World Series Of Darkness

"This may be the generation that faces Armageddon..." - Ronald Reagan

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Sometime in the next nine days, Americans will pop a few horrible images onto their brains, brightened images of the attack on New York City, the Pentagon and on the nation's capital. Sept. 11th, 2001 is about to go front-center in the national psyche.

It was the day no one expected, the attack everyone said was impossible. But it happened, accounting for more than 3,000 deaths and a quartet of wild airplane rides for passengers of hijacked jetliners used in the assault. Blame quickly went to 19 members of the Al-Qaeda outlaw fraternity, terrorists in the pages of our newspapers.

A huge ceremony is scheduled for Ground Zero in Gotham City, geography where the Twin Towers stood before the attack and where they fell less than two hours after being hit. President Barack Obama will be there, as will other politicians and pseudo-celebrities.

What will you be doing on that Sunday morning?

Will you be hoping that it is the last such foreign attack on American soil, or will you be cringing when the television networks replay the country's most-awful video, shots of the iconic towers being hit by the jetliners, entire floors going up in smoke, people jumping to their deaths, the towers collapsing in what has to be the most dramatic news video of the 70 years? I say 70 years, because that's how long ago another national tragedy hit the U.S. - that one a Japanese sneak attack on our U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Much has happened in the span of those seven decades, good things and bad. Military conflicts in Korea and Vietnam kept the nation at odds within its own diverse community. That should not be forgotten. But it happens. Americans likely remember more about Woodstock than they do about the Navy ships that sank that morning in Pearl Harbor. Quick quiz: was it the USS Arizona or the USS Indianapolis? If you don't know, well...

Life is funny that way. America lives in a hurry-up society that doesn't exactly treasure its history. Not too long ago, I asked a waitress at a Chili's in Austin who was buried in Grant's Tomb and she said, smiling, she had no idea. One more: What country were most of these Sept. 11th terrorists from? If you said Saudi Arabia, head for the fridge and get yourself a beer on me.

So, what about our 10th Anniversary of the day America came under attack?

What about that date should we remember?

What exactly did we lose that day?

Who can frame a neat paragraph to put it all in context?

You should be able to do that with ease, is what I say. Every American should. Attacks on our homeland have been so rare that any citizen worth his weight in U.S. History knowledge should be able to list them. If you can't, then all Sept. 11th will ever be to you is just another day of great TV video. We live in a video world, I know. If something is not on video, well, it can't be true. Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11th abound. We're also a society with too much free time on its hands. Most of us would rather hear about the Britney Spears of the world, the Lady Gagas, the Kim Kardashians, the Derek Jeters, the Peyton Mannings.

No one but architects can give you the height of the downed Twin Towers.

Few of your friends and neighbors and co-workers can tell you it was the USS Arizona that sank at Pearl Harbor, and that the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine farther west in the Pacific, and that many of the men who survived to jump overboard were eaten by sharks.

September 11th ought to be about feeding your need to know things you should know about your country and not simply a day to lower your head and dream-up a prayer for those who died that fateful day in the Big Apple...

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