The question is why?

        What is the point of showing horrible images of 9-11 again if we are only going to talk and talk and talk about it?

        We are beginning to look like a nation that is very good at remembering. We remember everything — except the reason to remember.

        The networks and cable channels will replay the tape to make us all “relive” the dreadful day. The press is burying us in the emotional rubble again, the heroism, fear, shock and grief — until it is all too much and we just go numb.

Media binge

        The media can't help it. Overkill is what we do best. But taken together, all the recollections and replays wind up looking like spray paint in a cemetery. No bravery is so shining it cannot be tarnished by the harsh lights of media excess. No anguish is so pure it cannot be made tawdry by the TV close-ups that make us feel more distant.

        Our moral unity and righteous anger are being dissolved by a steady drip of recycled tears.

        What is the point of remembering unless it is used like a grinding stone to sharpen our resolve? What is the point of dragging out the pictures of victims, unless we remember that the evil is still loose and must be killed?

        I cannot imagine America, one year after Dec. 7, 1941, begging President Roosevelt to “make the case” for going to war. “Remember Pearl Harbor” was not an anniversary of anguished sorrow. It was not a eulogy, it was a threat: “Annihilate Japan.”

Pass the Kleenex

        But now we are Oprafied. We don't want any harsh war talk to interrupt us while we wallow in emotion for its own sake. We want to “understand” and “deal with our anger.”

        Here's an idea: How about if we make Saddam understand what it's like to deal with our anger?

        How about if we stop asking our neighbors in Europe if it's OK for us to defend our home from mass murderers who plot to kill members of our American family?

        How about if we quit waiting for permission from the ingrate whiners at the United Nations, and do it the American way — on our own?

        The people who make excuses for Saddam and look for loopholes of appeasement are no better than the crowd who refused to believe the worst about Hitler as the bodies piled up outside the gas chambers. Wearing maudlin compassion like a medal is no way to honor the dead. The way to honor the victims is to make sure the barbarians are too dead to do it again.

        President Bush is showing the smoking guns to Europe and the domestic skeptics. But the truth has been in plain sight all along. Anyone who can't see that Saddam is the evil hand that pulls terrorist strings is someone who doesn't want to see it.

        What happened a year ago today was not a “tragedy.” It was not a disease to be cured by celebrity sing-along fund-raisers.

        It was war.

        It's time to say a prayer for the dead, stop crying and fight back.

        E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.

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