This has a couple swear words, it's unfiltered feelings. Please don’t read it if you can’t read past “curse words”. xo
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44
September 11th, 2001 happened my senior year of high school. I remember the bell had rung ending English class. The teacher said something about an announcement going to be made over the loudspeaker regarding some national event, crisis. The story was a commercial airliner had crashed into one of the Twin Tower’s in New York City. There was at first no reason to assume that it was necessarily terrorist related. At first it was thought to be an accident, an error, a snafu but then... a second air plane crashed into the other tower... and we all knew... this was no accident. Reports were coming in of possible other planes missing and speculation was rampant regarding what the next target might be. Air traffic control centers across the country worked to land every single plane airborne in the United States immediately. It was a terrifying morning but the morning wasn’t over; the sight of the south tower crumbling... the sight of the north tower crumbling... the sight of the pentagon burning... the stories of people jumping out of the 110 story towers to their deaths, the tale of firefighters and policeman not running away from the towers but towards them... the day isn’t one you forget. I remember calling my mom from school to make sure was alright. Sometimes her work gave her reason to be in downtown Milwaukee and with major cities being attacked I was worried. I remember coming home from school, walking up the stairs and turning on CNN. The images of horror, no words can ever capture.
September 11th shattered that naivety that America was invulnerable. The bigger questions of “Why did this happen?” and “What does it mean?” didn’t linger long. Immediately a military attack was orchestrated with promises of retribution (“justice”). Immediately people handed over their civil liberties like they were tinker toys. The reason of “Why?” didn’t matter as much as the punching back. Prior to the disaster the leaders of our nation were looking for a way to attack Iraq and they manipulated the 9/11 event to be their reason. Prior to the disaster there were warnings of its coming and the leaders of our nation did nothing. Nothing was practically done to prevent this crisis but a hell of a lot of shit was blown up after it happened. Nice. How many innocent Afghani people died in our display of “You hit me, I pulverize you”? Will there be a memorial to them at the site of 9/11 or are they just as faceless, nameless and voiceless as they were before September 11th? How much tax money has exchanged hands under the table, even out in the open? “Bin Laden, wanted dead or alive” our cowboy President said then later it was “Osama Bin Laden who?” The bullshit of this fiasco staggers the mind. Water boarding, “wartime president” rhetoric, torture and humiliation of prisoners, assassinations, cover-ups, lies, deception, using fear to manipulate, terror levels, the pointless gesture of taking your shoes off at the airport - all this and more became our American way of life.
Never once do I remember praying for Osama Bin Laden. It is such a shaming thing that it never even occurred to me to pray for him. Prayer isn’t my natural inclination anyway but more on that another time. This is going to sound un-American perhaps but I never looked at Osama Bin Laden and thought “enemy”. I certainly didn’t think friend or buddy by any means, but the word enemy didn’t come to mind either. Osama Bin Laden was like an odd phantom, un-catchable and yet able to communicate via internet video; he was to me a caricature of a larger issue. His face was made a symbol of an ideological, fanatical religious movement but killing the face doesn’t kill the movement; just as the death of Hitler did not bring the death of Nazi ideology, unfortunately.
How do we and did we as Americans treat our enemy? I am not impressed or proud. If Rush Limbaugh is saying “Thank God for Obama” I have to question what it is that Obama has done. Praise from Rush is not something I aspire my leaders to have. I don’t know - the way this whole thing has been handled is rubbing me the wrong way. How is Osama being dead make everything or anything better? Different even? What does his being dead now have to do with anything?
I respect our military, I value our men and women who serve, have served and who have died. Don’t make this into a patriotism thing. How is us sacrificing our enemy and our military on the altar of patriotism any different from what they do to us? Don’t make this into a religious thing. How is us sacrificing our enemy and our military on the altar of religions any different from what they do to us? I just don’t understand the wars of the last 50 years. Why does it always come down to killing? Who is right when it comes down to it? Both sides say God is on their side but the harder work of truly seeking to know God is always, always left undone. It is so easy to say something and never understand it. We speak for God when He hasn't said anything. So wrong! If the retaliatory behavior against an offender is identical to the original offenders’ behavior - than what is the point? When we become what we say we hate, we're lost. This whole thing has cost us so much, not just in skyscrapers and symbols, not just in people and service - but in our character. Who are we as a government and as a people? I wish I could say I know but I just don’t anymore...
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