9-11 HAS BECOME 2010s NEW CRY-IN: ENOUGH ALREADY

By Juan Montoya

Remember the 1960s?

There were teach-ins, love-ins, crash-ins, etc.

Welcome to the 2010s. Every time 9-11 comes around, we will inevitably have a cry-in for those lamenting the events of Sept. 11, 2001. There will be the inevitable press pictures and news broadcasts of survivors and their supporters holding pictures and putting flowers at Ground Zero for days.

It reminds us of the Columbia Journalism Review article which examined the Columbine Syndrome where those mourning the events at the Colorado high school. It told of people waiting around for camera crews to appear before they dutifully went before the pictures of the deceased and tearfully posted a flower before the home-made altars until the crew were done shooting. Them, when another crew appeared, they did it again.

I say enough already.

We have had nine years of this already. We saw George W. Bush use every available photo-op standing atop the ruins of the World Trade Center, clench his jaw and vow indefatigable efforts until the culprits were brought to justice. You remember. Karl Rowe copy flowed from his lips and he uttered words like "Resolve," "Strength," "Freedom," "'Merica," "Evil," "God," etc. He also vowed not to rest util he brought the "criminals" to justice. Where is "W" now?

Probably resting on his laurels on his spread in Crawford.

So what did "W" and his clowns do to address the criminals who brought death and destruction to the heart of America?

Nothing.

They invaded an innocent nation, removed a dictator, and became embroiled – as did countless nations before them – in the quagmire known as Afghanistan.

Nine year after 9-11, Osama bin Laden remains free. Our soldiers keep dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we will one again engage in a national day of Angst. Tomorrow, we will all go back to what we were doing before the current 9-11, and come back next year for another round of Columbine self-flagellation and sack-cloth mourning.

The distractions surrounding this event are almost comical, were they not so tragic. We have a fanatic evangelical from Florida threatening to burn Korans in protest of 9-11, then in protest of the building of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, then it's on, then it's off...

The hell with them. Let them build their mosque. It's their real estate, and their money. A recent USA Today front-page article on the Muslim survivors of 9-11 victims shows how blind patriotism has made us to the suffering of others. People of all religions died there. People of all ethnicities died there. Illegal aliens – God forbid – died there. Where does that idiot in Florida get off monopolizing rage and anger over 9-11 only for his own kind?

Let him burn his Korans. Let them build their mosque. This depth of this nation's strength has been able to overcome 9-11s, Depressions, World Wars, etc., What makes people think we can't overcome a babble of imbeciles bent on dividing us? Give me a break.

The Taliban isn't going to like us less than they already do if an idiot burns a Koran in a Florida backwater. And preventing Muslims from praying in downtown Manhattan isn't going to bring back our 9-11 dead.

As a former Marine and an uncle to soldiers who have served in Somalia, and in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I say that it's time to dry the tears, get out of those nations where we have no business in, and to form a plan using the best of our best and deliberately hunt down bin Laden and his cadre.

We lost 3,000 innocent people at the Twin Towers. No one has a right to inflict this kind of pain upon innocent people and they should be made to pay.

But let's step back and examine our own actions.

The people who carried out this attack were trained and equipped by us to fight Russians and evict them from Muslim Afghanistan. Once they – at a great human cost – drove off the godless communists, did we allow the people there to run their own lives?

No, we – like we did in countless instances in our history (the Phillippines comes to mind) – shoved them aside and installed our own puppet government.

In the wake of 9-11, I would often ask myself why anyone could hate us so much. And why would the sons of the nation we favored in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) have been the ones to man the planes and shower death and destruction upon our innocents at a cost to their own lives?

Could it be that in our zeal to maintain our stranglehold on their oil and keep a stable supply we have propped up monarchies and prevented the normal modernization of their society? Could it be that our presence there prevented their society from progressing beyond monarchies and into something resembling popular will, if not democracy?

Remember the Shah of Iran? Have we learned nothing?

When confronted with a monarchy which was propped by a superpower, the normally progressive movements were stymied and turned to more radical and extreme forms of change.

Remember. Whenever there is a drone attack on some Pakistani or Afghan village, we say that the casualties were "suspected" terrorists. Has anyone gone back to confirm our suspicions. And if those suspicions were not correct, does a simple "I'm sorry" suffice?

There is no excuse for 9-11. But neither is there any excuse for us not to face our own actions of the pain and death we have brought upon innocents around the world.

A patriot is not one who thinks God is only on his side. He knows that his enemy also has a God, and that he also thinks his God is on his side. Let's leave Him out of this circle of hatred – tend to the business of settling our accounts with Mr. bin Laden – and get on with our lives.