Part I

There’s a boy – 6 years old, kicking around an old soccer ball in the front yard with his dad. The neighborhood is alive at dusk; 2 doors down a dog is barking, 2 more doors down a little girl is screaming at a little boy to get away from her or she’ll tell her mom. Mom can’t hear because she’s in the kitchen making dinner. Her older brother is outside, but he just tells her to shut up. A car rolls by, lacking a muffler and kicking up dust, causing an annoyed instant of commotion up and down the street. Another car drives by, a little faster. All of a sudden gunshots fire, screams resonate, insurgents shoot back at an Allied Forces tank. Dust really kicks up now, for minutes that last too long, pure terror for the 6-year-old boy, the dad for his son, the dog 2 doors down, the little girl 2 more doors down, the older brother who wished for once that he could hear his little sister. The outcome: a fatherless 6-year-old, a brother with no siblings, a barking dog offering the only sound beyond the crying.

We call those boys evil. Maybe they are now. But terror breeds terror. An emotion that is pure doesn’t let logic get a voice; emotions push to extremes, logic never does.

A word really doesn’t exist for things like 9/11. it’s almost better as those 3 numbers and a symbol because words don't represent the way we felt, the way we still remember exactly what we were doing when it happened.

But I think …. sometimes we forget that those people – those middle easterns, those insurgents, those terrorists – are, ultimately, just people. And some of them are just f-ed up in the head, just like the crazy people here (I work with some of them). But some of them have faced heartache and death and vengeance all their lives, and called out hopelessly to the sky that this life is just not fair.

5 years later, I’d almost forgotten – why did they kill us in the first place?

Because they hate us, and now… I’m just afraid that we’re feeding that hate. It’s not about Bush, about pulling out, staying in. God, that makes it sound like a bad porno. It’s about feeding that horribly illogical emotion of hate. It’s not about killing innocent people; it’s about killing people and leaving behind innocent people who cared about the people who are now dead. War is fertile ground for personal martyrs. I feel like this “war on terror” is just kicking them up like weeds.

Cultures are vastly different, but people are fundamentally the same everywhere. It’s weird, actually… weird to go to a different country and meet someone who acts just like your best friend back home.

All I’m saying is it’s weird, and emotions make you do really stupid or drastic or harmful things. We all know that. And we all know that 9/11 is very emotional. all the way around, up and down, through and through.