It is still september 11th on the eastern
coast of the United States of America. I'm in Spain, and it's now Sept. 12th. The Spanish government may not be supportive of the Bush team, but over here, despite how much the people might think poorly of Americans, they have not forgotten Sept. 11th and the bombing of the World Trade Center or the innocent lives that were lost there. Tonight there was a long television show (dubbed in Spanish of course) documenting the World Trade Center attacks. There were interviews with survivors, police, firefighters. It was American made. There was nothing subversive about it, or anti-american.

September 11th 2001 was a beautiful day in Boulder Colorado, where I was living on that serene morning. I woke up early and drove into the mountains to crawl around on rocks with chalk on my fingers and really tight shoes. The sky was light blue and pristinely clear, as it was above New York. The infidels didn't know they were infidels. But that crystal blue day, we lay folk, chubby with the wealth created in the 90's and still freshly removed of our cold-war opponents, were lazily gazing at the blue sky's of a few grand years as the unchallenged global super-power, and we were cheerily ignorant of the coming storm.

But the serene blue vista, the calm Starbucks gaze out a Trade Center window, was shattered by the first plane. And there were more planes. The caffeine buzz was gone, suddenly unnesessary, and replaced by riteous indignation. We found ourselves battered. And we presumed it to have been even worse than it was. We estimated the death toll thousands above what it turned out to be. Nothing short of miracles had occured in the stories we heard about survivors, reunited families, strangers saving strangers. But there were the dead. Tragic deaths. Good people, good Americans, had been slaughtered by an unknown enemy. We were mad.

Our president told us that we would find out who did this, and we would get them. This is our story, the story which starts when the first plane hit. But there was also the story of the pilots, the suicide hi-jackers, brave and faithful enough to die for their cause. People spent years planning the attack. They were muslim people, and most of them had been living in far different worlds for most of their lives than Americans. They had spent more time fighting with guns than with SAT exam scores. They too have a story. And to many of their peers, they are the heroes of that day.

I think it is a sad thing. I think it is a sad thing that they see us as so wrong that they will die to kill us, and I think it is a sad thing that we don't see their story, the one that starts before 9/11, at all, we only see the story that starts on 9/11, and that story stars them as the enemy: a senseless, "evil," enemy, which is out to get us because of our freedom. This is not a true story, and it is getting really late so i'm not going to delve further here. But let me just say that who are we to say that we, (one group of people), are more right than them (another group of people). WE are all just people. If we can start concentrating a bit more on improving WE, rather than attacking or retaliating against THEM, we might make some progress in connecting the dots between the history of pre-9/11, the history of post--9/11, and the future of civilization. Turning the world into America is not a very realistic goal. Let's just look at Dick Cheney's vision of Iraq for example. He could have been right in thinking that we would be greeted as liberators. It turned out that he was wrong. Afghanistan is another example. Or how about planting "democracy" in Palestine, stir the soup of a lack of critical thought, and you get an elected "terrorist organization."

The republicans are busy doing HAMMER TIME, and they are using the same hammer that they've used before, jack-hammering away at us with fear. As the elections approach I can hear it all the way in Spain. The administration is busy administering the same loud feed-back, pre-chewed fumblecabbage that they've stunk us up with before, "WE ARE NOT SAFE." They seem convinced, or seem to be trying to convince us, that if we don't stay at war, there will never be peace. But does that make sense?

I'm not trying to say that the democrats are going to fix all the problems, but I keep hearing that if we elect the democrats "they are going to bring us back to a pre-9/11 world." Are they going to stick all our heads in the sand and time warp us back? What i want to know is: is that really any different than the present? The biggest difference is that our actions were more in keeping (certainly not perfect) with international law. It could have been 9/9, or 8/28, or 10/02, but whatever you say, people hi-jacked planes with box-cutters and fake bombs and they killed a great number of people and did some tremendous damage which reflected a well thought out and carefully executed plan. Not the work of some demented crazies, but rather the work of highly motivated people. If the people who planned the Iraq war also planned 9/11, the first plane would probably never have made it off the ground.

Side note: my "pop" taught me that the kid who tortures animals is never popular. And the grownup who tortures grownups... well, not only is he not popular, but he is also breaking international laws, and subjecting himself to worthy scrutiny. He is a criminal. And he deserves to be held-accountable and punished...

We have lost perspective of what America once stood for. The media is certainly no help. Neither the red team or the blue team in America have the answer because both are playing with a flat football on a soccer field. The muslim cricketeers aren't playing a nice game, they aren't playing a fair game, but most of all they are playing a game that we in America haven't got a clue about. All the different players seem to think that their sport is the only true sport. I think an acknowledgement on all sides that different games exist and can all be true at the same time might be a good start.

America has a lot of work to do to start making friends again. "Terrorists" are people. They have a story, and they have reasons for doing what they do. The ends may not justify the means, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the other side (being us) is right in any response it makes. The post-9/11 story is the scariest to me. It is still being written as I write. Someone is probably getting killed in Iraq right now, likely there will be at least one or two American soldiers killed today, and who knows how many civilians. America needs to take inventory. We can admit that we were wrong to invade Iraq, but that does not mean that we can pull out our troops. But the guns that our soldiers carry are not the weapons that will win the war on terror. The minds of men and women are the only weapons which can win this war. This is a war of ideas, of civilized thought. Both sides are fighting like savages. Savages kill, savages fight with brute force. If we wish to call ourselves the civilized world, we should stop shooting and start thinking. We should stop yelling and start talking, infidel to infidel, soldier to Jihadi, men bound for heaven to men bound for hell, priests to clerics, and both of them to scientists. This planet is getting smaller every-day, we have to start acting like the neighbors we all are. All of us.