I dread the upcoming September 11th tenth year anniversary.
I am not alone. I know several families of those killed on that day that feel the same way.
I wrote a book in 2002 about the families of Irish American cops, firemen and ordinary working folk who died that day entitled ‘Fire in the Morning’.
They impressed me back then with their incredible courage and fortitude in the face of losing loved ones.
They impress me now with their determination to move on and not let that horrific day dominate their lives.
Sure, we will have all the usual pomp and ceremony from the politicians and lots of remberances of that awful day.
But why should we remember it? Nothing good ever came of it. Do the Poles remember the day the Nazis took over?
We had Iraq and Afghanistan and missing WMD’s and an aftermath of death, destruction and billions of dollars spent that stretches right to this day.
The families I have spoken with feel as I do we are just going over old ground.
The dead should be left in peace, their sacrifice never forgotten. The living must be allowed to get on with their lives.
I have stayed close enough to some of the families to know how difficult and how awful September 11th every year is for them anyway.
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The tenth anniversary promises to be the worst of all.
Every square inch of newspapers, every television screen will be dominated by the coverage.
Imagine if the death of your loved one was played endlessly on television on one day every year.
ABC news is trumpeting they have new footage of the first plane crashing into the towers.
How does that make the families of the victims who died horribly there feel?
We will have all the professional 9/11 hucksters back on our screen telling us what it all meant. We know what it meant—the worst day in America since Pearl Harbor.
We know that hundreds of thousands including thousands of Americans have died since in the aftermath of that awful day.
I say lets commemorate the day Bin Laden got wiped out instead.
Now that’s day to remember for anyone who wants peace in this world.
Listen to Niall O'Dowd speak on RTE's "Morning Ireland" radio show about Michele Bachman's views of Ireland
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