Checking in

It has been a while since I last posted. I just started up a new year as a teacher and am trying to get all of my timing together. Sorry for that I will post again soon.

Ten years

September 11th is a day that, to quote Roosevelt, "will forever live in infamy." It also happens to be the next pacifist day and my birthday. I hear a lot of people talking about the upcoming 10 year anniversary and it causes me to stop and think. Ten years ago I was turning 16 and at school. My father was on the Air Force Base and they were at very high alert. I was, to be honest, more confused then anything. I was told about the attacks when I woke up, but I didn't really understand it all. When I got to school that day the whole event slowly started to unfold for me. At that moment I was less angry about the fact that it was my birthday then worried for my father. In a short amount of time we were talking about war. I didn't understand it all, but I knew, front he media, that America was threatened and that we should want this war to happen. In fact, it soon became a measure of patriotism to support the war effort. The next thing we knew Iraq was being talked about. The American people were told that this country was a serious threat to American life and liberty so we should attack them. When the world wouldn't go to war with us we made the decision to go to war unilaterally and argued our "rightness" in front of the UN council. When they didn't agree, we talked about the uselessness of the United Nations and were threatening to leave since they didn't agree with us. The PATRIOT Act was passed and personal freedoms seemed to be jeopardized according to many. As the war continued we found out that the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq weren't real. News started to come out of human rights violations at Guantanamo amounting to torture. More voices began to speak out about the war and our country became divided over issues of "nationalism" and support of troops. Now, ten years later we are still at war in Afghanistan, American politicians are defending the torture of detainees because it "worked", and our standing in the international community is extremely low. I don't want to argue the rightness or politics of the war. I look back over the last decade and see, for the most part, an decade in America possessed by fear. We went to war in two nations out of fear of terrorists, we let our stance on human rights and war crimes slide, and even sacrificed our ideals of freedom of religion and basic inalienable rights all out of fear. As this week counts down to the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks think about the lives lost in defense of our freedoms. Make a stand for peace so those lost lives won't be in vain and above all don't give in to the fear this last decade has brought us.