As the President prepares to speak to the country tonight about the end of military action in Iraq, I haven't been able to stop thinking about those terrible days which followed the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. On the five year anniversary of that day, I wrote about it in this blog post.
Five years ago, I was having a quick breakfast at my house in Washington, DC. I was getting ready to go to the airport for a flight to Miami for the beginning of the U.S. Conference in AIDS. I was the still fairly new director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition and many of our staff had flown to Florida the day before.
I was watching Matt Lauer on the Today Show interview an author friend of mine, Richard Hack, when they stopped the interview to mention a report of an explosion at the World Trade Center in New York. Those early reports were chaotic and confused; nobody really knew what was happening. After that quick initial report, Matt Lauer went back to interviewing my friend.
Within minutes, however, the real story started to emerge. A plane, they said, off-course, had hit the first tower. What would become around-the-clock coverage began on every channel. Not long after, a second plane, the second tower. Fear and powerlessness began to take over. Planes were grounded. I wasn't going to Miami.
When I wrote that in 2006, I was in Skopje, Macedonia working on a cool USAID-funded project for the Institute for Sustainable Communities. If you read the whole post, you'll see I was frustrated that the war was still going on. In fact, that post includes a press release I wrote and my organization issued just days after the attacks n 2001. Our fear then was a war that would rage on and on, ever-expanding, with unclear goals motivated more by vengeance, than justice.
Then, as now, we knew that opposition to military action would be called un-American; and we were afraid of what might happen to dissenting voices during the national debate:
In taking this stance, we recognize that it won't be popular and it may even be dangerous. Even now, more than three weeks after this horrific attack, there exists a highly-charged, revenge-bent atmosphere—an atmosphere palpable particularly for people who look like they may be from the Middle East, but which ultimately affects all Americans.
We are deeply concerned about the environment of suspicion, blame and violence fueled, in large measure, by the bellicose rhetoric which came early from the White House.We hope that their proverbial “better angels” guide all Americans in this time of turmoil. We specifically call upon President George W. Bush to be a leader in this regard, and we are grateful that he has begun to tone down the rhetoric.
We know we face the inevitable charges hurled from predictable quarters condemning our position as un-American. We are clear, however, in the distinctions between blind nationalism and true patriotism. We refuse to muzzle our deep and heartfelt concerns about this war, for fear of being labeled as traitors. If democratic ideals are ever to be truly realized by all Americans, we must all stand with our country when and where she is right, and work firmly and steadfastly to correct the course when, as now, we believe she is in danger of betraying the ideals that make her great.
We are not saying that the US cannot work hard to bring the people who are responsible for these atrocities to justice. But, the ends cannot justify the means when the means require us to restrict the democratic values which make us American in the first place . . .
In the subsequent five years, I've worked outside of the U.S. almost as much as in it. I've been in 18 countries including places like Kosovo, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. I've seen and learned a lot along the way—about those countries and my own.
I still think we were wrong to go into Iraq—a country that had nothing to do with 911. And then to go so quickly into Afghanistan without any real plan. It still seems unconscionable.
But, we are there now and I've spent a few months on the ground working in Kabul trying to imagine what would happen if the troops pulled out. It would be chaos and innocent Afghans would suffer. I hope we'll hear more though about that debate tonight in the President's speech.
In the meantime, I'll celebrate with so many others the end of the Iraq War. I'll grieve for those whom we have lost, honoring their lives and spirits, and reflecting upon what it will take to end violence, hunger, poverty, and tyranny in every corner of the world.
Yeah, it took 16 months instead of 13 for us to leave, but if that made the exit a little safer for our troops, a little chaotic for Iraqis, I can live with it. And I'll remain grateful that we have a President who not only keeps his word, but more importantly, one whose ego refuses to allow vengeance to substitute for justice.
![Sept. 2009 167_thumb[1]](http://www.endlesssimmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Sept.-2009-167_thumb1-150x150.jpg "Sept. 2009 167_thumb[1]")
