Today: precisely seven years to the day since the holocausts at the World Trade Centers and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
The memories are slowly fading. The scars are slowly healing. The loved ones we lost are remembered with fondness and sadness, but no longer actively mourned.
Although time is working its magic, 9/11 remains a crucial point in recent American history; its shadow looms over our political landscape, especially foreign policy.
We often hear that we shouldn't politicize the dead. The Bush administration, for example, has used that as an excuse to bring back fallen soldiers' coffins in the dark of night.
Historically, however, the dead have been politicized for as long as records exist.
For recent examples, we need look no further than the Alamo, the Maine and Pearl Harbor. Following in that grand propagandistic tradition, the Republican Party has wrapped itself in the flag and fires of 9/11 to justify its neoconservative foreign policy; such as in 2003 - how many of us believed the unspoken lie that Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning of the attacks?
Democrats are not innocent, either.
Those of us with the more liberal persuasion are fond of pointing at the international capital the United States gained in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and how thoroughly Bush and the Republicans have squandered it. To my mind, accusing the Bush administration of dishonoring the dead in their ceaseless propaganda is less reprehensible than the actual propaganda, but at the end of the day, both sides of several arguments, by choice or necessity, are politicizing 9/11 and trying to capitalize on peoples' emotional reactions.
So perhaps we shouldn't try to fight it; as I pointed out, politicizing tragic events and their victims is inevitable. Perhaps we should all instead take a step back and, in lieu of offering emotional rejoinders, work to rise above our emotional impulses in order to clearly evaluate the causes, context and implications of 9/11. Not only does that rob the political camps of their emotional weapons, but we will ultimately have a better grasp of the events of 9/11 itself.
And once we have developed that grasp, we must rise above the politicization; we must roll back the cloak of emotion and objectively scrutinize those arguments which make use of 9/11. Are they logical? Do they match up with the facts?
A brief survey of the literature is disquieting: from the Bush administration's nonsense about Saddam Hussein's involvement with the attacks to their absurd non-sequiturs about increased domestic surveillance to the "truther" movement's bizarre, ignorant conspiracy theorist tripe, offenses against reason and reality, offenses that make profligate use of 9/11, abound. And, ultimately, those are worse than the emotional appeals that cloak them.
Write to Neal at necoleman@bsu.edu
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