September 11th, five years on

I got up and went to breakfast today. In the dining room, TVs were playing the stories of survivors of the attacks. Two, maybe three people watched. The rest ate their breakfast in peace. No teacher mentioned the date today in classes. I may very well go the entire day without talking to anyone about it.

I wonder: will we still remember September 11th fifty years from now? Probably, but only because the date got worked into the name of the event. I just barely remember that Pearl Harbor was on December 7th. I don't remember the date of the bombing that set off the Spanish-American war. Part of the reason we remember one and not the other is that the one was more recent. However, the one also led to a more glorious war, a war to stop Nazism rather than merely gain some territorial power.

September 11th, I think, may be more like the later. If the wars that came out of it were right in the first place, they were incompetently handled and it's unlikely we will look proudly back on them in the future. They will join the Mexican-American war, the Indian wars, and the Spanish-American war among wars that we don't really want to remember. When that happens, even the date might not save September 11th.