I not only remember those who died horrifically 10 years ago, I choose to remember what's happened between then and now. All the torture, all the bombs, all the blood. As the weeks turned into months, and more and more Afghans were erased by our Judge Holden-wannabe Administration, swept under the rug as enemy combatants. As fireballs burst into the sky during Shock and Awe, the darkness of that Baghdad night poured into my soul. I remember the millions of refugees from across Southwestern Asia. Do you remember Omar Khadr, who was barely into puberty before he was tortured severely enough to destroy his mental health for the rest of his life?
I remember being told to move to other countries and that I was anti-American, and the bitter taste of how insulting that is, considering my ancestry as a person of Indian descent. I remember how the first American woman to die in Iraq was Lori Piestewa, and how she has never been given the respect she deserved, while lies abounded about her surviving comrade Jessica Lynch. I remember Pat Tillman, do you? I remember the funeral I sang at, and the bravery of the dead, and the look of the governor in the church pew.
I remember how minorities, class and racial, are impacted by our country's decisions since that terrible crossroad.
I do not forget how the liberal-left told me that Afghanistan was the "just" war, the "right" war. I remember being told that on here, by the serious kids especially, and how that salt in the wound came after years of living in redder America and with redder Americans who saw me as a traitor and a commie. I recall the feel of the chilly, leafless evenings when white grandmothers dressed in black would stand at street corners, enduring the middle fingers and the profanities, as they protested the murder.
I remember my protest sign of Ali Ismael Abbas, and how it made mothers in their SUVs wince and turn away from the sidewalk. It is a hard image to see with open eyes.
I remember how the first responders have been given empty praise and were later humiliated, treated with disdain in their quest for cosmic justice, their endeavor to receive care for the physical and mental harm they've suffered through their duty to us. Because duty is a two-way street, and because their struggle did not end ten years ago on midnight, September eleven.
I remember how the widows and other grieving differed from the use of their loved ones as political props in the corporate media, how many of them were anti-war, how many of them wanted revenge, how many of them just wanted closure instead of constant rehashing. In other words, how they are human beings with their own individual wishes, and those wishes were not especially respected.
I remember how this country mysteriously lost billions in Afghanistan and Iraq either through what ranks among the worst fiscal management standards in world history, and, in Washington, wasted trillions more at the stroke of a pen. I remember how those tales were in one ear, out the other, at the time. And no one seems to understand that costs for the US are slated to go up because those adventures were unpaid for.
And by adventures, I mean awesome carnage. To make it even more cynical, I remember how the powers fomented an Iraqi civil war, and how our Emmanuel Goldstein shifted from OBL to Saddam Hussein to Moqtada al-Sadr to justify evermore treasure and blood.
I remember how the history of the Western World, including my European-American brrethren, was looted in Baghdad, and how magnificent buildings, including gorgeous mosques that are far more sacred to me than any plastered, concrete megachurch, were blown apart. I remember how the Jews of Baghdad, one of the last intact, Middle-Eastern communities outside of Israel, became an open target. I remember how the Maronites of Iraq are being slaughtered, their churches and clerics targeted, and how no one seems to touch that appalling situation.
I remember how the US can't figure out what it wants in Afghanistan, a country we tried to bomb into crud. It wants to get the Taliban, it quietly admits it can't root out the Taliban. It's there to get Islamic terrorism, it's there to stop the growth of poppy--you know, what actually could raise Afghan farmers' standard of living.
I remember how Bush's minions claimed that we had been kept safe and no terrorist attacks happened on Bush's watch... I remember how anything Donald Rumsfeld said was a lie made so poorly it couldn't even be noted. I remember how dark everything felt for years after 9/11. I remember how we could have taken a great chance to raise the standards of living in this country and others, and with it, turn people away from ignorance and hatred, and how we went right for the ideological hatred instead.
I remember a lot of things. But what's important is that I don't stop at the instant, choiceless recall of the faces of first responders, and people jumping to their death, and burning alive, and crushed into dust. I choose to remember history. Choosing to remember the consequences separates discerning from undisciplined thinking--a sacred duty. I could go into the prior history too, (prior WTC bombing, Carter and Reagan relations with Afghanistan, Iran-Iraq war?) but that's another diary.
I remember that tragedy means "goat song" because it denotes a story that people, ordinary as the shepherds of old, tell with the music of words. It impresses upon me that tragedy always implies human agency and consequences of wrong decisions, not powerlessness. I remember that we still live in a great tragedy for the ages.