Dear victims of 9/11,
I’m sorry that the media has been replaying graphic images of your horrible deaths continually the past fortnight.
I’m sorry that your familes are surrounded by horrific reminders of what happened.
I’m sorry that, for some, it’s not enough for your families and friends to have to deal with the grief of their loss – that the media feels the need to remind them, in intricate detail, exactly how you died, via every possible outlet, worldwide.
I’m sorry that your unnecessary deaths have been glorified to an extent where people who had absolutely no link whatsoever with you feel the need to dig up the past declaring ‘never forget’.
One day, they might actually let you rest in peace.
Yours,
An unrelated onlooker.
I agree with most of that: it’s probably not very nice for the families of the deceased at this time of year, and I hadn’t really thought about that aspect of it.
The “never forget” aspect is a bit more tricky. For instance, I’m not Jewish but I think it’s important to remember what happened in the concentration camps. Similarly, I’m not Japanese but I think it’s worth remembering the American internment camps. Looking at the 9/11 tributes (e.g. the DC comic that I linked to on Twitter), the recurring theme is that “firemen are the real heroes”, since they ran into the buildings. Meanwhile in London, people were attacking fire crews during the recent riots, so those rioters would have benefitted from a longer memory.
About 10 years ago (before 9/11), I was on a London bus, and then someone started shouting. Apparently he hated buses, and he wanted to get a car so that he’d be like a king. He then said “I have a bomb and I’m going to kill you all”. I grabbed him by the throat and tried to pin him against the wall; unfortunately I’d misjudged his position (standing with his back to the luggage area) so he just bent backwards and kept shouting. Nobody else got involved, and they just looked at me as if I’d massively overreacted. The bus driver refused to throw the other guy off the bus, let alone call the police. In fairness, the shouting guy didn’t have a bomb, and if he had then my actions wouldn’t have stopped him. However, I’d like to think that people would react differently now, if they remember the suicide bombers blowing up buses in 2005. Similarly, I think that anyone who travels by air can learn from the people who fought back against the hijackers.