The “war on terror” went away with George W Bush, but there’s still a postscript here and there to be attended to. If you’re one of the dwindling band of Americans interested in the Flight 93 memorial, this exchange with the presiding honchos of the “Circle of Embrace” (formerly the “Crescent of Embrace”) makes for glum reading:
“In your depiction, who is breaking the circle?”
“The passengers and crew,” said [Memorial Project Manager] Reinbold.
“But the circle is a symbol of peace,” Rawls continued. “Who broke the peace? It was the TERRORISTS who broke the peace on 9/11.”
Reinbold countered that that the circle is also a Druid symbol, and a Christian symbol.
“But it is still a symbol of peace,” said Rawls, especially as the Memorial Project is using it, with the circle being broken on 9/11, “so who breaks it?”
“It was the passengers and crew,” [Deputy Superintendent] Newlin repeated, elaborating that: “They are the one’s who brought the plane down.”
“You don’t think it was the terrorists who broke the peace?” Rawls asked.
“They TRIED to break the peace,” said Newlin, “but they failed.”
“Really?” asked Rawls: “They failed to break the peace? What about the 40 murdered heroes?” But Reinbold and Newlin were done talking.
I’ve no idea whether the conversation is accurate in all its particulars: It seems perversely obtuse, even for the midwives of this wretched memorial. But let’s not get into the weeds of what the “circle” means. To wind up chasing these guys through the circles in their circles and the wheels within their wheels is to lose sight of why “Let’s roll!” wound up as a Crescent roll. There shouldn’t be any effete circle of abstract hand-wringing in the first place. It’s not what this thing was about. As James Lileks wrote here a couple of years back:
If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.
9/11 was Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid on the same morning – Flight 93 serving as the latter. If the stone eagles aren’t an option, I’d rather see Todd Beamer, Thomas Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham and the other forgotten heroes of 93 in the pose from that Incredibles poster below with “LET’S ROLL!” chiseled in ka-powie Marvel Comics Jack Kirby lettering. Their story is one of action, not limp enfeebled passivity. Which says more about America today? What those guys did? Or how our culture chooses to memorialize them?