This 24.5 feet 3 ton twisted steel structure was once part of the World Trade Center destroyed on September 1, 2001 and is now in a memorial park in Beavercreek, Ohio. War memorials are generally sedate and thoughtful. The idea they should contain wreckage must be something different. But the war on terrorism is a different war than America has ever fought, because after 10 years it is on-going. Imagine WW2 going on interminably -- maybe, after ten years, communities would have displayed some of the awesome wreckage caused by the December 7, 1941 attack, as a memorial to those who lost their lives, but, also, as a constant reminder of the motivation for continuing war.
Sunday, Beavercreek dedicated a memorial — a 3 ton 24.5-foot high piece of rusted and twisted steel — in remembrance of 9-11. The DDN today published a large portion of the remarks given at the dedication from the featured speaker, Mark Marderosian, “Freedoms That We Share Are Priceless.”
Mr. Marderosian started with the familiar quote from George Santayana, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” and said, “Every American has a sacred obligation to remember history and to teach their children that history.” He asserted that for Americans “most important of all, we have freedom,” and said that those who attacked the Twin Trade Towers were “determined enemies of those freedoms … cowards so contemptuous of free thought and open debate, so frightened by the innate yearning of the human spirit, that they would rather die than live in the world where some disagrees with them.”
A key part of learning form history, of course, is understanding the motivating forces in history. It’s an important question: “Why were we attacked?”
Marderosian seems to take a view of history that is the same as Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, who in the last debate (see you-tube below) said, “We were attacked because we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jihadists. And they want to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for, and what we stand for is American Exceptionalism. We stand for freedom and opportunity for everyone around the world, and I am not ashamed to do that.”
A very different view of history was given by Ron Paul’s response to Santorum: “As long as this country follows that idea, we are going to be under a lot of danger. This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and they are attacking us because we are free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda have been explicit. They have been explicit. And they wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment, you have been bombing … [loud audience boos] … I didn’t say that, I am trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing…. We had been bombing and killing hundreds and thousands of Iraqis for 10 years. Would you be annoyed? If you are not annoyed, then there is some problem!”
In a post on his web-site, “Learning Nothing from 9/11,” Paul quoted former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit Michael Scheuer as saying, “Our growing number of Islamist enemies are motivated to attack us because of what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world and not because of how Americans live and think here at home.”
Yes, it is important that Americans understand history, but history is not as simplistic as Marderosian and Santorum would have us believe. They offer comforting thoughts, but give a view of history that refuses to hold us accountable for any consequences of our own bad actions or our one-sided and unwise policies.
I agree that in this dangerous and crucial time, it is of key importance that Americans must learn from history. The question is, “whose view of history?” If we are not willing to study history to find authentic answers to difficult questions, according to the insight of George Santayana, we are “doomed.”
