14 years

While it has been 14 years since the fall of the twin towers, the memories of that day are as fresh in my mind as the day JFK was assassinated.  I guess truly historical events burn themselves into our conscious mind.   The sheer enormity of the crime certainly rivaled the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  But the responses and their effects are so different, it is hard to reconcile them.  In 1941, we had a clear enemy state to battle and citizens were mobilized on a gigantic scale and were expected to sacrifice for the common good.   The atrocities carried out on 9/11 were the work of essentially a criminal gang with an ideology.  Instead of treating it like the crime that it was, the Bush administration used it as a catalyst for a war of hegemony in the Middle East, ostensibly to topple Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to the region.  Of course the billions of barrels of oil under the sands in Iraq may have had something to do with it.  Meanwhile, the Shrub told us to shop on while a tiny minority of the population bore the brunt of the battle.  The soldiers and their families suffered and the rest of us continued our lives without consequence.  Had Osama and his henchman been hunted by the FBI and brought to justice in the conventional way this country would now be seen as a shining example of justice and the law.  Instead, we are commonly viewed as a superpower out of control and disdained by the international community.  It will take a lot longer than 14 years to erase that stain on our reputation.