September 11th, 2011

Time flies in trying times...

Ten years going and the memory of 9/11 is fresher than ever. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been dreading this post. It would have been great to write a piece about how far we’ve come as a nation in the past ten years and how the progress we’ve made disproves the ideology behind Islamic extremism. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be honest. We are no better off now then we were on that sunny Tuesday morning, and I think all signs point to our nation as a whole being in a place that is much, much worse.

Our armed forces have suffered thousands of lives lost, plenty of amputations and more emotional trauma than can be calculated. The decline in civil liberties has been so severe that shockingly unconstitutional acts like the suspension of habeas corpus has been embraced by both major political parties and is not even considered to be a contested issue.  The foolish military endeavors we embarked on following the attacks on the World Trade Center have drained our treasury and our influence on world affairs is lower than it has been since before World War II.

I’m not blaming us as a nation, nor do I hold any one person or party responsible. However, all of the reflection on that painful day has made this process that much harder for me. What lessons have we learned? What has been taken away from the scar that was branded into our nation's collective memory? But more importantly, in the next decade to come, can we expect our national decline to reverse its course? I don’t know, but for the sake of the children I would like to raise one day, I certainly hope so.

AB – 9/11/11