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An Occasion for Evil
by Intrepid
I am always fascinated at how the most important and meaningful events of our lives can be turned into occasions for evil. Four years after the triple-sneak attacks on our nation, we may now look back and see for ourselves in the great landscape and in the telling details what has developed from the momentous events of September 11th.
On that day, I personally stood on my roof along with my mate and my neighbors and watched the Twin Towers get hit, burn and fall. We were stunned, amazed. At times I was frantic, but I remember a neighbor holding his little boy on his shoulders while videotaping the whole thing. A pretty woman with wet, auburn hair that smelled like flowers was weeping uncontrollably.
"What's wrong?" I asked stupidly. "My office is there on the 84th floor," she said pointing to the North Tower. "I have a 10:00 a.m. meeting. I was running late. I was washing my hair in the shower and then I was running late."
"Well, be thankful you're late today" I said trying to calm her. "No, you don't understand. My degrees are there in my office. My pictures of my family. My picture of my grandmother. My law degree. It's all there." She said, crying, crying. "Ah, but you're here," I told her while considering how the hair of her colleagues would be dry, and what that signified.
I happened to be standing next to two young foreigners (who were workmen for our cooperative) when the second plane hit. I remember looking at the smoking second tower and thinking out loud, 'who's doing this?' "The Jews" said the young man closest to me. He was tall and pale and blond, with an Eastern European accent. But really he was Everyman, or at least the primitive side of every man.
Another neighbor lady sat on the ground with her two little dogs. She was crying, too, and shaking her head saying over and over, "I don't understand. I just don't understand." In the four years that have passed since that day, I think our "leaders" our "spokespersons" and our "victims" have all tried hard to spread that same sentiment throughout the land so that it might mesmerize the people--and themselves--with NOT understanding.
And that evening on the TV members of Congress stood on the Capital steps, trying to sing God Bless America. But the sound they made was not music. It was as if their mouths were full of ashes and the song was dead instead of what it normally sounds like from the mouth of any school child and every common citizen: a pledge, a rallying cry and a prayer.
By all means don't call a thing by its name. Don't call a spade a spade. Don't identify your enemy and shout it from the rooftops. And, under no circumstances should we tell ourselves what this means, what it is. It is war. World War. Terrorist War. We did not start it. They brought it to us and will do so again and again. Is that tragic? Yes, for those who get killed and for their families who lose them, that's tragic. But what happened on September 11th was not tragedy, it was war. Until and unless that is understood and pounded into our heads again and again, we are nothing but sitting ducks. We are also fools. And that goes doubly for our leaders who can't lead horses to water.
As for the families of those that got killed on September 11th, let us be honest. Their loved ones are our war dead. They died in a very specific and deliberate way. They were killed in a sneak attack. Yes, they are our honored war dead. Not victims, thank you very much. And the families though bereft, are not victims any longer either, after four years. They are parasites, psychological parasites--as are many of our leaders and the would be perpetrators of the alleged cultural center.
There was another woman on the roof with us that morning. I knew her only slightly, but always recognized her because she and her husband had the most adorable little gray dog which they groomed beautifully and took for walks on a long, red leash. Her husband died in the World Trade Center that day and within a year the dog died too. The following year, she killed herself. I don't think 2 million dollars would have meant any more to her than 2 cents. It is neither a question of affluence nor poverty. It is about love and loss. Whenever I think of a victim, I think of this woman. Who among the families of the 9/11 War Dead would stand in this ladies shoes for all the money in the world? And if they would not--as I would not--then what are they talking about?
Nature abhors a vacuum and that which has festered since 9/11 is not due to the families of the dead. They are only a symptom. But the cause is a profound lack of leadership, a lack of vision and the absence of honesty and clarity which has brought us in four years to this tenuous place: the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And with the world watching, a natural disaster has been a dress rehearsal for us and for the enemy: radical Islam.
We failed this test and cannot hope to win this War until we are willing to come together as one nation, under God. I fear that is not politically correct. But the "correction" would be an occasion for evil.
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