I spent the 11th as I did that first time. At work. I remember driving to work ten years ago yesterday. I remember the total silence. No planes. No birds. Total silence. I remember the flags. Everywhere. On cars. Flying from the backs of trucks. In people's hands. Set out on the curb to wave, to show support. I remember each day, at the time of the first plane, the church bells tolling. This went on for so many days. I remember the elderly library patrons, unable to speak when they came to return or pick up books that day. Tears running down their cheeks. Pearl Harbor.
It made me think, then, and now. How do the People in the countries America has invaded, bombed and terrorized feel? How does what we experienced compare? It doesn't. We, as a country, have no idea what it is to be "terrorized". I didn't watch any of the "tributes". I didn't sit in front of the television watching the event repeated. 2400 souls lost in the Trade Center. How many Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq? That should be what we REMEMBERED yesterday.
And, more to the point, how many have we killed in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Amen and amen.
ReplyDeleteWell put Joanne. I said my piece on Terry's blog this morning.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same. I'll never forget that day. When the wind blew in this direction, the stark contrast between the beautiful blue September sky and the smell waa enough to imprint that in my head for all time. You just stood there knowing what that smell was wafting over you. Too horrible.
The sound of the fighter jets patroling back and forth from out east was so loud and frightening and yet weirdly comforting. It did make me think of how people who are under attack elsewhere in the world must feel hearing those screaming jet sounds coming.
Well said Joanne, much respect!
ReplyDeleteGem
You could make the same argument for any war. We only have to think of the French countryside during WWII and how much the American soldiers were loathed despite what they did to drive back the Germans. The American forces did as much if not more damage with their bombs and warfare than the Germans had done.
ReplyDeleteWhatever terrorizing the Americans have done in Afghanistan or Iraq pales in comparison to what the Taliban has done or what Saddam Hussein and his cronies did to anyone they decided didn't have the right to live.