One year ago today, the sky came falling down upon my world. I stared across the Raratin Bay to see a singular tower in the distance, backdroped by an Everest-sized cloud of smoke and dust. And now as I stare out across the Hudson River into the city and see the towers of downtown Manhattan without their crowning jewels, I quietly mourn for those innocent people lost to the cowardly attack.
It brought us together in grief and showed us what true heros were; the many firemen and police officers that gave their lives to get as many people out of the doomed towers before they gave way; selfless to the last moments. Its for the innocents and the heros that I grieve today and remember.
It still amazes me that so few could take so much from so many. Victims outnumbered attackers that day at nearly a 150 to 1 ratio, and the fact that they used our own tools of convince against us to do it still frightens me, because it shows just how vulnerable we really are. The “greatest nation on earth”TM, winners of the cold war, and yet we’re more vulnerable today than when Moscow was matching us nuke for nuke.
But while I grieve for the losses and celebrate the heroics I’m also asking myself a simple question, and I challenge you to ask it as well:
What has changed in the year since?
We pulled together as a nation, at least for a little while. While constantly being beaten over the head with television, radio and the press trying to pay their bills with national pride and good will. After a while, the message has worn thinner on some of us. It turns one’s stomach to see “Know Your Terroisit” and “Remember The Heros” magazines side by side selling for $6 a pop. That’s capitalisim for ya.
We went to war against an enemy who operates without the restrictions of borders and the burden of diplomacy: the terrorist. Our strike against the Taliban in Afghanistan for harboring such men shows just how good our armed forces are at taking down good old-fashioned governments and military forces. The continued struggle to hunt down the remnants of Al Qaeda shows how much we are still learning when it comes to taking down terrorist organizations.
The government resolved to fix the airline security measures that made the attacks possible in the first place. Security that still allows every Tom & Jane Newscaster to sneak a boxcutter through to show just how unsafe everything still is…and help the ratings of their 10 o’clock news on some UPN affiliate.
We were introduced to Anthrax by an assailant that still walks free today. Every letter opened was scrutinized for the white powder of death. And instead of waiting until we have enough questions answered to absolutely convict someone of this crime, our beloved Attourny General John Ashcroft goes on a witch-hunt, making our government look foolish once again. Nice going, dick!
We stand on the verge of another Vietnam again — in Iraq. We didn’t do a good enough job of clearing out Saddam back in ’90 and now our government says that he’s up to go good again and we have to go back to topple his regime. Some think this is just the warhawks having their way. Others think it’s a totally unneccessary police action and that it will lead to further conflicts with other Arab nations. The only thing I can see in the cloudy crystal I have is that the conflict will happen. The when is unclear; the if is not.
(As an aside: has anyone else noticed how talk of a missile defense system has kind of died down in light of the terrorist attacks?)
It may seem Un-American to speak out like this today, but in my opinion it’s just the right time. If we don’t learn from our past, then we are doomed to repeat it. Forgive the cynicism, but if there’s one thing I’ve had reenforced in the past year is to take everything this world gives me with a grain of salt. It’s sad I have to live that way, but that’s the price we pay for living up in such an unstable time.
But in the end, we will come out of this much stronger for having faced the adversity. And from the ashes we shall rise and ascend to even greater heights.
Tags: International
What has changed? oh so much…for starters, you’re almost considered unpatriotic is you speak out against the actions of the our government. We need to focus on why this happened in order for it to never happen again.
Some really good articles out there, you guys should check these out:
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0911-05.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0905-04.htm
I do not think it is thought unpatriotic to speak your opinion against our governments actions. What I do think is unpatriotic is for people to condemn our government. As flawed as it is, it is the best thing going. We have the right to say we do not like something our politicians are doing. More over, we have the right to do something about it. We ellect the officials and we have representitives and we have a say in what happens. Now don’t get me wrong, this is not fairy tale land. We, the people are not the be all and end all in every issue that comes down the pike, but we do have an influence. I think we do need to look at why this happened to prevent it. We need to do our best to put and end to terrorism. One way to do this is to do all we can to stop Saddam before it is to late. Iraq is certainly NOT another Vietnam. Vietnam was a disaster because we tried to engage in jungle warfare with people who invented it. We even gave them the home field advantage. The main reason these two conflicts are so very different is our reason for involvment. In Vietnam we we trying to be the good guy and help out. It could certainly be argued that we had no buisness there. The same could have been said durring Desert Storm. Our interests there wer to protect Kuwait. Right around the same time Yugoslavia was in major turmoil as well. Kuwait gave us crude oil, Yugoslavia gave us the Yugo. Can anybody be suprised which conflict we engaged in?? This time around, not to sound like a corny movie ad, it is personal. Saddam hate us, our way of life and everything abouts us. He would like nothing more than to put an end to all of the afforementioned. Please understand I am not one of these war happy lunatics that wants to nuke the whole area. It is far more complicated than that. The people of Iraq and Afganistan are prisoners themselves. They have no love for the Saddam or the Taliban. Left to there own devices they would hang out and do whatever people surrounded by the desert do. Most noteably amongst those activities is leaving the US alone and not blowing up our shit! All I can hope is that the US as well as NATO, and the rest of the civilized world do the right thing. It is a small planet and we all have to live on it together.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.