our allegiance not because we are racially or ethnically homogeneous but because we are one in our allegiance to a nation founded on liberty and unafraid to defend our principles from enemies and unafraid to embrace newcomers who stand with us and, indeed, become us.

Ellie