The Enemy Within

It was a clear, sunny morning here in Seattle, Sergio and I had just returned to work after our religious Starbucks pit stop and the usual five minute cigarette in the parking lot. I remember he was cracking jokes about my failed marriage while I was mocking his relentless balding, I remember that day like if it was yesterday. The mockery continued, of course, spoken loudly and openly over the cube hives at work. It was business as usual, when a Boeing 767, American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the northern side of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, it was 5:46:30 am here in Seattle.
The rest we already know... or we think we do, as with almost everything, but let’s not go there, yet.
I believe what I saw on TV that day, a day I will never forget. 2993 people died in a matter of minutes. People, not just Christians or Muslims or Jews, not just Black, Hispanic, Asian or White, not just Democrats or Republicans. People, women and men, people of all walks of life, from many countries, creeds and colors. People jumping to their deaths from skyscrapers on fire, people crushed under tons of concrete and steel rubble, firefighters and children, all tossed and charred and crushed like rag dolls. It was plural murder, and the common denominator of the people that died that day is that they were mostly American Civilians.
My heart broke, it still is. But then sadness turned to anger and then anger turned to hatred. I have never felt so American and I have never wanted to put on a black shirt, but this day changed it all.
Six years have gone by and now there are all these conspiracy theories. Were the towers imploded? Why did WTC 7 collapse? Without 9/11 would the Bush/Cheney/Rove Administration have been re-elected? Is this the excuse they needed in order to impose this fascist regime? To strip us from our individual civil rights? To steal our privacy? Did they produce it? Is the Viacomm/Rove propaganda machine similar to that one of Joseph Goebbels by coincidence? Is the Patriot Act a rough draft of an Ultra-Conservative Meine Kampf? I don’t know, but I sure keep my handy, dandy notebook.
Is it that all these people whom are fed hatred for the free world don't recognize that maybe the immigrant influx reflects that America is a great country that welcomes people from all over the world who come searching for a better life? for opportunities not found in their countries of origin?
The 9/11 terrorists were welcome with Visas into this Country just the same as the Israel Olympic Team. They were able to make a living, go to school, date, some even learned to fly, and look what they did.
I can recognize that we do rub people the wrong way and that our foreign policy has sometimes been rather despotic. But that does not justify terrorism or xenophobia, and it goes both ways. Today I grieve and think of all the children who have suffered from this violence, the children of the victims of 9/11, of our fallen troops and all the children in the World who suffer the atrocities of war. Alternative fuel is just one more thing to return to a sustainable environment, but it should not be used to isolate us from the rest of the world, we have just one, after all.
"All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."
Martin Luther King Jr.