http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/11-0For ten years now, we've repeated the magic words, the gestures, the rituals. Today, of course, we can hardly forget to remember: to return to that luminous Tuesday morning, when the autumn day turned to darkness, and thousands turned to dust. And yet we find, more and more with every passing anniversary, that to remember is to forget. For every thing we are called upon to remember, there is something else we are compelled to forget.
Our American amnesia has been wrought, not only by the collective trauma of 9/11 itself, but by the mists of political myth, by the fog of perpetual war--and by the shadow of the walls that have gone up between us, as Americans, and between us and the rest of the world. Between the wars and the walls, the shock and the awe, our hindsight has proven to be anything but 20/20.
So let us now praise forgotten men and women. Let's remember all 2,996 lost to us that morning--including the Muslims who were murdered (and subsequently dishonored), as well as the unnamed and undocumented workers whose families were afraid to come forward. Let's remember the first responders, volunteers, and cleanup workers who were sickened by the air, but went untreated for years as every level of government denied them the care they needed.
And let's remember the other victims named in a recent statement by September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows: "On this day we ask those who feel compassion for our loss to expand their compassion to include others...Innocent families in Afghanistan and Iraq experiencing the loss of their loved ones...Muslim-Americans subjected to bias and violence at home; those denied the protections of our Constitution and law, whether in Guantanamo or our own country."
More at the link --
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