6 years and a day later?

Why write about the day of Sept 11 until after you see all the memorials and what not? For the most part there weren't that many on TV. The best I had to say was MSNBC's rebroadcast of the 2 hours of Today/NBC Breaking News report from the moment after the first plane hit for 2 consectutive hours.

I read another report on Huffington Post by Michael Smerconish I began to think. It was the expierence, the tenor, and the calm of Tom Brokaw that really brought it all home. Just as I'm sure it is Cronkite for my parents, it is wake of 9-11 that we lost most of the voices that brought us the news. Aaron Brown, fired from CNN. Tom Brokaw, retired from NBC. Dan Rather, resigned/fired from CBS. Peter Jennings, died from lung cancer due to smoking which he started again on 9-11. Fox, pretty sure it was Brit Hume but he's gone way over to how can anyone be against Bush than reporting what really happened that it's not news.

My wife didn't want to watch any of it because of the tragedy. I watched it because you forget what it was because this was really the only focus on events. Kidnapped blonde girls, black woman abducted by white supremacists were the other stories of the day. Only this morning on CNN was an interview with a group of young Iraqis, the wrong war btw, saying you can't send the US troops home, but they can't stay forever; there are no good solutions. We are in a global war, but are we fighting it in the right place and in the right ways?

Is it so ugly that absolutism, what we're fighting, can't be used against it? Can one ideology defeat another? Or is this a time for realism and letting the grown ups tell us what need to be done even if we don't like their recommendations? I'm all for letting the intelligence and military types (colonels and task force leaders) be given a relatively free hand in doing what needs to be done where it needs to be done. If they say it is Iraq, it's Iraq, but I bet they say its the Afghani/Pakistani boarder and Indonesia. I'm sure I won't like it. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'll be terrified of what they'll say.

Something has to be done. The Arab world has more of its population under 18 years old than any other ethnic group in the world.

The only thing I won't do is trade liberty for security. We are an open society. We should be more open and transparent. This way we can ensure everyone around the world, you're only hitting and hurting a people that accept all. Rebuild it, let them tear it down, rebuild it again. Every time it is torn down by agression and murder, it will rally more to our side and less to theirs.