10 years on

I was at work, like a lot of us were.  The one advantage I had over most people was that I was able to see what was happening on the TV right above my head.  I was able to see it but I was not able to comprehend it, could not process that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center, and denied to myself that both towers had collapsed in a matter of hours.  I could not believe that the towers I had watch being built, had been in them on both business and pleasure, had seen where the tightrope walker had autographed his name on the wall the day he traversed the distance between them, had both come down in a huge tragic pile.  Just recently, I looked through a book I had bought at the time and the pictures of the huge fireballs, and the people hanging out the windows and then hurtling in the air, the piles of rubble, and the clouds of smoke and ash and debris, all still have the power to take my breath away.  As always, my thoughts turned to the people I knew there and the thousands of others who lost their lives that day.    

What have we learned in the ensuing 10 years?  A lesson that has been reinforced is that violence begets more violence.  We have lived in a near-constant state of war since then, and the grim statistics keep piling up.  Another lesson that’s been reinforced is that we leave the killing and warfare to our military; us civilians have very little to do with the war.  We ask our soldiers and sailors to put themselves in harm’s way, but we do very little to help them except pay them lip service and applaud them when their pictures are flashed on the message boards at ballparks.  If we were asked to sacrifice our plush lives to end the war, would we?  Would we accept rationing to bring the men and women home quicker?  I wish somebody would ask those questions; I’d like to know how I’d respond.