Listen, about NINE-ONE-ONE . . .
9/11 was a terrible, terrible thing. No argument.
Very bad, very sad and also probably could have been avoided*.
Words will never do justice to those who lost loved ones, over 3,000 of them, on this day seven years ago.
It was a terrible and tragic event.
But more tragic is what happened after it.
By that I mean our government and the EPA lying to rescue workers about the safety of the air, and then when the workers started getting sick and dying, the government claimed it didn’t have to do with the air at ground zero and refused to pay for health care (court cases still going on), at least at first.
By that I mean the fact that the man responsible for the above tragedy hasn’t been caught and isn’t a priority for the Bush administration, in their own words, they don’t think about him too much. He sends videos mocking us.
By that I mean the nearly 5,000 soldiers killed and 60,000** wounded by invading Iraq to protect us from an attack with WMDs that Iraq didn’t have.
By that I mean being told we had to invade Iraq and STAY in Iraq because Iraq was responsible for 9/11, when Iraq had nothing to do with it.
By that I mean the over 100,000 dead Iraqi citizens, killed when we invaded to free them from Saddam, and the millions of displaced Iraqi refugees.
By that I mean New Orleans and all the people killed there, killed not when Hurricane Katrina hit, but days after when the levees broke and the government didn’t do anything because it was mainly poor black folk and staying in the abandoned stadium without water or toilets is good enough for them, according to Barbara Bush.
By that I mean George W. Bush lying publicly, twice, about breaking the fourth amendment, essentially breaking federal law.
By that I mean the dissolution of our civil liberties and Bill of Rights, as a country who once stood for freedom and democracy around the world which now has a reputation for fraudulent lies and torturing people we don’t like, throwing them in prison and keeping them there for years without trial, without due process or a lawyer, spies on its own citizens without a warrant, just like Saddam used to do.
By that I mean that the United States of America now uses torture (can’t say this enough, because it’s nearly unbelievable), sanctioned by the government, on innocent and guilty people both. Just like Saddam used to do.
Those above things, when added together, especially the major tearing and bending of the constitution that binds America together as a democracy, those events are more tragic, terrible and criminal than what happened on NINE-ONE-ONE, bad as that day was.
In America, more than 3,000 people die on the highways in automobile accidents, every year. And that’s tragic, too.
But because they don’t die in one spot on one highway, we don’t do anything about it.
And considering what has been done in the name of the tragedy that was NINE-ONE-ONE, maybe we’re lucky no one has tried.
Originally written for Theatre is Territory: 10 questions
Footies:
*Yes, it could have been avoided, I believe. Not only did Bush get a memo warning him bin Laden was poised to strike on US soil, our intelligence people sent a man down to his ranch on Crawford specifically to brief him on the memo in August, 2001. Bush listened without a word, and when the man was done telling him the danger bin Laden represented, Bush said, “All right, you covered your ass. You can go now.” And then he continued his vacation without another thought about it.
**By the time you read this, both of these numbers will have gone up.
