A not so popular question...
Why are we* still observing 9-11?
By "we" I mean our government and related agencies. Even my town has some commemoration of the event. Why is that? It was 6 years ago. If memory serves, we had only one commemoration of the OKC bombing. Why was there nothing on April 19th this year? Was it the number killed? The spectacular nature of the deaths?
Don't get me wrong, what took place on September 11, 2001 was a horrific tragedy. But continuing to commemorate the event 6 years later seems to serve little good. I can see doing it on the 10th anniversary and for decades beyond much like Pearl Harbor was. But continuing this memorialization of the event every year since only reminds those who supported the act that, at least for that day, they won. I'm not saying we should forget what took place that day, far from it. But ritualizing the remembrance doesn't really serve us, in my opinion.
If you really want to remember those who died, try contacting your government, at all levels, and ask them how they are helping prevent this from happening again. Here is a link on how to write your Congress critter. Here's a few topics you can query them on:
By "we" I mean our government and related agencies. Even my town has some commemoration of the event. Why is that? It was 6 years ago. If memory serves, we had only one commemoration of the OKC bombing. Why was there nothing on April 19th this year? Was it the number killed? The spectacular nature of the deaths?
Don't get me wrong, what took place on September 11, 2001 was a horrific tragedy. But continuing to commemorate the event 6 years later seems to serve little good. I can see doing it on the 10th anniversary and for decades beyond much like Pearl Harbor was. But continuing this memorialization of the event every year since only reminds those who supported the act that, at least for that day, they won. I'm not saying we should forget what took place that day, far from it. But ritualizing the remembrance doesn't really serve us, in my opinion.
If you really want to remember those who died, try contacting your government, at all levels, and ask them how they are helping prevent this from happening again. Here is a link on how to write your Congress critter. Here's a few topics you can query them on:
- Why are we still managing cargo (and potentially hazardous materials) that comes into our ports by paper? How secure are our ports if we continue this practice in the 21st century?
- What progress has been made in streamlining the communication between our intelligence agencies. At this point its useful to remind them that we had all the intel we needed to prevent 9/11, we just lacked the coordination between intelligence and law enforcement organziations to act on it.
- What are you doing to secure proper support for our first responders should a tragedy like 9/11 strike our area? Many of the firefighters that lost their lives trying to save others could have been saved if their communications systems weren't the equivalent of soup cans and taut string.
- Beyond these 3, why have we still not fully adopted the recommendations of the 9-11 commission? They had some pretty good ideas on how to prevent this from happening again.