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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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To remember is capacity of human mind. To forget is another capacity. To be able to remember some things or part of it and forger others according to our perceptions and values is really unique ability that makes us stand alone in the large group of living creatures. Any events, even those of worldwide importance, allow different interpretations. Inasmuch as we go forward and away the event seems not what it seemed just a year or two ago. September 11 doesn't make exception. Three years after the event, people discuss not only why did it happen, they disagree over what did happed? It's hardly imaginable how big the differences in interpretations could grow in the decades ahead.

After a brief survey of the American media covering the remembrance activities in the country, the result is that the wound is still bleeding. People as far as California made candle vigils. People as far as Hawaii stood in silence remembering the dead. There were special events in many cities, small and big. But if we asked the average persons, Mr. and Mrs. Smith what did happen on 9/11/2001, the first thing to come would be the falling twin towers of the WTC in NYC. The burning building of Pentagon will come as distant two. The crashing site in Pennsylvania will come on far distant third position.

The presence of TV cameras on the spot in NYC and the huge death toll guarantee that twin towers collapse will be remembered at least as long as the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Pentagon will be remembered mainly because of its real and also its symbolic significance for the federal government. The crash in Pennsylvania will gradually cease existing in the collective memory as if it didn't happen at all. In the history books it will represent just a short paragraph in the chapter dedicated to September 11, 2004. The irony is that this plane had to hit the Capitol Hill. If it did, the short paragraph could grow to many pages. It seems that the anonymous heroism of the few passengers on the board above countryside far away from the residential areas isn't enough to compensate the lack of spectacular blast in the center of the federal capital. As in Pearl Harbor case, the collective memory remembers the victims, not those who risking their own lives made the number of these victims fewer.

If in America we find understandable but unjustified discrimination of what really happened on 9/11, in the world elsewhere we find even greater deviation from the real events as they were seen and reported three years ago. Unlike then, now almost nobody in the world mourns with America. Mourn those who have been hit by the same hand of terror. In Israel, where 9/11 happens on regular basis, people can understand what's to be a target. In Spain and Russia people too learned this lesson of our time the hard way. Even those who remembered the American 9/11 they feel no grief except for those who died in the WTC. Without saying it explicitly, it seems that for the world the Pentagon was a legitimate war target. For the world the attacks on NYC and Washington stand in two different categories. Pennsylvania is in a third category, the category of forgotten events.