Remembering...

As I went through my day, yesterday getting everything ready for my youngest daughter's birthday party, I did it like I have for the past 9 years: In a daze. Not the same as the day she turned 4. It was so busy. I had to get her to preschool. The invitations were sent. I had come up with a cute idea to make her poster of her short life even better. I bought die-cut letters spelling out her name and strung them on yarn like a necklace that laid on the pictures of her first 4 years of life. But from the moment my husband called me telling me to turn on the TV to watch the horror of an attack that still makes no sense to me it was like sleepwalking. Only one tower had been hit and I watched in disbelieving horror as the second plane flew into and almost through, but not quite, the second tower. It never occurred to me to worry for MY safety or that of my kids. The terrorists were obviously making a huge statement by choosing targets of political and populated immensity. Everywhere I went the radio or television was on. When the attacks were over I was reminded that being a newscaster is probably not on par with rocket science as the pundits asked inane questions and offered useless commentary. The bewilderment of the people living in NYC became anger, resentment and a need for vengeance. It also united the country in a way that was astonishing and brief.
9 years later and our country is as divided as it's ever been or maybe that is just the way it feels to me. Hatred is a common commodity and it's bought and sold with ignorance. My daughter's party was a success. Far more successful than I was anticipating considering I was catering to a bunch of little divas. In the background we watched the horror of 9/11 replayed over and over on the History Channel. It's amazing to me that nine years have passed and I feel no sense of atonement. Our country is financially broken by a war that to me seems a farce. It's always felt that George H. Bush had no real end to Operation Desert Storm. Saddam Hussein wasn't dead and Bush couldn't have another term. The Clinton years pulled us out of the huge national debt. And George W. Bush Jr. former college cheerleader, part owner of the Texas Ranger Baseball team, and card carrying alcoholic "good ol' boy", set about to tie up Daddy's loose ends. And he did. Bush Jr. surprised many people by choosing Dick Cheney as Vice President, but probably not his co-members of the Skull and Bones Society where shaking hands with the devil is what they aspire too. Financed by daddy's oil and bloodshed and married to Haliburton prince of darkness George W. became the worst president the United States of America has ever had. After riding off into the sunset, free of puppet master Cheney, George hasn't had much to say in the last couple of years. That's been the wisest thing he's ever done, in my opinion.
I don't know when it was, in the past nine years that the unanswered questions started nagging at me. Questions like: Why Pearl Harbor? If you're going to poke a hornet's nest, do the most damage possible, right? And when the hornets begin to sting, they annihilate Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Killing so many innocent people. Doctors, nurses, civilians. Why?? What was the military strategy in that?
So it's 2010 and President Obama has shifted the war from Iraq to Afghanistan. The Al Quida has had plenty of time to regroup and like his father, George W. left office knowing that the bad guy slipped through his fingers. President Obama is left holding the bag, and the debt, and the unnecessary wars including a renewal of the war on racial prejudice. The Republicans, the bat shit crazy Tea Party/Birthers/9-12ers, etc. How does he face it? A self destructive country.
Who will be our first female president? Sarah Palin? I'm guessing one of the Bush twins. She can continue the tradition of cleaning up daddy's mess and even secure a pardon for all of the atrocities committed under false intelligence. There's no atonement for the events of 9/11/01. No redemption because we are tired of war, and lies. We're broken. And in some crappy hole in Afghanistan, a stinking man by the name of Osama Bin Laden laughs at American stupidity and greed.
Happy freaking birthday, youngest daughter.