9/11

I'm a tad late with these thoughts, but I took a little time to digest them. I heard a lot of lead up to the anniversary of the September 11th attacks yesterday on the news and such, but it felt kind of contrived. It was like the various news outlets looked at the calendar and just realized that it was almost September 11th and they should probably do or say something about it. You really should acknowledge it, right? They were mainly along the lines of USA Today wondering "Is 9/11 becoming just another calendar date?" The news accounts came across as obligatory and insincere.

I was pretty jaded about it myself during the lead up and most of the day. Although I had heard about it and certainly was aware of the upcoming date, I didn't really have strong feelings about the event. The only mention of anything was the media, but during the day, I never once heard anyone I was around even mention it. I thought about it a lot myself, since, due to my job, I write the date often. Usually I just noted the coincidence and moved on.

Until I got back to the hotel and flipped on the TV.

The first thing that was on was a retrospective of that morning. One tower already had a hole in it and the other was just being hit by the second plane as I tuned in. The commentators were completely lost as to what to say about it. It brought the actual morning crashing back to me. I suddenly remembered exactly what I felt that day, watching as the news showed the crashing and falling videos over and over again. I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline, and I remembered the feeling of just being mad as hell at whoever had done this.

Moreover, I felt pissed off all over again. First, I was pissed at Osama and his minions. How could anyone possibly think this was a rational action? How could intentionally killing civilians be justified? How could we tolerated the existence of someone like that? But the more I stewed about it, the more I realized that I am still very angry that we have not remedied the situation. The person most responsible, both by our accusations and his own admission, is still running around taunting us with videos on the anniversary of the most devastating attack on American soil in 60-odd years, and the best we can do is debate whether or not he has dyed his beard. We're wasting time and money and lives running around in the wrong damn desert while the person who started us out on the War on Terror is still out there, as effective a figurehead as he ever was, at least in part because he has so far evaded the most powerful military on the planet. Why, after all the American (and even world) outcry, did we send only 11,000 troops into Afghanistan, where we knew the man and organization responsible for the attacks was taking refuge? And why did we then send over 100,000 troops (and now over 160,000) into a country that had been pinned down and helpless for 10 years, effectively hamstringing ourselves from doing anything further on the original problem?

Yeah, I'm still pissed. At the original problem as well as our response to it. Sorry for the rant, but yesterday affected me a lot more than I thought it would.