Common Sense

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks. America has become quite a different place in that time. That day led us into a global war on Islamic fundamentalist and has ripped at the very fabric that holds this country together. What started out as the most unified we have ever been has now become one of the most divided times in American history.

When I think back to that day, I feel a great amount of anger. There’s the anger against those that carried out this horrific act, but there’s something else, too. The image that comes to mind isn’t the burning towers. It isn’t the view from the helicopter cameras over Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It isn’t the scenes of pandemonium as workers evacuated the White House. No, it is this image of George W. Bush.

Conservative pundits always ask where does the intense Bush-hatred come from. My hatred is rooted in that day and his actions. I remember learning that an airplane had struck one of the towers and going to the office below mine at MCC. I remember seeing our president sitting in that Florida classroom. I remember Andy Card walking up to him to tell him “Mr. President, America is under attack.”

And he sat there, looking scared, for 7 minutes. He didn’t excuse himself to to even find out who was attacking us. He just sat there, impotent to protect us. It’s been five years and I still can’t forgive him for his weakness.

With that anger is mixed a sense of missed oppurtunity. That night, I sat in Floyd Casey Stadium with thousands of others for a candlelight vigil to pray for those who might still be saved after the towers’ collapse. I saw so many people ready to sacrifice anything to help out. When I think about that, then look around to the oppurtunism and the lying we’ve seen from our own government in the past five years, I’m disgusted beyond belief.

There was so much potential that was lost because we had no real leadership.

Beyond my own anger and sense of loss there is what those who died this day must feel. Almost 3,000 people died in an event that shocked us all with its brutality and evilness. They must feel such resentment that their sacrifice, and it was a sacrifice to our ignorance of the threat posed to us, has been perverted into a mere political tool so that those who failed to protect them may keep power a little longer. They must be incensed in the afterlife that 3,000 more Americans, soldiers who fight to keep us safe, have died in Iraq because of the deceitfulness of those same politicians.

The dead speak to us sometimes. And sometimes their silence speaks volumes more about how they feel toward the world of the living.

Its been five years and America has changed. The question that we are left to answer is it for the better?