Memorializing an event is really about solidifying how the story will be told—which facts will be remembered, and which ones will be left out. To do our job as Albuquerque’s alternative news weekly, we are voicing a range of perspectives to the narrative of this anniversary.
Alibi advice columnist Kat Cox remembers the morning of 9/11, when a plane crashed into the Pentagon a few miles away from her college. The phones were down, and chaos ensued.
U.S. fighter jets have taken off. ... Where’s Bush? Cheney’s in a bunker. ... The White House has been hit. No, the Pentagon has been hit ... box cutters ... terrorists on a train . ... Saddam did this. No, the Saudis did it ... 10,000 dead. No, 4,000. ... Let’s roll.
Anniversaries like this ought to be as much about mapping the future as rehashing the past. If examining what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, doesn’t help us plot a wiser course, we haven’t gained anything at all from it.
There are so many others who were affected deeply, who suffered unknowable personal losses on Sept. 11, 2001. But as a country, the greatest loss we suffered was our sense of safety. Still we survive, and a new tower is being constructed in New York. shrouded in strings of lights and topped by a crane, it looks especially surreal. But there it sits, a palpable mark of progress, and the city continues to churn around it.
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