Today is the 9/11 anniversary -- four years after that fateful day. This year's anniversary is somewhat overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina events, and I have linked to a LAT editorial below that makes the same point that we try to make in our editorial in the September 12 issue -- are we ready?
On FlipSide -- the back page of the issue -- we also list all the names of the Pentagon 9/11 victims. I was somewhat shocked to find that those names are not posted on any Defense Web sites as far as I can tell -- including the Web site for the Pentagon's 9/11 Memorial. In fact, I couldn't find the list on any government Web site, and I really searched. I would love to be corrected.
We had to rely on CNN's Web site for the names.
9/11 editorials...
Here is the NYT's take:
Revising 9/11 [NYT, 9.11.2005]
Hurricane Katrina has forced us to expand our vision of 9/11, which, until now, had defined the limits of tragedy in America.
Four Years Later [WP, 9.11.2005]
It is tempting to use the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, to list, once again, the local and national errors that led to the chaotic response to Hurricane Katrina two weeks ago. But to do so would be to repeat precisely the same mistake that Department of Homeland Security officials have made -- in response to demands from Congress and the public -- over the past four years. Put simply, this is a nation that is very good at fighting yesterday's battles, very good at distributing funds based on politics rather than risk and extraordinarily bad at fighting tomorrow's unexpected challenge.
9/11 and 8/29
If 9/11 showed how much the world had changed, then 8/29 showed how much it hadn't. Four years ago, when terrorists crashed jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, history was cleaved in half — the era before 9/11 and after. Will 8/29, the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast, prove to be a similar demarcation line?
The answer is complicated by the slow realization, with each anniversary, that 9/11 did not change the world (or America) as much as we thought. The response to Katrina, from both the government and the public, is the best illustration.
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