by Jonathan Jay on 11 September 2008
Perhaps you have heard this many times already, so I will keep this short and hopefully somewhat sweet. Sometimes the only way to win a war is by not fighting.
Seven years ago, a terrible thing happened to people not used to having terrible things happen to them - US. From the Center of the Empire, terrible things only happened to other people, elsewhere. But on this day, box cutter-driven planes crashed, towers collapsed and almost three thousand lives were snuffed. Folks still debate what exactly happened and whom was to blame - but that is perhaps besides the point.
We can and do know what we did since that day. On September 12th 2001, an electronically traumatized American people made a tragic mistake, and we make it still to this day. We unleashed a monster of terror, a demon of destruction recently stymied by lack of plausible foe - no more barbarians at the gates - until....
Until the towers dropped - ten hundred thousand million times, falling over and over again in digital cloud of media haze, until millions of Americans closed their eyes from horror and surrendered: to fear.
One of these days we are going to wake up from our terror-induced hallucination, and begin to glimpse the destruction we have wrought in the wake of 911. Did enough people die that day? Who thought there should have been more? Was three thousand not enough?
Did we really need to add 6,000 young American Men and Women form the Armed Services onto the pyre? 100,000 innocent Afghanis? A Million Iraqis? Is there a mass grave big enough to bury this horific travesty? Do we now "need" to additionallly
blow up some Iranians? Is this the logic of Empire?
Where does this American Empire end?
In your heart. In your home. In your town. On your island.
Right here. Right now... or whenever you decide to shut it down. It could be today - if you are ready.
Let us "memorialize" war no more. It is time to celebrate peace and freedom - not just for us, but for "all peoples everywhere"... which means here too. Even in Lihue.
See you at the Peace and Freedom Hall.
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