9/11 - When will it end?

We all remember that Tuesday eight years ago. We know the consequences it had for friends and family, for the US as a nation, for the world as a whole - with the "War on Terror", with Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans can't escape the consequences, nor can they escape the day itself;

• Remembrance services are being held today.
• It is officially "September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance"
• Thousands of people gather near Ground Zero
• People have been encouraged to contribute to a national day of service.
• Throughout the morning there were four "moments of silence", one of each plane.
• Readings of the names of every single person out of the 2,700 who died at the World Trade Center.
  

But you know what did it for me?

• American soldiers in Afghanistan completed a 9.11km run to mark the day.
  

Isn't it all too much? Isn't it time to let go, to say it was a horrible thing that happened, to let families remember their loved ones in peace? I'm gonna go out and say what a lot of people are thinking, the thing that is so politically incorrect to even think that people avoid it at all costs;

It's enough!


I get making September 11th a.. day of some sorts, it's now "National Day of Service and Remembrance". But this focus on the planes that crashed, the towers, the people that died - reading their names. How do the families feel about this? Never being able to let go, constantly being reminded of it year after year. The whole country putting on a show, and their father, mother, daughter or son is the star... along with nearly three thousand others. Just a puppet, a piece in the puzzle.

Fortunately, the day has become more than just 9/11 to some people. Many spend the day helping out in the community, offering their labour, sending care packages to soldiers overseas. Focusing on the present, not on the past, brings far more good, more hope than sadness. Of course, not everyone likes this;

Debra Burlingame, whose brother died at the Pentagon, told Associated Press news agency: "I greatly fear at some point we'll transition to turning it into Earth Day where we go and plant trees and the remembrance part will become smaller." BBC News

I guess some do wish to stay in the past. And that moment in history, that day eight years ago, is the perfect way to explain and justify all the bad decision, the mistakes, the killings and the evil that has taken place since, in parts of the world far, far away from the US of A.