It is not a tidy anniversary this year. Seven years between that awful day and this Sept. 11, the terrorist attacks linger somewhere between the immediate, a conscious part of our days, and the comfortable remove of the distant past. No longer yesterday and not yet history.
What happened seven years ago colors American life today. There are the two wars, of course. But in smaller ways, too: We sing "God Bless America" at the ballpark. We weigh "evil" as a campaign issue. We slip off our shoes at airport security, buy the zip-top bag for liquids and gels.
And yet there is an unmistakable distance now. No one speaks of the "new normal" anymore. All of those things are just normal.
This Thursday _ Sept. 11, 2008 _ will be nothing like the first anniversary, when people were allowed, even encouraged, to take the day off work to reflect, when airports were eerily empty, when silence settled over cities.
But it will also be nothing like what life in America was on Sept. 10, 2001, the day before.
What does 9/11 mean, seven years on? What do we make of it now?
Seven years means we are far enough away that Sen. Joe Biden can joke in a Democratic debate that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani only mentions three things in a sentence, "a noun and a verb and 9/11," and bring down the house.
Yet we are close enough that video of the towers' collapse _ the actual smoke, the crumbling _ is so painful it almost never airs anymore, and when it is shown, as in a montage at the Republican National Convention, it is utterly halting.
No one will forget. But when is it OK to move on?
For the people who were left behind, left without a spouse or a child or a parent or a friend on that day, it is a very real question, something to turn over in their minds every day.
For some, seven years means enough time to pick up, sometimes to pack up, to start anew.
Cathy Faughnan's husband, Christopher, a 37-year-old bond trader, was killed in the trade center. She was 37 then, too, and remembers thinking she was too young to be a widow for the rest of her life.
Now she is 44. Within two years after the attacks she moved back to her home state of Colorado, and has since been remarried, to a widower she met in New York shortly after Sept. 11.
She does not like to watch TV coverage of these anniversaries. Her family remembers Christopher in other ways. September also means the start of college football, and they go to cheer his beloved Colorado Buffaloes once a year.
This year, for the first time, she took the three children she had with Christopher _ Siena, Juliet and Liam, who are now 14 and 11 and 9 _ to ground zero, where steel from the rebuilding now pokes above street level.
At the visitors center across from the pit, they saw the pictures of thousands of people who died when the youngest of them was just 2 years old.
"I think that was the first time it really maybe hit them how many people died," their mother says. "I saw them with their mouths open."
For others, seven years is an instant.
One morning last month, Diane Horning was watching a webcast of the federal government's briefing on the mechanics of the collapse of Building 7 at the trade center complex.
A half-hour later, she saw a television report speculating on the vice presidential prospects for Giuliani and was outraged: "He can't put two words together without talking about my son's death." Continue >>
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'The reason we are in the middle East right now is not because of oil, but because of Osama Bin Laden'
first of all osama is somewhere in afghanistan not iraq. why is bush not serious of capturing osama? if he is then he should put more emphasis on capturing the mastermind of 911. bush spinned & politicized 911 & connected iraq & saddam with 911. saddam did not plan 911, osama did. people believed him in the name of payback or patriotism not being serious with capturing osama. if it is not about oil, then bush should invade north korea to free the people from a brutal dictator. obey blindly of what bush is saying bec. he is a christian & everybody should support him. now he is blaming everybody for the mistakes he made in the name of patriotism.
bush was in the national guard but money is more important than the safety of this nation. he even ignored PDB 'bin laden determine to attack US.'
I am thinking about when prophet Elisha ben Shaphat anointed Hazael of Damascus as new king of Aram Syria and the way God use this heathen king to let punishment befall Israeli because they have done what is unrighteous in the eyes of the Lord.
Let us not forget several very important points:
* The reason we are in the middle East right now is not because of oil, but because of Osama Bin Laden;
* The reason you take your shoes off and go through all that screening is because of 19 Wahabbi Muslims who wanted nothing more than to kill as many Jews as they could;
* 9/11 produced more of the next generation of Mohammed Atta-wannabe's than you know, and they're looking to repeat 9/11 tomorrow if they get the chance.
Obama thinks you talk with people like that; he's naive. The way they talk with us is 20,000 gallons of jet fuel gushing through the World Trade Center. Friends, the bad guys are still out there. Get a guy in office who's ACTUALLY BEEN IN the military.