Thursday, September 11, 2008

9/11

This morning I woke up at 6 AM to put American flags out on lawns for Patriots Day, apparently the scouts changed the time so nobody was there at 6, which gave me some time to think about 9/11 and what it means to me.

I had just started work in the Winnemucca BLM office the day before on September 10. Alina and the kids had not moved to Winnemucca yet, and were still in Springville helping take care of my father who had just suffered his aneurysm. I woke up in a hotel room by myself and turned on the TV and just sat there in shock until Alina called on the phone to ask if I was watching what was going on.

I went to work and they had locked the office, everybody knows that the BLM Office in Winnemucca is a very strategic target so it had to be shut down.

So I went to the only place I truly feel at home, the wilderness. I went up into the Santa Rosa Mountains Wilderness and hiked and thought. Thought about the same things everybody was thinking; Who would do this? Why would they do it? What inspires such evil in humans that they would willingly kill themselves and other humans that they did not even know? How do divine ideas and principles like those taught by Christ and Mohamed get twisted and used as justification for mass murder?

The events of 9/11 were completely unjustified and pure evil and those that perpetrated them should be brought to justice, no problem there. I am not exclusively a pacifist. Sometimes and in some circumstances aggression is warranted.

Now for the part that has been bothering me for 7 years. The politicization of 9/11. It seems as long as you can link something with 9/11 it justifies any action you want to take. Drill every square inch of public lands, no problem, we have to stop importing foreign oil from those people who blew up the World Trade Centers (if we drilled every square inch of the continent it would not stop us from having to import foreign oil). Torture prisoners and hold them without charging them, we have to get information from them to stop another 9/11 (Never mind that we have become exactly what we despise, I thought only the bad guys use torture?), invade and occupy Iraq, they had to have a something to do with 9/11 (Nope, absolutely nothing. But over 40% of Americans still believe there is a direct link).

As I watched the Republican National Convention and saw once again pictures of the towers waved in front of everybody to scare them into voting "for a President who knows how to win the war", I was disgusted.

Honor the dead, honor the county and the ideals it is based upon, and make sure you carefully consider your vote this November.


Long live the Red, White and Blue

5 comments:

TyandBre said...

For a long time I was oblivious to the fact that Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11. Like I said on my blog, you can't believe everything the politicians or the Bush administration tells you... Too bad some people haven't figured that out yet. :)

miranda said...

Wow we have such a political family. I'm impressed with everyones blogs. Ty let's discuss it over Sunday dinner! :)

McKell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
McKell said...

I concur. I got into a heated "discussion" about this topic with a girl in my class. Well it was about the AWFUL "Angry American" song that the very talented Toby Keith wrote. Don't worry I put a boot up her ass and solved the argument.

Julie Castellon said...

Beautiful.