On my way to work today, I noticed an odd thing – no American flags flying. Not a single one anywhere. I live in rural Mississippi, the Bible belt, home to some of the most conservative people anywhere in the United States. So it was genuinely surprising to see, in a community so supportive of the military, with so many young people enlisting out of high school, that there were no visible signs of patriotism today.
But then, 9/11 is not the typical memorial day.
I remember going to Hawaii in 2002, and visiting the Pearl Harbor Memorial. The memorial itself floats on water, directly over the wrecked hull of the U.S.S. Arizona. Access to the memorial is by boat. The roof of the rectangular Pearl Harbor Memorial takes the shape of a parabola – it is lowest at the center, ascending to its greatest height at both ends. This, I have been told, symbolizes the struggle of World War II. The low ceiling in the middle represents the early difficulty of the struggle, the rising at both ends reflects ultimate victory.
How different 9/11 is from Pearl Harbor, though the two have so often been compared. The sorrowful but confident Pearl Harbor Memorial grieves the moment of defeat, but also directs the mind to ultimate purpose, to resolution. And what resolution do we have for 9/11? The World Trade Center attacks represent the beginning of a deeper U.S. involvement in the Islamic world, one none of us ever dreamed of in the years before. I guess before 2001 we thought we had no enemies, that everyone liked and admired us; 9/11 dashed all that, and more. For the first time we have had to consider that the world, or at least large parts of it, not only dislike us but hate us, and that has been a bitter herb, almost as bitter as the deaths of the 2,100 and of the thousands of soldiers who have died since then.
Bad war, good war, surge, shock-and-awe, war on terrorism, Guantanamo, airport panic: It is no wonder after seven years there is still no memorial on the World Trade Center site. As the Pearl Harbor Memorial reminds us, we took a grievous blow on December 7, 1941, but from there everyone knew where we were going. We knew what ultimate victory was, and where to find it – in Tokyo and Berlin. Today we still don’t know were Osama Bin Laden is, and I would argue we aren’t that much clearer on what we need to do to stop a repeat of this event even if we had to. We don’t know what ultimate victory looks like here, or if there is such a thing. How to build a memorial, when no one really knows what it should symbolize?
I think the reason there were no flags flying in my town this morning is because no one here really understands what 9/11 meant, or where it is pointing us to, or if we are even one inch closer to Ultimate Victory.