By Paul Beston on 9.15.05 @ 12:10AM
September 11th and the limits of public grief.
On the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks,
President Bush declared that the day be known hereafter as Patriot
Day, in an effort to honor the sacrifices of the brave
firefighters, police officers, and rescue workers, and to re-cast
the day into something analogous to Memorial Day or Veterans Day.
In four years, I've never heard anyone refer to September 11th by
this name, and don't expect to. A pale euphemism for a national
catastrophe, it doesn't register with anyone's physical or
psychological experience of that day. I expect the pretense of
printing the name on calendars will fade away in time.
The more honest analogue for September 11th is of course
December 7th, 1941, the only other time outside of the War of 1812
that United States territory was attacked by a foreign enemy.
December 7th, too, brought forth examples of heroism and sacrifice
along with the losses, but Americans were generally more concerned
with avenging the dead of Pearl Harbor than reciting their names
every year. They remembered the attack with anger and resolve, and
repressed the pain.
The attitude was probably best exemplified by President
Roosevelt. As the second anniversary of Pearl Harbor approached in
1943, Congress jointly passed a resolution calling December 7th
"Armed Services Honor Day." Roosevelt, though, vetoed the bill.
"December 7, two years ago," he wrote, "is a day that is remembered
in this country as one of infamy on the part of a treacherous
enemy. The day itself requires no reminder, and its anniversary
should rather serve to cause all the people of the nation to
increase their efforts contributing to the successful prosecution
of the war."
Similarly, the Washington Post called December 7th a
day of "deep humiliation" that should remind us of "our pitiful
unpreparedness and our laxity in the face of disaster."
Talking this way about the September 11th attacks is liable to
get one accused of being unpatriotic, or worse, insensitive. Last
Sunday, families gathered at Ground Zero to read the names of the
dead, and emotions ran high as always. I wonder for how much longer
we will encourage survivors to come back to the scene of their
greatest torment and re-enact their grief in such a public way.
Such rituals can only serve to keep old wounds forever fresh, and
they provide an annual reminder for our enemies of the devastating
effectiveness of their deeds.
Even while the wounds of Pearl Harbor were fresh, Franklin
Roosevelt recognized that a great nation shouldn't grovel so much
in the mire of one of its darkest days, especially when it had a
war to win. It is not true that repressing the pain of loss means
forgetting it. That is one of our touchy-feely myths. Repression is
a key to survival, and Americans once knew this intuitively.
Today, people under 50 barely know what December 7th signifies.
That's not an endorsement of ignorance, but December 7th's quiet
place in our calendar is more appropriate than not. Someday, one
hopes, September 11th will join it there, devoid of euphemism and
indulgence, as another somber reminder that our freedoms are never
guaranteed and rarely safe. Our losses we'll tally in private.
