Confronting September 11Is It 'Too Soon' for Flight 93 Movie?
Five years after the single most deadly attack on American citizens in the history of the nation, our forces are engaged in a global war against Islamic terrorism in battlefields across the world. The war on terror has already lasted longer than World War Two, and still, the country doesn't seem to see it as a real war.
During the Second World War, virtually every movie theater began with a trailer showing the carnage of Pearl Harbor, followed by newsreels extolling America's victories at home and overseas, before playing what was invariably a war movie in which our side played the good guys.
In four years time, America utterly defeated the combined might of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese Empires. It entered the war as a minor player on the world stage. Four years later, it was the world's undisputed superpower.
Claiming sensitivity towards the families of September 11 and concern for America's comfort levels, the media has all but completely censored any serious coverage of the events of September 11, 2001. The media's newly-found sensitivity extended to banning any video of WTC victims leaping a hundred stories to their deaths to escape the raging inferno.
Mainstream media news organizations have all but banned video of the airliners impacting the Twin Towers, except when commemorating the attacks each anniversary.
Instead of newsreels highlighting American victories, the networks are suing the government for access to Dover Air Force base so that they can broadcast pictures of flag-draped American coffins as they are being unloaded from the war zone.
Highlighting the horrors of war serves the mainstream's liberal antiwar agenda. Highlighting the attacks that forced that war upon us is counterproductive to that agenda.
So, while the cable and nightly news coverage is a moment by moment, live and raw video examination of the horrors of war, the attack that started it all has been sanitized to the point of censorship. To this day, more than four years later, there has not been a single Hollywood movie about the events of September 11. The first major film to address the topic, entitled "Flight 93" hasn't even been released yet and the media is proclaiming it "too soon."
Some theaters are refusing to even show the movie's trailers, and others have said they won't show it at all.
I haven't seen the movie. I don't know if it will be a good movie or a bad movie. But it will at least BE a movie. Perhaps a few 'brave' Americans will summon up the courage to witness vicariously what their fellow Americans actually experienced on September 11.
There were forty passengers on Flight 93. They were to be used as a missile to strike the US Capitol, according to testimony from the Zacharaiahs Moussaoui trial. Most of us can recall a few names; Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick, maybe one or two others. As to the other three airplanes, other than a few notable people who perished, like Solicitor General Ted Olson's wife Barbara, the rest are anonymous 'heroes' and that is about it.
America has been largely shielded from the terror of that day and what the victims of September 11 experienced. We have a few names, not very many faces, and not enough information about our losses for us to truly comprehend the magnitude of what America suffered on September 11.
Some might argue that America has suppressed its collective memory of September 11 in order NOT to 'give in' to the terrorists by allowing them to change our way of life. It is a well-meaning attitude, born out of anger and grief, but the last four years have demonstrated that it isn't very practical.
We need to confront the horror of September 11 head-on, get to know the people whose lives were brutally stolen from them, rekindle the anger we felt that day, shake us out of our complacency and remind us that we are engaged in a REAL war. We need to meet and get to know some of the victims of that war.
And we need to meet and get to know the enemies who would destroy us.Instead of confirming Georges Santanyana's fatalistic observation that 'those who learn nothing from the past are doomed to repeat it.'
Hal Lindseyhttp://www.hallindseyoracle.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=12707