I don’t recall where I read it – and it bugs the hell out of me, because it was just within the past year or two – where a comment had been made to an American military officer from a foreign counterpart (maybe even an adversary) remarking upon the peculiar American tendency to memorialize, almost even to celebrate, notable defeats.
The instances cited were Bunker Hill, an American defeat (a Pyrrhic victory by the British regulars, who lost three times as many soldiers, but still an American military loss of a strategic high ground) at the start of the Revolutionary War, the Alamo, where every American defender was slaughtered, Pearl Harbor, and now, of course, “9/11”. In fact, though this example wasn’t made, you could also add “Remember the Maine!” to the list, although that has been pretty well proven to be an internal coal bunker explosion, and not any kind of Spanish attack on that battleship prior to the start of the Spanish-American War.
I can’t explain it, either, @chyna. But maybe it’s not so particularly American, either.
I also recall (vaguely) a story about a man taking a taxicab ride in New York City, where he starts a conversation with the driver, who is obviously a recent immigrant. The driver eventually explains that he is from Turkey. The passenger tells of his experiences with other drivers in the past, immigrants from other nations, and remarks that a few years ago he had a ride from an Afghan driver. At this the driver becomes visibly agitated and emotional. The passenger asks him what is wrong. The driver exclaims, in broken English, “Those pigs! Dogs! I hate them all! They killed a member of my family!” The passenger sympathizes with the driver and asks for more details, such as when the incident took place. “In 1315,” the driver mutters.