A Reflection 10 Years Later: Are we sane yet?

I am not watching the news this weekend. In fact, I have stopped watching it already.

I do not want to see the towers fall again. And again and again and again. I saw it 10 years ago, and it was all seared into my brain then.

It was a beautiful September morning in West County. Russ was getting ready for work, and I was lazily lying in bed with our very new, 3 week old daughter. Life was bliss then. A house in the woods, a warm bed and a snuggling infant.

"Turn on the news," he said. "There's been a plane crash."

I didn't really want to see a plane crash, but he didn't normally tell me to watch gory news stories. I'm sure I did a quick mental check if I thought anyone I knew had been traveling and could have been on a plane. A good friend of ours is a pilot and flew his own small plane at the time.

I turned on the TV, and the story had just begun to unfold. Only the first plane had struck. You know the rest of the story, so I won't retell it.

I knew thousands of people would die that day. My heart was sick for them and their families. I knew that life as we knew it had changed that day. I suddenly had the thought, "What kind of life have I just brought this beautiful baby into?" when I just as quickly remembered that we had adopted her. We hadn't brought her into this, she was going to be here no matter what. Thank goodness she was with us.

My next thought was even more sickening...this isn't the end. This isn't the end of the killing, the hatred, the racism, the horror, the madness, the religious fanaticism. It was the beginning. Or, rather, another beginning.

In the magical world of Margaret-land (although if I ruled, Earth might look more like a Star-Trekkian future–people of Earth have united and get along), with me as head of the government, I imagined this: the high road. No retaliation. Peace talks. Find out why these people are so angry with us. Do something about it. Strengthen relations. Come to agreements. Bring accord. Make sure this didn't happen again. No more dead.

I know, I know. I'm a Pollyanna.

But in my heart I did the math. Thousands of Americans dead today. Retaliation. Thousands more dead in another land, maybe double or triple that number. Not even "an eye for an eye" but a whole body for an eye. And if we went to war, we would again double that number of our own dead. More Americans. This time our beautiful young sons and daughters.

I never dreamed it would all go on this long. We went to "war" months after the attack, and just days before my father died. I wondered if he had heard what was going on. Did his heart sink when he heard we were again at war? He served his country in WWII, luckily (for me) in a non-combat position, but he knew plenty of people who died, and plenty of people left with visible and not-so-visible scars from being in a war where you kill people. Our WWII veterans have all almost died away now. Is this when we begin to forget what war is and want to put on another one?

I'm not saying that we should never go to war. I know that Hitler was a horrid man and needed to be stopped. I'm still amazed at how one man can lead so many people into fanatic thinking and horrid acts. And there seems to always be one (or more) of those around. And they should be stopped. But why do so many people have to die before they are?

I don't have the answers. I'm merely a tiny little player in the grand scheme. But there has to be another way. There just has to be. There are plenty of people in our country smarter than me. Why haven't they figured it out?

Sam Harris, of Project Reason, ended his blog post today with this...

Ten years have passed since a group of mostly educated and middle-class men decided to obliterate themselves, along with three thousand innocents, to gain entrance to an imaginary Paradise. This problem was always deeper than the threat of terrorism—and our waging an interminable “war on terror” is no answer to it. Yes, we must destroy al Qaeda. But humanity has a larger project—to become sane. If September 11, 2001, should have taught us anything, it is that we must find honest consolation in our capacity for love, creativity, and understanding. This remains possible. It is also necessary. And the alternatives are bleak.