Five Years Later

Everyone in the blogosphere is talking about this fifth-year anniversary, so I won't belabor too much about my personal reactions and reflections beyond bullet points:

-- There are still people out there who believe that what we're doing in Iraq is directly related to what happened to us on September 11. These people need to get educated.

-- This amorphous "war on terror" which hit fever pitch following 9/11 is becoming far too much of a get-out-of-jail-free card for anything the Administration wants to do, like detain people indefinitely, wiretap private phone calls without probable cause, and invade foreign governments with faulty justification. Funny, Republicans claim to have no faith in The Government when it comes to regulation of the environment, or the economy, or the workplace; but we should blindly trust everything The Government does in the name of "fighting the war on terror."

-- These things are so unbelievably tacky and tasteless they make me sick. Those people buying them would make me sicker, except thankfully I don't know anyone who would. (Side anecdote: at some point after the attacks, I walked past a store that was selling a candle. It was shaped like the Twin Towers and bore the inscription "We shall never forget" across the bottom. There were two wicks in the top of the candle and I couldn't help thinking that if one used the candle the way it was meant to be used, you'd end up seeing the Towers burn to the ground again! Someone didn't think that idea through very well.)


We should never forget the attack, but above that, we should never let those attacks destroy the foundation of freedom that this country represents.