At the Washington Post, George Will writes, “Today, for reasons having little to do with 9/11 and policy responses to it, the nation is more demoralized than at any time since the late 1970s, when, as now, feelings of impotence, vulnerability and decline were pervasive. Of all the sadness surrounding this anniversary, the most aching is the palpable and futile hope that commemoration can somehow help heal self-inflicted wounds.”
Or as George Savage writes at Ricochet, as far as the MSM is concerned, “Apparently, Americans have 9-11 as our biggest natural disaster while the Japanese have the recent earthquake and tsunami. Same thing.”
Responding to Will’s comparison of 9/11 ten years on with Pearl Harbor ten years on, a commenter at Hot Air makes a great observation:
America is treating 9/11 like some national tragedy, rather than treating it like Pearl Harbor – the first blow of an actual war. Nobody ever looked upon Pearl Harbor as a “tragedy”. It was a call to arms, like Remember the Alamo. Instead, 9/11 has been treated in the media spotlight like some highrise fire started by an errant cigarette – so let us mourn the dead and gaze into the reflecting pool.
Recently, Ann Althouse noted:
After 10 years of remembering what happened on the day we sustained a great loss in a war, have we ever — as a nation — celebrated a victory? I remember when President Bush tried to do that. And he was crushed by criticism so harsh that it has served as a warning: never ever savor a victory. Now, it’s: “we don’t… spike the football… that’s not who we are.”
And who are we? Is our preferred self-image the collapsed towers?
What will the tone of today actually be?
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