September 11 and Politics

When America was attacked on 9/11 I was sitting in my office cubicle doing the job I was being paid to do. I could not get updates other than a customer in New Jersey that kept feeding me the news. When the first tower was attacked, I, like many other people thought it was an accident, when the second tower of the World Trade Center was hit by an airplane I knew it was an act of war. What I didn’t know was who and why? I wanted to go grab my baby girls out of school and know they were safe. My boss declined that request. I should have told him to F off but I didn’t. Five mouths to feed counter acted my need for a job to feed my babies.

Why would people go to such extremes to attack a people that in all respects, no matter how you look at our political philosophies, always reaches out to lend a helping hand? Why? To this day, nobody can answer that question.

Today, I watched a two plus hour depiction of what happened on that tragic day and it got my blood boiling. So many innocent people lost their lives on 9/11 and not one of them deserved it. I’m a die hard liberal and it pissed me off. People jumping out of windows from fifty and sixty or more stories up to their death because they did not want to be burned to death. Reporters on the scene were quoted as stating that the thud of bodies hitting the ground was every couple of seconds.

These people were murdered and I may be a liberal but I am not a pacifist. When you attack my nation I will fight back! When you kill my fellow Americans just to raise awareness of your cause then you piss me off too! America is not a red state or blue state nation or tribal click, we are all Americans when you attack us.

I don’t care where the blame lands as far as what President Bush has done to defend America. He alone has had access to the information to defend this nation and I appreciate the work and sacrifice he has had to bare. We don’t know what he has had to do to protect America so I’m going off the Bush bashing mentality as a liberal blogger.

Which leads me to the next point. Do we want another hundred year war as in the days of the Crusades or to talk to the people that want to kill us all? That is a double edged sword when it comes to politics. We can kill millions of people in response to 9/11 or we can find out what the hell is really going on? Logically, none of this state of affairs makes any sense. We can just continue the status quo or we can find out what the root of the problem really is.

During the Cold War, every American President talked with the Soviet Union. Talking to your enemies is not caving in to your enemy. It's just talking and that is what diplomcacy is all about. One side talks, and then the other side talks. That is how you work out differences. It may not always be the best path but it brings people to a common understanding.

In the mean time, we have one politician running for President intent on a hundred year war and another begging for diplomacy. It is totally up to you how you vote. I’m leaning on the side of diplomacy. I still hate the bastards that killed so many innocent people on 9/11. We as a nation have to move past that point in time or forever be defined by it.

Something is wrong, how we find the balance to understand the reason and madness behind 9/11 is nothing that either McCain or Obama is running on. At this point in time they are running a he said and he said campaign and that is not serving the true spirit of the American people. Life in America is not based out of Baghdad or Iraq?

When McCain and Obama want to talk real issues then maybe we can listen in. Till then, my heart felt prayers are with the many families that lost a loved one on 9/11. Their pain is real, what are you both campaigning for President going to do about it?

If you want to convince Americans how to vote then tell us what you intend to do to protect and defend America! It is frankly that simple.

Papamoka

9/11 FATIGUE, OR 9/11 FRUSTRATION?

Picture courtesy of Terrorism Victims.org

By Michael Linn Jones

I refer you to FREEDOM EDEN and its post, 9/11 TRIBUTE FATIGUE. I believe the article quoted by Freedom Eden is from a Sept. 2, piece written by N.R. Kleinfield of the New York Times.

Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week.

Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers.

Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

“I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

I don't agree with the above sentiments. There is history, and then there is our own personal history. The world doesn't share the grief of someone losing a loved one to disease or accident. There are, though, certain intersections where an historical event becomes part of our own personal history.

There are many to choose from aside from 9/11, and I recall quite vividly the death of John F. Kennedy. I was 10 years old. School was dismissed and I'll never forget one of my fellow students hopping and skipping down the sidewalk saying, "He got shot in the head; he got shot in the head" over and over while pointing a finger gun at his own skull. Even at that age I was astounded that anyone could feel such joy at the death of another.

I cannot watch anything about November 22, 1963 without a strong sense of despair and frustration. If only this had happened; if only someone had been looking at the buildings instead of the motorcade...and on and on. This feeling I will carry to my grave. It is also frustrating to accept that one man; one loser like Lee Harvey Oswald changed our nation so much.

Frustrating also is to accept that 19 fanatics managed to alter the course of our nation, along with murdering over 3,000 innocent human beings. The use of airliners to inflict such damage will probably never happen again. Osama Bin Laden and his band of losers will constantly seek a new approach, one that will be overlooked by U.S. authorities. Like any terrorist organization, their credo says that we have to be lucky all the time, while they only have to get lucky once.

In our fractured and selfish society, 9/11 was a rare common experience. For those who lost loved ones on that day, I say ring the bell and read the names. The least I can do is respect their grief. Of course, those who died in Afghanistan and Iraq also have grieving families, and they too should be honored and remembered. I only hope that they will not have to wait and fight for recognition of their struggle as did those who fought in Vietnam or those who to this day grieve for the loss of their boys four decades ago.

No, scars heal but slowly for the human heart. One can't seriously dismiss the healing process. It's slow....very slow. Be patient with the suffering as you, too, may someday know what it feels like. I hope you never do. But that 'ole Golden Rule may not be a bad one to apply to any remembrance of 9/11.

Compare 9/11 with Pearl Harbor for a moment. The lives lost are roughly equal. But, unlike Pearl Harbor, 9/11 provided no nation to direct anger towards. True, the Taliban in Afghanistan had it coming, so to speak. Iraq we invaded, yet as brutal as Saddam Hussein was, his dictatorship was as close to being secular as any in the Middle East.

The true supporters of the attack on 9/11 are still out there. They are scattered among differing nation states. They claim to share the same faith, resulting in the idiocy of Bin Laden recommending America become Muslim, or the rank insensitivity of a Saudi prince telling Rudy Giuliani that the attack was due to American support of Israel.

So, convert to Islam; throw the Jews onto the fire, and the world will return to peace. Failing those disgusting goals, terrorism is a convenient tool for nations to take advantage of; it changes the life of the target population. And for those inside certain nations rooting them on (silently, of course) there is the option of claiming outrage over acts that they privately endorse and support.

If I have to strip down to my BVD's to see the National Archives, or the National Air & Space Museum, or the Smithsonian...then why should not those who, to this day, applaud my having to live like this be allowed the luxury of innocence?

Rather than punish an entire nation, or an entire religion, why not have a policy evolve that would make these financiers and faceless bureaucrats live in fear for their own lives?

I think on 9/11 the names of the murdered should be read while watching the film of the thousands of Palestinians cheering the deaths of those innocents on that day.

Those who supported 9/11 then, and rejoice at this anniversary, should not be allowed to have their cake and eat it, too.
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Cross posted at MICHAEL LINN JONES.COM