I have not done a 9/11 post for several years. The reasons ar varied and I am not always sure I understand them myself. I was bothered yesterday. Krugman in his sickening NY Times article ( no, it will not be ,inked here) was right, the the anniversary was subdued.
I am not sure what I want. In typical male fashion, I am more than certain I cannot accurately, or remotely articulate my feelings. I do not want to listen to a recital of the victim's names. I want the names of the evil Islamic Terrorists recited. I want the names of those murderers reviled with the likes of McVey, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. 9/11 should live as a Day of Infamy equal to December 7. I want America to remember, to know who did this. I do not want to see a peaceful waterfall and reflecting pool as the reminder of that awful day, I want the images of the towers burning, the helpless Americans jumping from the burning building in a hopeless attempt to escape the flames. I want American to remember the cheering, the joy in Palestine over the senseless slaughter of innocents condemned for having temerity to believe in a different God, to live in a different culture.
Every time a court in Dearborn, Michigan tries to enforce Sharia Law, I want the people of this country to remember the fate of the men and women of 9/11 and rise up crying "Hell, no!". We have equal justice under the laws of the Constitution for every one.
When the multiculturalists try to tell us all cultures are equal, I want John and Jane Citizen to know that idea is nuts. A culture that advocates women as second class citizens, advocates female circumcision, takes joy in killing others because they believe different from the tenets laid down by a pedophile sheepherder deserves no legitimacy as long as the basic foundations of human freedom are excluded. I can not consider the killing fields of Pol Pot or the Gulags of Stalin an equal cultural decision, and I refuse to give credence to terrorists and butchers of mankind in the name of religion.
I refuse to listen to the apologists as they decry Western Civilisation for past crimes. Yes, evil was done in the name of the Christian God. Yes, we were slavers, the treatment of the Jews over the ages is deplorable. But it was this same Western Culture that overcame their Dark Ages culture, that brought us the Enlightenment, threw off the yoke of slavery, granted equal rights to women and people of color. Is it perfect? Of course not, but in modern democratic societies we no longer wield the torture of the Inquisition, suffer honor killings of our wives and daughters and sell of our female relatives like cattle. We do not behead the infidel, we do not terrorize mankind for thinking different thoughts. To make excuses is mere rationalization. No standard of living, no religious belief, no history of oppression can ever justify the actions of September 11, 2001.
I don't want to spend my 9/11 thinking of the slaughtered as victims of a terrible, unnamed accident. The men and women who breathed their last that September morning were each and every one murdered. I am still angry and I am not ready to let it go. I am not interested in monuments to peace or a couple of rusty pieces of metal stuck in the ground in Indianapolis, Memphis or Omaha. When I was in New York last winter, the hole in the skyline brought up not sadness, but anger.
The death of a Hoosier soldier in Afghanistan this weekend should hammer the point. The dying from 9/11 is not yet over. There may be some who deplore the War on Terror. They may say we are not at war on anything. Well, I have news for you -- Terror is still at war with us, and the perpetrators are all members of one single religious faith. Not all Muslims are terrorists, that I know and believe. But every terrorist in today's world is a damned Muslim. That is fact.
Yes, I feel today the same white hot anger I felt on September 12, 2001. That is what I choose to remember.
6 comments:
Well said.
Ditto.
You did, indeed, accurately and clearly express what you... and every American... should still feel.
Kudos, Joe.
When your right your right Joe, great post.
Amen. Every year I feel the overwhelming need to watch it over and over again, do raise up my fist in anger and just let it wash over me. That's probably why I reacted strongly to your 9/11 post. I was MAD, angry mad, I want to remember, I NEED to remember, at least for a few days how horribly it was, how angry and scared I was for months and months.
Then I let it go for another year. I know many who do not want to watch or hear or read anything about 9/11 at all. As I said, we all grieve differently.
I don't hate Muslims, but I would sure feel a whole damned lot better if we could ever see or hear a moderate Muslim declare the horribleness of that act and actually mean it.
Either they don't say it or it's never reported.
So I have to work at not believing all Muslims are full of hate. The media does them no favors by never airing any moderates.
I wish I could write like that.
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