Graveyards...

At a ceremony I played today, a young captain berated the troops and audience with the memories of September eleventh, calling for the remembrance to justify warrior's fervor. The objective of the deploying troops he spoke to was Iraq, yet this would not even register as relevant for the most part. Something terrible happened within our borders, and now we must bring justice for the heroes that died that day. Let me say that that day was the beginning of a long, shattering year for me and was crippling in its gruesomeness. But there are many of us that realized that our country was experiencing something that the rest of the world has known for centuries and millinia: desperation, horror, cowering fear. On that day, I remember thinking with something approaching excitement that this country might become unified and simplified and engage in the sympathy that the world offered us and that we could possibly offer the world. What devastated me in the months, and now years, to follow was the blind rage the nation pitched itself into, claiming vengeance wherever convenience led. Yes, we should have gone to Afghanistan, assuming Bin Laden was even there after the full months lead we gave him after the event (and I'm sure he was gone well before it even happened), but how did we justify bombs when the search was for one man. Civilians in a barren wasteland of war-wracked desert were subjected to the mass executions that American weapons are designed for. And that's right folks: no Bin Laden. Yet the fear and the rage had transformed and gripped this country so deeply that there were very few questions asked when the same tragedy of 9/11 was used to justify deposing Sadam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction and human rights (oh wait, that was only mentioned later) were piled on top, but basically it has been the replaying of buildings collapsing on our compatriots, friends, family, lovers; a horrific wrong turned into propoganda justifying wrongs on a much larger scale. When will we properly mourn for our loss rather than remaining in the enraged stage of grief, making the world feel our pain exponentially? When will the people who burned and fell and suffocated in those towers be given the silence and peace that their deaths deserve? How many other monuments to death will we justify while ignoring the solemn emptiness in our own country that waits for wisdom and rest? When will this feud end?