Tuesday, September 11, 2007
(8:59 AM) | Stephen:
Happy Birthday, Son
Today is my son's 1st birthday. Last year my wife jinxed herself by saying that she didn't care what day our son came, so long as it wasn't September 11. She really has no one to blame but herself, of course.
So now whenever someone finds out what day our son was born, they always nod their head and say, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh." I try not to be too hard on them, because the events of September 11, 2001 are still an open wound on America's soul. It was a day on which the USA should have grown up and joined the rest of the world - the rest of the world that experiences terrorist violence regularly.
Unfortunately, George Bush and his accomplices saw that the United States was about to do just that, and saw how nations that are usually quite hostile to us were expressing their solidarity with us. Such emotional maturity, such awareness of world events on the part of Americans and such thawing of relations was, we can now see, entirely antithetical to the goals that Bush has had since before he took office. So he used his enormous bully pulpit to tell Americans to shop, to use blind consumerism to soothe their battered psyches, and he set about making sure that he alienated not only those nations traditionally hostile to us, but ever other nation he could.
Six years later, and the man responsible for the attacks is still free, and is still decidedly not a priority to the Bush Administration. All conspiracy theories aside, the most likely explanation for this is that Bush has no desire for Americans to be able to move past that day. He doesn't want there to be any sense of justice, of closure. He wants 9/11 to be an open wound so that he can periodically stick his thumb in it and twist it around, bringing up the pain and heartache again and again.
My son will never be able to escape the connection to 9/11/01. But I do long for the day in which that connection is to something that is finally put to rest in the past. If you want to honor the victims of that horrible day, then don't waste your time with "charity." You can do charity tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Spend today learning the truth, as much as you can, about anything you can. Commit yourself to truth, to standing firm against the onslaught of lies coming from the "Petraeus" Report, to resisting the idea that Bush's war of conquest has anything to do with bin Ladin, anything to do with terrorism or preserving the safety of Americans.
So now whenever someone finds out what day our son was born, they always nod their head and say, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh." I try not to be too hard on them, because the events of September 11, 2001 are still an open wound on America's soul. It was a day on which the USA should have grown up and joined the rest of the world - the rest of the world that experiences terrorist violence regularly.
Unfortunately, George Bush and his accomplices saw that the United States was about to do just that, and saw how nations that are usually quite hostile to us were expressing their solidarity with us. Such emotional maturity, such awareness of world events on the part of Americans and such thawing of relations was, we can now see, entirely antithetical to the goals that Bush has had since before he took office. So he used his enormous bully pulpit to tell Americans to shop, to use blind consumerism to soothe their battered psyches, and he set about making sure that he alienated not only those nations traditionally hostile to us, but ever other nation he could.
Six years later, and the man responsible for the attacks is still free, and is still decidedly not a priority to the Bush Administration. All conspiracy theories aside, the most likely explanation for this is that Bush has no desire for Americans to be able to move past that day. He doesn't want there to be any sense of justice, of closure. He wants 9/11 to be an open wound so that he can periodically stick his thumb in it and twist it around, bringing up the pain and heartache again and again.
My son will never be able to escape the connection to 9/11/01. But I do long for the day in which that connection is to something that is finally put to rest in the past. If you want to honor the victims of that horrible day, then don't waste your time with "charity." You can do charity tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Spend today learning the truth, as much as you can, about anything you can. Commit yourself to truth, to standing firm against the onslaught of lies coming from the "Petraeus" Report, to resisting the idea that Bush's war of conquest has anything to do with bin Ladin, anything to do with terrorism or preserving the safety of Americans.
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