Newspaper and Journal Articles-Quoted

Main

Mr. and Mrs.President

See How They Ran

And yet, New Yorkers remained scarred by the horrors of September 11. The sprawling sixteen acres of Ground Zero continue to be a hole in New York’s cityscape, and a hole in New Yorkers’ hearts. Police officers walking their usual beats continue to get extra deference and repeated smiles, as they represent a living link to the fallen rescue workers, America’s new heroes. And wherever you look, the American flag flies high, large and small, in plastic and fabric, as both fashion statement and political message.

It is easy to be cynical about the new patriotic chic. Yes, promenading down Fifth Avenue, seeing huge American flags incorporated into the trendiest store windows, raises questions about whether sacred and profound emotions have been commercialized and vulgarized. But the truth is that such displays are the language of New York, the language of modern consumer-oriented America. Behind all the glitz stands a city, and a nation, still in mourning.

New York City, which has always been crowded, is now also filled with ghosts. You catch yourself having fun at a trendy Saturday night hot spot, staring at the twenty-somethings, and wondering about their buddies who are not there but would have been, the young college grads slaughtered for no reason. You frolic on Broadway with your three kids, whooping it up, and you wonder about the fathers whose lives were snuffed out, and who will never again get to laugh with their children.

Fire stations, which New Yorkers once rushed past, continue to command extra attention. They remain focal points of mourning sprinkled throughout the city,. They are often festooned with flowers and with signs expressing love for the fire fighters – and gratitude from the fire fighters to the people. One midtown fire station features a picture of the two "brothers" from that engine company killed in the Twin Towers. The engine company’s note of thanks also announces that "fortunately" those two bodies were at least recovered. A planter with a small tree features a concrete sign with a poem etched in, noting that "there was no time to say goodbye" and why the men were lost "only God knows why." I don’t quite share that certitude in divine knowledge, although my four year old reassures me that, in the Bible, God explains why the Twin Towers were destroyed.

In classic New York style, even a trip to Ground Zero has been somewhat commodified. The authorities have built a viewing stand, and visitors must go to the South Street Seaport to get tickets. The tickets allow you in at a specific time, on the half hour. WTC:00 is emblazoned at the top left corner of the yellow stubs; on the bottom right is a logo "NYC & Company," with a silhouette of the Empire State Building carved into the bottom of the "N" and the crown of the Statue of Liberty emanating from the top of the "C."

Yet here, too, cynicism melts away once you approach the spot itself. The site is large but not overwhelming – it now appears to be a massive construction project surrounded by the city’s hustle and bustle. What is most striking is how the wooden wall marking off the site has been turned into a moving memorial. This makeshift wailing wall features letters, caps, t-shirts, flowers, candles, teddy bears, and, most haunting of all, those "Missing Posters" with pictures of the victims; posters that three and a half months ago blanketed the city, and are now powerful reminders of the personal losses imposed by this mass murder.

There is, of course, a tension between the vast majority of us fortunate not to have been directly victimized by the terrorists and the actual mourners themselves. As Jeannine Gist, whose daughter Karen Gist Carr was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, told the New York Times, for those most directly affected it is sometimes hard to hear that these events "happened to the entire country.... I would love to have not lost my daughter," she said. "The same is true for the people in New York. It did affect all of us, but you can't put all of us in the same category."

Indeed, those of us less directly affected must be restrained and humbled. And yet all of us, in the United States, in the West, in the civilized world, must continue to mourn. The mourning is not simply to help honor the dead and support their survivors. Rather, we have seen in the last four months that terrorism, if it cannot be eradicated, can certainly be constrained. All forms of terrorism are political acts with strategic objectives. If the infrastructure is smashed; if the mode of politics is delegitimized; if the political gains are minimized, this disease will go into remission, at least on some levels. When the Palestinians find attacks on civilians politically inconvenient, due to Western pressure, they shift their strategy and softpedal the terror. When Pakistan finds supporting Kashmir terrorism militarily risky, due to Indian threats, the government all of a sudden discovers all kinds of bases to close and extremists to detain.

The mourning, thus, is not and should not be mere emotional indulgence. The communal mourning must continue and be harnessed. With a concerted effort and continued will we just might be able to make September 11 the day that the world finally stood up and terrorism ceased to proliferate, rather than the day that a new standard in murderous mayhem was forged.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University.