It's all too tempting to think of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a closed chapter in our history.
The U.S. military succeeded this year in tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden, the orchestrator of the deadly attacks, representing the most significant victory in the War on Terror in the decade since it began.
Construction of One World Trade Center, a 1,776-foot skyscraper that will stand near the former site of the twin towers, is set to be completed within the next two years. When it is finished, it will be the tallest building in the United States. The National September 11 Memorial will open on Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the attacks, on the exact spot where the towers once stood. An accompanying museum will open next year.
It's been 10 years. The two wars fought in the aftermath of the attacks are winding down. The Taliban is severely weakened. Where the smoldering debris of the World Trade Center once lay, a memorial and museum commemorating that terrible day now stand.
Is it time, then, to start thinking of the attacks not as a current event, but as a historical one? Ten years later, are the attacks still part of our present? Or are we ready, now, to refer to that day as "the past?"
Most of today's college students were in elementary or middle school when they learned that America had been attacked, but we can remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we found out. Perhaps our young age insulated us from the enormity of the change that gripped the nation afterward.
Many of us can barely remember when boarding a plane didn't require removing pocketknives from a carry-on bag — when the threat of terrorism did not weigh on the national consciousness. For us, it is difficult to think back to a time when we had never heard the name "Osama bin Laden," when it did not cause hatred to pound through our veins, when his destruction and the destruction of the terrorists he commanded was not a cause for which thousands of Americans had given their lives.
For us, the pre-Sept. 11 world might seem like the distant past. That was half a lifetime ago. The details are hazy.
But for those who suffered directly that day — the people who lost loved ones, the police and firefighters who witnessed the destruction firsthand and suffered dearly for it — the recollections are anything but hazy. Dealing with them is very much a part of their present. The memory of that last conversation with a child or a spouse or a friend is sharp and clear, as clear as anything that has happened in the 10 years since.
