How much time will have to pass before it simply looks silly to bring up 9/11 as a reminder of why we need to protect the country?
Obviously there will have to be a point in time where “Remember 9/11” will hold just as much weight in arguments as “Remember The Maine” does today. But when will that day come?
Probably as soon as another attack or something major happens to become the new rallying cry of those who do not want to discuss the issues at hand.
“Remember Pearl Harbor” still has resonance. I think it’ll depend on everyone who was alive at the time dying off. Give it 80-ish years.
They’ll continue to use it as long as people are willing to let them get away with it. As it stands nw, the stock answer to everything is “9/11 changed everything”, no matter what the subject is.
Sure, it still has resonance when it comes to commemerating it, but nobody uses it anymore when it comes to making current political decisions.
But 9/11 is frequently invoked when it comes to both foreign and domestic political policies.
I think that if the U.S doesn’t suffer any more major terrorist attacks then 9/11 will fade out of our political discourse within 10 to 15 years.
A major indicator of when this happens if when we stop hearing “9/11” mentioned in the State of The Union Address. I’m confident the current President will mention it every SOTU speech until he leaves office, but his successor (regardless of who it is) will probably drop the reference at some point while he’s in office. The first SOTU that’s 9/11-less will probably be around 2012.
It’ll be a long, long while. When you have thousands of Muslims rioting and calling for death because of a cartoon, you don’t need someone to fly a plane into a building to still be scared as shit. And keep in mind that bombings like those in Bali, Madrid, and London are more current reminders of what’s at stake. I think it’ll be a miracle fi there isn’t some disaster in Torino at the Olympics. Britain, Spain and Italy were our main allies in Iraq. The first two were hit, and it’ll be Italy’s turn next.
OTOH you’ve got the example of the Feds inept response to Katrina and the coming budget battle, where everything except 9/11 related security and military are on the table. Another Fall of bad weather down south, coupled with continued Federal fumbling and budgetary unhappiness, could start eroding the efficacy of crying “9/11 9/11!”
54º40’ AND Fight!
It did change everything. It will resonate with me for as long as I live.
I’d call that a non sequitur. The American voters can walk and chew gum at the same time. They might not be able balance a plate on their head as well, but the security issue is always going to be up at the top as long as the threat is present.
I’d say the spectre of a sneak attack lingered for several decades after 1941 and was used to form policy during the cold war when the anticipated threat was Soviet bombers, not Japanese fighters. It had died down a lot after 1990, only to be reignited in 2001 as the best analogy to what had just happened.
The Vietnam War was a side issue in the last Presidential election. That’s a war that ended 30 years ago which (these days) almost nobody has a truly positive view of. I think it’s going to take longer for September 11th to fade in a similar way despite the fact that ideas and catchphrases in political cycles get ‘used up’ faster than ever.
Even if there’s another attack, it won’t have the Out of the Blue shock factor that September 11th did. At the risk of hyperbole, the national consciousness was altered.
Not sure how to answer that. I guess it’s a function of the last event plus a waiting period to see if there are any reminders. How long has it been since radical elements of Islam have been in the news?
How do we know when it isn’t?
When we see enough non-9/11 based threats and catastrophes to push our fear of international terror away from some of it’s positions on every burner of the stove.
Er. That “Give me liberty, or give me death!” stuff still resonates a little bit, more than 200 years after the war that made it famous. Sure, we’re best buddies now with that particular country, but the point is that these things can linger.
From a pure political perspective, it will last in direct proportion to the Liberals/Progressives desire to play to their base with the “attack on civil liberties” argument.
Can you re-word that? Because I can’t decipher what you’re trying to say.
Even if Democrats get elected and at some point the entire “War on Terror” concept gets dropped, along with the moronic M&M-coded threat levels - I’m assuming those were what you meant - people are going to wonder periodically about ‘the threat.’ It’s not quite the same as wondering when we will have ‘achieved stability’ in Iraq or some such.
Gee. Which party keeps dragging up 9/11 and terror? Which party uses 9/11 to justify things like spying on American citizens, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, arrest and detainment without the niceties of a trial? Which party ties every statement of discontent or dissatisfaction to “helping the terrorists”? Which party kept issuing “terror alerts” just before the last election? Which president keeps invoking 9/11 and the War On Terror (the war president???) as a reason to be the Unitary Exec who can do whatever he pleases? Hell, for that matter, which party even HAS a base to play to, whether it’s the stay at home war heroes or the antigay/anti everything extreme right religious guys? Last time I bothered to look, it wasn’t the liberals/progressives jamming “The War On Everyone” down our throats all the time.
“A state of war is not a blank check for the president”
Huh? Are you honestly “scared as shit” by the cartoon riots? I definitely wouldn’t call myself “scared as shit” over the terrorism situation. Angered and worried, yes. Concerned about the need for good law enforcement, diplomatic, and military strategies to combat the threat, yes. Grimly prepared for the likelihood of more terrorist attacks on us, our allies, and elsewhere in the world, yes.
But “scared as shit”? C’mon, car accidents kill more Americans every two months than have died as a result of terrorism in the last ten years, including the troop casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Scared as shit” is when you see the enemy’s troops massing on your borders or the bombs start dropping.
Muslim extremist terrorists are not going to destroy our society or eliminate our way of life. Unless they somehow get their hands on a major nuclear or bioweapon, they’re not even going to kill very many of us. The idea that we’re really supposed to be “scared as shit” over the current situation suggests to me that Steve and Marley, etc. have a point about this threat being shamelessly used to manipulate our anxiety.