Right after 9/11
Erin's Reaction Right After the 9/11/01 Attacks
If you are not an American, I don't think that you could ever really understand what we all felt in the aftermath. It's not just the sheer magnitude of the attack, or the loss of life, but that fact that this happened ON AMERICAN SOIL. This is America! People just aren't supposed to attack our cities! How could this happen?! In NEW YORK CITY, of all places!! (Washington, D.C. I can imagine, but not NYC...that just hurts.)
So much death, and for what? Innocent people were killed--what will this accomplish? None of those people who died had any say in the U.S.'s Middle Eastern policy. We don't even get to vote on that sort of thing...foreign policy is a purely presidential prerogative.
Americans are typically very apathetic when it comes to our country. We don't care much what other people think of us, and we are perfectly happy to criticize our government and governmental policies. However, when you fuck with us, we will band together like steel and never let you get away. Everywhere I look, there are American flags hanging from windows, plastered on cars, printed on t-shirts, posted as IM away messages. Religious or not, atheistic or not, we are filling the churches and temples and mosques, putting into reality that motto of ours, "In God we trust," whatever our individual vision of God may be.
Patriotism and anger aside, I hope that this will not start a war. A war of the 21st century would just about be the end of the world, literally. Nuclear weapons and bioweapons can destroy the earth really, really easily. It would be much better to persecute those responsible for this in court, and then get our big American noses out of the Middle East. America is the best country in the world, but to create more death is not going to solve anything.
Terrorist attacks will never break our country. They will never tear down our democracy and our society. They will never kill our spirits or our resilence. "One nation, under God, with liberty and freedom for all."