Author: Richie DeMaria
On Nov. 7, 2009, the Navy officially commissioned the USS New York LPD-21 in the city of New York. The Navy usually reserves state names for nuclear submarines, but per New York governor George Pataki’s request, they made an exception. The ship contains seven and a half tons of steel in her bow – steel reforged from the ruins of the World Trade Center. The ship’s motto: “Never Forget.”
Pataki, at the ship’s commissioning, promised the world would not forget. “The USS New York will ensure that all New Yorkers and the world will never forget the evil attacks of September 11, and the courage and compassion New Yorkers showed in response to terror,” he said, according to The Epoch Times. The ship is emblazoned with that very motto, with an escutcheon that features a phoenix rising from the flames.
Maybe it’s an appropriate tribute – what better way to symbolize naval and national loyalty than with a reminder of that time when all Americans were, however briefly, united? It also provides some sense of fulfillment to the grieving, some sense that their lost ones did not die for nothing. If nothing else, it’s resourceful, like the reuse of warships bombed in Pearl Harbor.
But isn’t it also grotesque? The USS New York is an amphibious transport dock, which means it functions as a landing platform from which aircraft can take flight. Isn’t it a little perverse to construct this kind of ship with the ruins of a very violent air crash? Isn’t that just asking for a kamikaze?
CNN quoted Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, who lost a brother and 658 employees in 9/11, as saying: “The pain that we went through, we want no one, no other family to have to go through it.” No one, of course, but the people we attack.
Lutnick’s statement sums up why something like this is so frightening: 9/11 continues to be the pretext for war with other aggressors. Our own sense of victimization becomes a justification for assault. In the name of freedom and the dead, the USS New York will be used to inflict force upon other nations lest they forget. Isn’t this the same kind of short-sighted, nationalist rhetoric that made America such a target eight years ago?
Maybe this comes as no surprise. The WTC was a symbol from its construction, a sky-high emblem of the American Dream. September 11, too, a symbolic attack itself, quickly became the impetus for anything and everything. It served as the narrative behind several years’ worth of TV commercials. It was a justification for conservatism and over-the-top “patriotism.” It was used to start wars.
Nonetheless, to continue waving it around as a wartime banner is more than predictable – it’s awful. It turns a tragedy into an ongoing reason to wage war on others, no matter their affiliation with 9/11. It smacks of self-centeredness and an ‘us-against-them’ mentality – all using the remains of a catastrophe whose victims never asked for it.
New York is a beautiful symbol for American diversity and character, and 9/11 of New Yorkers’ resilience. Continuing to use these symbols in war is not an honor but a disgrace.
Richie DeMaria is a senior ECLS major. He can be reached at demaria@oxy.edu.
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