We are being inundated this week with 9/11 remembrances.
No matter how sophisticated or simple, genuinely moving or maudlin, we’re certain almost all are heartfelt. And they should be.
Even the commercialization of trinkets to sell is part of our free enterprise system. You don’t have to buy that stuff; it’s your choice.
Your Notebook is away this week, re-creating a visit to old friends in Florida in whose home we were 10 years ago. We’ll be flying back to Washington on Sunday, Sept. 11. That’s our little way of honoring American commerce, freedom and, yes, the victims of 9/11.
Getting out of town also is a brief break from the bleak bunker that our nation’s capital has become.
The National Park Service is spending great sums to rebuild the seawall so that the beautiful Jefferson Memorial plaza doesn’t slide into the Tidal Basin. Yet, an ugly ring of Jersey barriers lines three sides of the monument.
On the south side, imposing security barriers block any vehicles besides police and maintenance workers from driving up close. At least there are no metal security stations to pass through -- at least not yet -- to see this jewel to democracy.
On Capitol Hill, a network of side streets remains blocked off, forming little pockets of free parking for Hill workers and security forces. Some of the streets now have flower gardens planted in the bunkers. A sweet thought, but flowers can’t soften the image very much.
At the Ellipse on the south side of the White House, E Street remains closed, and the wide, circular roadway is inaccessible to tourists and others. It’s become a security ring of free parking for bureaucrats there, too. (The good news is that at least the National Capital Planning Commission has selected a firm to redesign the area. But it still will be a gussied-up security barrier rather than a place to celebrate freedom.)
Does anyone even recognize the U.S. State Department site in Foggy Bottom anymore? No other agency is going to top its use of barriers along city streets. It looks like a compound in Baghdad’s Green Zone, not the focal point for diplomacy in the capital of the free world.
At the massive Reagan Building downtown, empty hallways remind of how it was going to be a downtown shopping mall. But it was too dangerous to have American commerce flourish in a building named after Reagan. How incongruous is that? It should be open and free-flowing to honor that president, not virtually shuttered. (The food court lives on, but it’s sad to see hundreds of teenage visitors lining up like sheep to go through security wands to get a hot dog.)
Where is the American ingenuity to devise better crowd security without treating each person as a potential terrorist or terrorist stooge? We hear all the time that the wheelchair-bound senior citizen or the baby in a basket may be carrying bombs unknowingly. Well, what’s to stop a terrorist from putting on a ubiquitous security uniform and just walking into a place? Who polices the police?
For those of you have read this column for a while, little of this tale of woe is new. As reporter and columnist we have returned time and again to the creep of security into our lives. Sometime ago, we coined the word “securicrats” to highlight the bureaucracy of security that we see and feel every day.
It’s not a personal slam on the well-intentioned men and women who make up the police forces or the rank and file of other first-responder jobs. They are doing what they can despite high-level acknowledgement that much of it is “security theater” to make us feel safe rather than to be truly safe. And do we as Americans want to live in truly safe, lockdown environments?
Try this the next time you’re walking along Pennsylvania Avenue or other downtown corridor: Count the police officers you see, the police cars, the private security guards, the security cameras, the barriers, the bollards, the signs that forbid entry, the signs that demand identification cards and anything else that says you can’t do this or that.
It could be depressing.
But also, look up. Look up beyond the barricaded doors and bomb-proof glass to see how many flagpoles sprout from private and government buildings. Take a moment to enjoy the sight of Old Glory waving in the wind. (We particularly like the big flag on Freedom Plaza, an aptly named space on Pennsylvania Avenue.)
Look at those flags that stand for freedom -- and for a country that honors freedom and tries to export it to the world. That’s the America we want to see. And we want to see it with as few barriers as possible.
Pause on 9/11 to honor the victims of those horrible attacks, but don’t give in to fear. It would be downright un-American of you.
