We move on, eventually. Life has that way of refusing to end. But sometimes, without warning, it comes back. We remember it all over again. And I get angry all over again. No, I'm not angry at Islam. Or the 19 men who hijacked those 4 planes. I'm not angry at the GOP -- well, I am but not about 9/11 per se -- nor am I angry at the hypocrisy of American foreign policy that continues to this day because we still have not learned what God was trying to tell us about the "Other" on 9/11.
What I am angry at, over a decade later, is how people on the west coast. Still. Just. Don't. Get. It. Day to day, it doesn't really enter into my reality. But every once in a while, something will get said. No, they never mean to be insensitive. After all, I was not in New York that day. For God's sake, I'm from literally hundreds of miles south of there. But do you not understand that my father used to work in the Pentagon? That my high school sits literally, directly across the Potomac River from the Pentagon impact site?
You claim to have compassion for all of God's creatures, and certainly you study the vile and heinous things that we Americans have done in the name of safety, democracy, freedom... oil... free-trade... WMDs that never were... fear... but you turn your back on people who chose to serve. Wake up and smell the taint of your own hypocrisy. We are in the middle of an epic of suicide related to the military that has never been seen before. Our veterans need us more than ever. Could you put your heart in front of your politics for just a minute and recognize that we are in the midst of an emotional holocaust and it is destroying an entire generation of Americans in uniform?
What I am angry at, over a decade later, is how people on the west coast. Still. Just. Don't. Get. It. Day to day, it doesn't really enter into my reality. But every once in a while, something will get said. No, they never mean to be insensitive. After all, I was not in New York that day. For God's sake, I'm from literally hundreds of miles south of there. But do you not understand that my father used to work in the Pentagon? That my high school sits literally, directly across the Potomac River from the Pentagon impact site?
You claim to have compassion for all of God's creatures, and certainly you study the vile and heinous things that we Americans have done in the name of safety, democracy, freedom... oil... free-trade... WMDs that never were... fear... but you turn your back on people who chose to serve. Wake up and smell the taint of your own hypocrisy. We are in the middle of an epic of suicide related to the military that has never been seen before. Our veterans need us more than ever. Could you put your heart in front of your politics for just a minute and recognize that we are in the midst of an emotional holocaust and it is destroying an entire generation of Americans in uniform?
Could you take a minute, open a Bible, and please read John 15:1-13? I would respectfully suggest that we should thank God every day for those who serve and we should provide for anything and everything they need. Not just by flexing our political will so that our leaders deploy our military only for just causes, but also by caring for our soldiers whether their service was for a just cause or not?
Jesus did not give less support to Romans who saw Him for who He was just because they were not of His tribe. Why do we even bother to call ourselves His followers if we do not practice such hospitality?
Jesus did not give less support to Romans who saw Him for who He was just because they were not of His tribe. Why do we even bother to call ourselves His followers if we do not practice such hospitality?
And Jesus cried out and said, 'He who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And he who sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me.'
- John 12:44-50
I think Jello Biafra put it best when he pointed out that we have a long history in this country of saying, "Rah rah! Support the troops!" while the war is happening, but when the troops come back we say, "Fuck 'em!"
ReplyDeleteI never supported the war, and I also never blamed the troops for the decisions that civilian leaders made. But what we all must accept is that we, as a society, voted Bush in. Germany didn't do it. France didn't do it. G*d didn't do it. We did. And now we have to put up with the damage he caused, ALL of it. It's a big shit sandwich and we all have to take a bite.
Thing is, I completely and totally supported -- an in principle, still do -- the war in Afghanistan. Of course, I also am self-aware enough to realize that the blame for *that* particular war, and I would add 9/11 as well, ultimately sits on the shoulders of one George Herbert Walker Bush and another guy named Ronald Wilson Reagan, neither of whom stopped to think that the very radical Muslim warlords the USA had *trained* in guerrilla warfare might turn against the USA in response to our total lack of help in rebuilding the country after what the USSR and the USA-funded mujahadeen did to it. Osama binLaden was *not* a direct enemy of the USA until he saw the reality we left behind in Afghanistan.
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