Paul, I respectfully disagree.

The defining hour took place in August, 2001, when George W. Bush pissed away the opportunity to take some preventive action to avoid the horrific events of September 11, and again a year later, when he used those events to start the drum beat for a war in Iraq that has been at least equally horrific.

I'd like our current President to spend his energies and his political capital related to this issue on getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and steadying the ship of state.

Perhaps the hole should remain a few more years as a reminder, until that is accomplished.

We all remember that day vividly, even if we were hundreds of miles away. In some respects it would be satisfying to have a memorial finished, but that is not the first thing I think about on this anniversary.

I think about the tragedy that occurred after the smoke cleared. To call it a failure of leadership would be inaccurate. It was a conscious and despicable decision to capitalize on these events, in order to advance a political agenda. These unforgivable choices cost many more lives, and eventually led to the current situation -- we are now horribly divided as a nation.

When I think of that day eight years ago, I get the same sick feeling in my stomach. But I'm sick about the way things are now. Sorry, but I don't really care very much about the hole in the ground there in New York. I'm worried about the hole in the fabric of our nation. We suffer today from self-inflicted wounds that stem from that terrible day. Will we ever be able to heal those wounds? Or will the terrorists win, after all?

I say this with genuine respect for your point of view, and thanks for your considerable service, both past and present.

-- ARG

I can think of no greater testament to the lost Bush decade than that gaping hole.

Frankly, it is well and appropriate for the time being, that a hole remains where a memorial should be. Our country came together for a few short weeks during the autumn of 2001, and then promptly returned to our erstwhile fractiousness with fervor and pique unseen since the 1860s. A void is what we deserve for our failure, and a better memorial can only be contrived by Americans who will have learned from our petulance.

There has indeed been in abundance, since 9.11, "bureaucratic gridlock, partisan bickering, old-fashioned greed and failed leadership." Lest we forget: It takes two to tango, and while George Bush and his wrongheaded cabal can lay claim to the lion's share of blunders born of our great national meltdown at ensued in the wake of that tragedy, it should be marked well that we, as a people, tolerated this mendacity and chicanery--and even re-elected this dunderheaded clique to a second term.

The true lesson of 9.11 is not only that we were unprepared for the attack, but that we were unprepared for the aftermath as well--that we had grown soft, and lazy, and greedy beyond precedent in a land renowned for it's venality and avarice, and that we do not deserve to commemorate our loss.

That job should fall to our successors--and may God have mercy on their souls.

Let me offer a far more prosaic and boring reason that the hole has not been filled: It's a tremendously difficult task, technically and logistically.

The site is owned by the Port Authority, an unusual government entity formed by a compact between 2 states. Trains controlled by the PA, as well as trains controlled by the MTA, another unusual government entity (controlled by both NY state and NY city), run underneath it.

The buildings had been sold to a private developer, and he -- along with his insurers -- have a massive stake in this. Add in state, local, and federal authorities, plus all the entities who had offices in the WTC, plus all the people who worked there, living and dead, and their insurance companies, families, lawyers, etc.

NOW add in multiple architecture firms, and blue-ribbon panels supposed to select building and monument designs... as well as crime scene investigators, and public and private security experts.

Finally, consider the civil engineers trying to redesign and rebuild the enormously complex foundation system so that it doesn't flood (even tho it's partly built on land reclaimed from the Hudson River), and can accommodate several train lines, several skyscrapers, and 2 large subterranean monuments.

From every standpoint, this is one of the most complicated construction sites that has ever existed anywhere in the world. It's actually not surprising that it hasn't been finished. My office is a block away, and would love to see the endless work completed, but I want them to take their time and get it right.

Thanks Paul (as always, this is an amazing post). George W. Bush should have sat everyone down and made them come to an agreement to build something asap. But, of course, he let the "market" sort it out, and as a result, nothing's been done. (Man he was gutless about everything...)

I wish they had built a free university - free to our best & brightest students - an instant Harvard/MIT/Yale overnight. The university should have focused on Renewable Energies & Peace. And they should have always had exactly 2,974 students enrolled at all times -- the number of people that died that day.

Instead they're going to build a "freedom tower" that will never have tenants.

Two points, have to be said:

1) 9/11 was not any generation's "defining hour." Not at all. Generations are defined by their achievements, not by criminals acts.

2) The Iraq war was made possible by these criminal acts, but it wasn't a cause (the ill-thought-out plans were in the works for a decade).

"On September 11, 2001, millions of young Americans like me promised to take a bullet for this country"

"Americans like me decided to take a bullet?"

But Paul, it looks like you are still here, and unperforated. What went wrong? Did they run out of bullets before you could take yours, or was it that cheap Chinese-made ammo Bush's two contractor friends supplied the military with?
Or did you just forget about "taking a bullet"?

I miss the point here. How does re-building the World Trade Center memorialize the deaths on 9/11? It seems to me that it would trivialize them: Look, everything's as it was.

Look, everything's as it was.

Which would have been a much better plan than to go apeshit and start tossing bombs all over the place. Hunter Thompson was right - "We're not at War, we're having a nervous breakdown."

We fell right into al Qaeda's bloody trap, and eight years later are stuck deep in not one, but two occupations with promises of delivering democracy in a pretty little box. A box lined with a tissue of lies.

The owners should have taken the insurance and rebuilt the towers. Or take Tim Kreider's advice - build three towers, with KISS on one, MY on the middle one and ASS on the third.

But whatever is done with the site, we should have busted our butts to keep this nation as free as it was the day before the attack. That would have been the better memorial. The PATRIOT Act was an insult to the Americans that died that day. And let's remember that the site is called the World Trade Center for a reason - citizens of over 90 nations died in that attack.

Now eight years later, it seems that we are still standing still, frozen in time, and as a country, still waiting for the healing to begin.

It sounds like you are the one standing still, frozen in time, waiting for the healing to begin.

Things have been built, just not in the literal space you are referring to at Ground Zero.

For example, the New York Philharmonic commissioned John Adams to compose a memorial for the victims of 9/11, which debuted in September 2002 at Lincoln Center. Can you imagine writing a piece of music for world premiere while you yourself are still in mourning? Yet he "built" a haunting work of art in 6 months called On the Transmigration of Souls that you can listen to anytime. Transmigration is a term for the passing from one place to another, one state of being to the next. Adams wrote it for the survivors, for all of us who remain.

I couldn't listen to it in its entirety on the first anniversary because it felt so painfully accurate. I managed to sit through it the following anniversary (WNYC played it), although not dry-eyed. Adams is a minimalist, so it may not suit your taste at first, but you can read about it here. It is an American masterpiece.

It was almost exactly eight years before 9/11/2001 that Bill Clinton gave a speech about universal health care (Sept 22, 1993). It's been almost exactly eight years since 9/11/2001 that Obama gave an almost identical speech a few nights ago.

In between those two speeches, about 18,000 Americans needlessly died each year (according to the Institute of Medicine), for a total of almost 300,000 Americans needlessly dead from missing healthcare. That's about 100 "nine elevens", give or take a handful.

So -- to borrow a line from Eduardo Galeano -- from the point of view of sick Americans who needed healthcare, and their families... there are 99 holes missing.