Secondhand Sun

Ginmar's said all I could say about September 11th.

This, I think, is the day I want to remember. It's September 10th, and if I squint, I can remember what it felt like, not to fear terrorists, but to fear my government's use of them to further its agenda. That, indeed, is an agenda, not that which is ascribed to gays, to feminists, to Muslims. On September 10th, 2001, I could not believe my country would take the murders of 2, 798 Americans and use it cynically to tell lies, to seize power, to further a religious agenda. Without the murders of 9/11, I doubt they would have tried so blatantly and so successfully.

Do you fear terrorists? Or are you told to fear? We live in a climate of fear now, yet the fact is, the major attacks of the past five years have all been on foreign soil, not here in America. Terrorism is a fact of life. On September 11th, to be brutally honest, the US for the first time experienced what other nations have long endured: terrorism on our soil, terrorism that succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the terrorists.

Read the whole thing.

As for me, I'd like to tell the Washington Post where to shove its multimedia photo collections and all that crap. Once upon a time, we maybe had the opportunity to remember this day with some kind of dignity, but now it's been invoked too many times as an excuse for destroying human life abroad and destroying the rule of law in America. So screw it.

Oh yeah, and what Jill said, too.