Eight years.
Seems like only yesterday.
Today is as different from this day eight years ago as it is possible to get. There’s no warm sunshine, just sheets of cold, grey rain. I wonder, is God pissed that we’re fighting back? Or pissed that we’re not fighting hard enough?
Does anyone even remember? Eight years ago we were thinking about invading Afghanistan to clear out the viper’s den. Today we’re still slogging through Afghanistan to no point or purpose because our esteemed leaders don’t want to be rightly viewed as soft on national security.
I think the righteous anger has calmed. The big smoking crater in New York is pretty well cleaned up and new construction is rising. The hole in the grassy meadow in Pennsylvania is now a contemplative memorial. The smashed wall in Washington has been reconstructed and holds the same offices it did eight years ago. The wounds have healed over. The scars have faded. There aren’t even any scabs left to pick. And those of us who remember what this day was like are left looking like inflexible morons for dwelling on the flames and the terror and the blood and the death.
For eight long years we’ve all been flogged with how horrible things were in the United States. How we were all subjected to a “Climate of Fear.” I have never felt so afraid from that distant day to this one as I do right now.
Eight years ago, at the very least, we had a government that understood that as of 8:46 AM Eastern Time on September 11, 2001 this nation was at war. Eight years later we have a government that thinks we brought the war on ourselves. Or that it was all the fault of the Jews. Or that we’re fighting the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time and it would probably be better to just forget all about it and concentrate on playing nice with each other and getting some legislation enacted that would cut our knees out from under us and finish the process of turning the United States of America into something like Belgium: small, powerless and dependent on others for security and wealth.
Well, hell. I still remember who we used to be and where we came from and how we got here. Somebody has to remember.