First I do want to say that I do remember and honor those who lost their lives on that tragic day in our worlds history. I want to make it clear that this post has no ill intentions towards the families of those lost, nor the soldiers and the families who have suffered the same losses since this horrible day.
I am going to make it clear though and I hope that this will reach at least one person not living in the USA in effort to make them understand that if you think US Citizens blindly follow their governments lead then you likely haven't spent more then one day in the country, or one hour reading its thoughts and feelings on this whole fuckin' mess.
On September 11th 2001 I was at work at Maple Leaf Bakery. I was doing some sneaky IRC'n from my computer when someone online told me to get to a T.V. quick. I ran to the conference room and cut on the television where I immediately seen WTC 1 on fire. Not being an overly emotional person I was shocked to feel tears on my face. The pictures by then were just of the first building burning and the reporters were already crying and cowering because the first people had just started jumping from the buildings. As opposed to a lot of thick minded Americans my first thought wasn't 'we should kill who did this to us' but 'we did this, we did this to ourselves.' No I dont mean that the people in the WTC and the Pentagon were responsible. I mean each and every one of us was responsible. We had all grown fat and complacent in our security. We, as a country, who twenty years before had questioned our governments every move, had given up like tired little soldiers when it came to fighting for the truth. Oh, there were still some fighters out there, but as a nation we had just said 'fuck it, let them handle it' and did nothing to demand answers from those we place in office here. I was never a patriotic person because of this and short of feeling a sense of pride in my FELLOW MAN, I still to this day am not the patriotic citizen posterchild for the USA.
Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.
W. L. George
Immediately I realized that my boss, the only one I had ever really liked and even loved would be on a plane today. I recall people slowly filing into the conference room behind me. No one spoke, they just watched. As we were watching just then the second plane hit WTC 2. A man behind me cried. The phone rang and we all looked at it as if it were a hissing cobra. I am sure we all had the same thought then, was it Al? Was he ok? No one wanted to answer it, but here we stood, at work, knowing someone had to do it. People were jumping out of 100 story windows to avoid burning alive and we were scared to answer the damned phone. That same sick feeling that I had felt when I turned on the T.V. moments ago had intensified in the pit of my stomach. A country so strong built on the backs of the weakest. God? Are you there? I didn't think so just checking though..
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
Edward R. Murrow (1908 - 1965)
"Joy? Are you guys ok there?" It was Al, and he was safe. He was stuck in Vegas because of the grounded planes. Thank God, thanking a person I never thanked for preventing a tragedy that never would have happened. So maybe someone was there....
I will never forget that day and the things I seen that were not on the T.V. I remember the grocery store being so eerily quiet and devoid of the things that were usually only gone when a snow storm crept up. No bread, no milk. I remember that even the children I seen that day after work were all extra quiet. They seemed to know that silence was the motion of the day. I remember sitting in my car at a redlight, listening to the radio with tears rolling down my face and looking at the car to my left and seeing an older man doing exactly as I was, grieving. I remember the air force jets that blasted back and forth overhead that day, breaking the sound barrier and little pieces of our patriotic little American hearts each time they flew by. I remember spending a lot of time glaring at the sky, waiting for my own personal last moment and wondering what form it would take. This was war.
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
When the first plane hit of course at first we all thought it was just a horrible accident. As the second hit, we knew it wasn't. It wasn't long after the second plane hit that we all began milling around, finding excuses for not working, turning people with appointments away because of the impacting things we had just seen. And then I thought, this is why we are at fault. In the blaring face of the tragedy, it was so much easier to ignore then to watch. This is how we got here in the first place.
A diplomat... is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
Caskie Stinnett
Then the other things I witnessed, things that gave me an ounce of faith in my country for just a fleeting moment. People helping each other, empathy in the eyes of people strangers to us. That look that said 'if you need me I am here,' that we all gave each other while being still wary of who the enemy may be. Teenage boys with mohawks and chains helping an old lady to her car with her groceries and everyone watching knowing that they WERE helping her, not robbing her. Such tragedy that led to a short-lived newfound peace, but a peace I have yet to witness again and hope never to again if it only follows horrors upon horrors.
Of course in the days, the weeks that followed I randomly joined in the fray with the other bloodthirsty Americans that wanted retribution for this horror. Someone is responsible, lets find them and see that they 'come to justice'. Which in US-English means KILL THEM, DESTROY an EYE FOR AN EYE. So in the early days of the war we were all just as blinded by the excuses that were hoisted at us. We ALL enjoyed hearing about the bombings, the revenge, the loathing of the group of people responsible. And it took a few years and a lot of dead soldiers to begin to change the minds of the biggest hunters of retribution in the USA.
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of. Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
Now five years later, we have lost more soldiers to this 'war on terrorism' then we did in the act itself. We have divided our own country more deliberately then the terrorist did on that day so long ago by having to choose our sides. The side that gives and saves lives or the side that seeks oil and profit. Come on, I am not a bleeding liberal nor am I a tight-assed republican, I am just human, but this human sees something behind this war that shouldn't ever have come into play. There were body parts all over the ground at the WTC site the day of the attacks and I am quite sure they resemble a lot of the parts that mothers and fathers, husbands and wives are getting back in nice little pine boxes covered in American flags daily from the Mid-East. And thats just bitter old lazy ass us. The same US that sat around not giving a fuck until some radical assholes stole some of our planes and used them to kill our citizens. What about the people who are caught in the crossfire of this 'war on terrorism'? Crossfire includes Iraqi civilians. Crossfire includes our own youth who are missing key parts of their own families to this war.
We are the people our parents warned us about.
Jimmy Buffett
Dont even fuckin tell me that in a world where I can get online even out in the fuckin stix and use a GIS system to see if my mother is home 30 miles away, that we can't find, pin-point and 'bring to justice' the people directly responsible for this mass murder, that we dont know where the hell a few terrorist are lurking. I am getting sick and fucking tired of hearing about how 'we spotted Bin Laden today but lost him as he ran into the mountains of Pakistan' when our military intelligence is likely surpassed by no country on earth. I bet if I looked hard enough, I could probably find a live fuckin feed of Bin Laden and Bush having dinner in a bunker somewhere and toasting each other with barrels of oil. Keep feeding us that bullshit while we watch soldiers brought home in body bags for just simply doing their jobs. Keep acting like this all about exacting revenge when its about continuing the Bush Family Legacy.
Keep up the ignorance America, your government is depending on it.
A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
Bob Edwards
