Oh, please.

A recent article in the Huffington Post purportedly provided us with some sneak previews at a former Bush speechwriter's tell-all book. Among the tidbits shared: the fact that good ol' W apparently-- once in his life-- showed reluctance to share an anti-gay-marriage soundbite with the world:

For a commencement address at Furman University in spring 2008, Ed Gillespie wanted to insert a few lines condemning gay marriage. Bush called the speech too "condemnatory" and said, "I'm not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can't get married."

LIKE. WE. CARE.

Does anyone out there actually give a rat's behind that Bush restrained himself on this one particular occasion? Is this newfound "belief" about the condemnatory nature of the speech supposed to make us forget all his previous statements and actions on the topics? Even if he really felt that way, and more-- like, even if Bush really is a big fan of gay marriage, unbeknownst to us all, it would not make me any fonder of him (perhaps less so). Because really-- what do our feelings and intentions matter if we do not have the courage to act in accordance with them?

(And that's about all I have to say about that.)

Reflections on the day the world changed

Eight years ago, I was a 17-year-old International Relations major, off to her first semester at college, when some terrorists decided to launch a massive attack on my country, and turned the whole world upside down. On this, the anniversary of those attacks, I dug out an old floppy disk and pulled up the thoughts I logged on those events, closer to that date-- the original entries scrawled by hand on a notebook I kept up on my dorm room loft. The thoughts of those earlier days and years are here presented, unchanged and as they were. They cover that day, when my suitemate and I watched a skyscraper fall, and also many of the thoughts and emotions that were to come later on.

The day the world changed-- Part I

written midafternoon on September 11, 2001

Someday my children and grandchildren will ask me where I was today, what I was doing, how I found out. I will tell them now, while it is freshly imprinted in my mind, while the world is falling apart around me. Though I don’t think I could ever forget any of it.

A normal Tuesday morning for me, in the third week of my college career: up at 8:30, showered, dragged myself to my 9:10 public affairs discussion. We sat there talking about missile defense, national security. The biggest things on our minds were when this class was going to end, and whether or not we’d be able to fit in a nap in the 20 minutes before the next. Finally we were released.

The tea I had made that morning still sat, cool and sweet, on the dresser next to the microwave. I hadn’t had time to drink it in my rush to MC 201. I would have just enough time to reheat it before hustling back upstairs to my writing class. My suitemate poked her head through the open bathroom door as I pulled the dripping teabag from my mug.

“Have you seen the news?” I stared back blankly. “The country is under terrorist attack.”

I was seven during the Persian Gulf War. I remember being terrified of Saddam Hussein. I was eleven when the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed. Like every other person in America, I will never forget the images. I was fourteen when the U.S. Embassies in AfricaU.S.Iraq. I remember being shocked. were attacked; I was away at camp and my mom and grandma told me about it when they picked up a few days later. I remember the counterstrikes. I was fifteen and my friends were dying my hair when I was called from a musty basement to stand in a kitchen doorway, careful not to drip on the carpet, as I watched the flashing green-and-black screens which signified bombs dropping on

Eventually I learned to be outraged at what I thought were unjust, violent acts of my country all over the world, or even the few crazed madmen who would attack their own country. But they were far away. I could look at the pictures of injured children, displaced families, weeping wives at soldiers’ funerals, and feel sorrow, but it was displaced from me. At the end of the day, I didn’t really have to pay attention. I was not required to care.

All that changed at 10:08 this morning, with a few steps across the bathroom dividing two dorm rooms. My roommate and I had just rearranged our room the previous evening, so our TV was not plugged in. I think she told me before I saw the screen, but I’m not really sure, it all hit me like a brick in my stomach. Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. One of the towers just collapsed. The Pentagon is on fire. They’ve evacuated Capitol Hill.

“They showed them evacuating the White House,” she told me. “They were all running, all in their suits, running out of there.”

As would be repeated on one news station after the next, America had never seen anything like it.

I dragged myself to MC 111. Usually I loved that class, never wanted it to be over. It was the longest session ever.

My schoolmates wondered how much defense loss had been incurred in the attack on the Pentagon, discussed the comparative structural integrity of buildings now and in the past, and called for swift retaliation and war. What kind of systematic defense do we have against this sort of thing? one fellow wondered.

You can’t defend against people flying jumbo jets into buildings. You’ve just got to try and pick up the pieces.

It didn’t dawn on me until later that day that in the few moments of coverage I had witnessed between my two classes, the reporters had been speculating on more possible damage: more to New York or D.C., or on other major cities. Los Angeles, Chicago. My brother works in downtown Chicago.

I wasn’t worried. All the missing planes had been accounted for. Everything had happened in the space of an hour. But it could have come closer. Someone had said that another student in the college had a family member in one of those planes. It could have come much, much closer.

All the televisions in the dorm were on the news all day. By the doors of the cafeteria, behind the front desk, in the second floor lobby where a silent group had gathered, and in every hall the grisly news was repeated. All day long, flashes of fire as a plane crashes through a tower, crumbling buildings, billowing smoke everywhere-- these were the sights of the day, on every channel but Sesame Street. The faint and echoing sound of sirens haunted the background and became ingrained in my subconscious.

If America had seen nothing like it, I certainly hadn’t. I was raised in a country which taught its children to feel impervious to turmoil in the rest of the world. Other than the brief encounter in the Gulf, we had seen no war, and certainly nothing had threatened our homeland.

Now, less than a day’s drive from the green lawns and clear, cloudless blue sky outside my window, people are dying under a thick cloud of ash and smoke that paints a picture akin to nuclear winter. We never thought it would come from the jumbo jets. Spend your billions and trillions on weapons and defenses, but at the end of the day we’re as mortal as anyone else. Maybe more so, because we’re so much more surprised by it.

Whoever did this are already being called “madmen,” “cowards,” “the bastards.” Why shouldn’t we retaliate against, crush, whoever caused people flying home to their families to become weapons; buildings to collapse upon their inhabitants?

Because we do the same thing. But no one notices that, because we aren’t required to care. As I sit here I listen to a man’s description of watching people leap from the windows of the Trade Center towers. He said it was the most horrible thing he’s ever had to witness. Hearing him describe the body of a woman melted, encrusted into the cement, I feel sick. Not only because someone has done this to us, but because I know we’re going to do it right back. We have done it before. And I’m afraid it is never going to end.

When are we all going to figure out that we can keep killing each other off, but in the end the only difference it makes is pain for that many more people? It’s a game, but the stakes are lives all over the world. I just don’t want to play anymore.

The day the world changed-- Part II

written at 8pm on September 11, 2001

Everyone on the news keeps saying it’s like Pearl Harbor. Except worse. 78 NYPD officers unaccounted for. 200-some firefighters missing in New York. Reportedly up to 285 people killed on the four hijacked planes alone. Uncountable thousands killed in the Trade Center collapse. 50,000 people work there in that one building. 150,000 people visit daily. They had an hour and 20 minutes before the first tower collapsed entirely. 23 minutes later the north tower went down too. The first time the Congress has ever been evacuated. Ever.

Does anyone, however, remember what happened when Pearl Harbor was bombed? We dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If this time is worse, I don’t think I want to know what is going to happen next.

I saw the Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol building earlier this evening. Bush wants to “hunt down and crush” whoever is responsible. Even Madeline Albright-- who we had been longing to have back-- didn’t seem too promising. There have been explosions in Afghanistan. Either the U.S. is responsible (the White House has been denying it, but everyone’s been pretty much ignoring it) or the accusations that had been flying all evening are a little less relevant, and then what do we do?

I don’t know. I honestly can’t deal with all the hatred and racism and nationalism and militarism-- and mostly, with all combined-- that is in this college, this whole nation tonight. I just pray for us all. Let us not do anything for which our children and our God will condemn us.

The day the world changed-- Part III

written around noon on September 13, 2001, two days after the attacks

They say the reason womyn shouldn’t hold high offices of power in this country is that we’re not rational, that we’re too emotional. Without discussing gender stereotypes here, I find that nonetheless an almost amusingly ironic declaration. I see nothing rational in revenge, in killing innocent lives in attempts to resurrect those our own country has lost, in striking out against those we assume responsible without discovering the truth, in two wrongs making a right. I learned that in kindergarten. Apparently some people missed that lesson.

I couldn’t say any more in MC 111 this morning. We started with a discussion of the weeks’ events-- or mostly, the future and how we should or must respond-- sparked by a few thoughts by the professor. One person in the class remarked that he didn’t believe in killing innocent lives, but, well, “sometimes that’s just necessary in war.” Will we really feel better when the terrified people leaping from buildings, running through the streets, crushed under steel, melted into the concrete, have foreign names rather than those we easily recognize? Will that really be enough? We might feel a superficial sense of satisfaction, but never peace. Never peace, not that way.

That is what worries me. Everyone wants world peace at the holidays, but when it comes down to wounded pride, peace be damned.

I think I might be going into the right field.

The day the world changed -- Part IV

written at 3pm on Thursday, September 11, 2003, two years after the attacks

It’s been two years, and I can hardly believe it. I still remember that morning like it happened yesterday. No, that’s not even true. I, too, have become distanced from the feelings that day, have learned to deal in hate and revenge and politics rather than in the sweet value of human lives. I, too, have become bitter and angry with those who feel differently than I.

So much has happened in the last two years. So many people-- millions, I’m sure-- have had to learn how to live life all over again, how to go on without their loved ones. Those people are all over the world now-- in the United States, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. And what have we solved? We cannot even solve our “victories” for themselves, let enough with adequate certainty to make amends for those lives we lost that fateful day. Many died on this day, two years ago, and so many, many more have died since then.

Our country has forgotten about Afghanistan. We were so impassioned about bombing the shit out of them at the time, sure that once we had obliterated all their hopes and securities and a good many of their children, we would feel complete, feel that just reparation had been made for the attacks of those who used planes as weapons. But it wasn’t enough. Oh, wait-- we did manage to bomb the Red Cross. Twice. That would be ridiculously funny, except that it’s not. And still, it wasn’t enough.

So we wrote off Afghanistan. Declared that even if we hadn’t found or killed bin Laden, it was ok because, look, we did other good things. We justified killing civilians by the reasoning that we had really helped them by taking the Taliban out of power. Bomb first, justify later. We wouldn’t have sent our forces to remove the Taliban for the sake of the Afghanistan people. That’s far too selfless. It’s just a convenient after-the-fact excuse.

Meanwhile we were rounding up our own people like cattle. Didn’t we try this before? Does this scene look frighteningly familiar to anyone else? I wasn’t even there, and I can see it. Open your eyes! In school they tell the children about the internment camps and the Japanese families (U.S. citizens, even!) that were torn from their homes and held for no other crime than their race. We tell the children that this was an awful idea, that many of these people were very patriotic and would have served the U.S. in our forces, that never again will we do something like this. That we learned the first time.

And then we tell them that this time, well, this is just different. The Japanese weren’t actually threats to the country, which we didn’t realize at the time-- or did we?-- but, you know, Arabs and dissenters and generally anyone not a nice white person with a “God bless America” bumper sticker-- now, those people are actual threats. It’s such an obvious difference, can’t you see?

Take out a map. Hold your finger over the Middle East. Close your eyes. Pick a country. Or, better yet, inherit an enemy. Saddam made a nice target the first time, good thing Daddy didn’t finish him of or W would really be in a fix. Well no, not really, we can always find another enemy, another really good reason to hate.

More dead, victory declared, but still more--and more--and more people dying almost every day. But it’s ok because, look, we did other good things. We justify killing civilians by the reasoning that we had really helped them by taking Saddam’s regime out of power. Bomb first, justify later. We wouldn’t have sent our forces to remove the Saddam for the sake of the Iraqi people (…but for their oil?). That’s far too selfless. It’s just a convenient after-the-fact excuse.

There were so many reasons to hope though, as well, over these last two years. For every twenty letters to the paper demanding revenge (on anyone or everyone, it seldom mattered) or denouncing a “non-patriotic,” “un-American” war protester, or praising the president and his brilliant plan for war(s), there was maybe one letter, or two, questioning, protesting, demanding reasons and calling for compassion and peace.

The peace vigil I coordinated in March was one of the most moving things I’ve ever experienced. That’s as lightly as I can phrase it, and still it comes out as me taking far more credit for it than I really feel I deserve. One simple act-- adding a location to an online registry of vigils worldwide-- and it just exploded without any further help from me. Yes, I emailed those who’d signed up on the website, giving details about the location and encouraging them to bring their children along and finding someone who could take digital pictures and notified the news media about the event…. but I would see signs for the vigil up places around town, at Kava House when I stopped for a hot chocolate. And there was this amazing sense of connectedness. There-- physical proof that someone else in the city was working for the same things I was, that I was not alone in my protest and in my longing for peace, that all that was needed was for someone to take the very first step, and people would run with it. And I learned that I could be the one to take that first step. I had the power to actually, concretely, make a difference.

And this all came together in just a very few days. When I showed up at the Calder Plaza at seven that Sunday night, there were people everywhere. It was incredible. It was like nothing I had dreamed of-- I’d been worried that not many people would actually show up. The entire thing had been taken out of my hands, would survive whether I was there or not, because there were hundreds of people who cared enough to make it down there that night and light a candle for peace.

There were men in suits, nuns, toddlers, sullen-looking teenagers-- everyone was there. And people did bring their children.

Two hours after planes crashed into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, a Pennsylvania field, I learned to fear and to grieve. Two days later, I had learned to despair and become angry at what my country-- yes, it is mine too-- was doing. Two years later, I have seen much pain but also some hope. And so I hope than in twenty years, perhaps we will finally be able to see more of the second, somewhat less of the first. Hopefully the children that came to the peace vigils this year, the children I may be raising, will learn from my generation better than we have learned from those of the past. Hopefully they will continue our struggle to change the world for the better.

It will not be complete, that struggle, in twenty years. It has been going on much longer than that, and will continue after me and my children and their children are all forgotten. But to keep struggling, to get a little closer to that world of peace and hope-- that is what really matters for now.