The One About 9/11

I didn't know anybody who was killed during the attacks on 9/11. I wasn't directly affected by them either. All I remember is coming to school less than a month into my freshman year of highschool and walking into my first hour geometry class to see everybody staring at the TV. When I turned around to see what was so interesting I saw the second plane crash into the second tower and I remember thinking, "Well, that was stupid."

It took almost the whole day for it to really sink in. Some fuckers just killed thousands of people. For no other reason than "Hey, Allah said so.... or something." And the real tragedy is that we used this atrocity to justify a war against the entire Middle-East.

Sure, at the time, I wanted to kick some ass too. I was so pissed that I enlisted in the army a couple years later actually HOPING I would get deployed. If you know me then you know that ended badly (read: pathetically) with an uncharacterized medical discharge for a back condition..... I, like a lot of other Americans, was ready to blame every bad thing that had happened in my life on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan and Iraq/Iran.

A few years, and a lot of life lessons later, I've come to realize that I don't hate Afghans and/or Muslims. In fact, the few that I know are pretty cool people and don't have any strong hatred of Americans and/or Christians. I let the actions of a few extremists color my view of an entire religion negatively and I sincerely regret that. Shame on me.

Ten years later, I can take a step back and look at things more objectively. And when I think about things this way, I realize that I have a brother, brother-in-law, and cousin who are all active military. And the last thing I want is for them to go over there. That would suck balls.

I won't get into the whole "should we/shouldn't we have gone to Iraq" debate. I have mixed feelings about it. Yea... Sadam was a douche. It's great that he's dead and no longer in power. But was it worth everything we've sacrificed? I dunno... Probably not. I'm sure there was a better way it could have been done. What I WILL say is that we've been there too long. It's time to go. Maintain a presence in the Middle East, sure. I mean we still have a base in Germany from WWII right? But I don't see why my brother's best man had to give his speech via recorded video because he was deployed to Kirkuk. (Wyatt, if you're reading this, the speech totally kicked ass. Loved it.)

I completely forgot what my overall point was for this... But if you take anything away from this, it should be that 1) I love my country more than my Grandma's chocolate chip cookies... And 2) 9/11 sucked for everyone. Even those of us sixteen hundred miles away who are still affected to this day because we have loved ones in the military.

That's all for now. I'll say more crap later.