10 Years Ago Today

I was a student at a small liberal arts college studying theology. It had been a busy year, I had just moved to Texas from California and had just gotten used to my room and roommate and my classes when I showed up for class on September the 11th, 2001 and my political science professor, Mel Hailey, gave us the day off and told us instead of coming to class we should watch the news. So, I went to the student commons on campus and watched one of the TV's there while grabbing breakfast and listening to the buzz of the students: "Buildings are coming down." "Who's doing it?" " Was it on purpose or an accident?" We all sat glued to the screens around campus watching the news.
For those of us still in college it was not a clear message from a fanatic backing up years of negative propaganda against US foreign and national policy, it was simply a crazy act of hatred. I'm sure there were those who had been more cognizant of the global affairs than I was but even with a full grasp of the information there was not emotional empathy on the part of my generation, a generation that had, for the most part, been only still in diapers when Iran, Libya, Afghanistan and other such Middle East countries had come up on US radar as places of conflict.
We were kids coming of age at the end of the Cold War, unaware of the powder keg that had been lit years ago during the back and forth struggle for power around the boundaries of the dangerous USSR. It had never occurred to me that the homeless guys wheeling themselves through the Metro in Moscow legless, toothless and drunk to the gills were the result of battles fought in Afghanistan only a decade and a half earlier. Had the information been lavished on me, I might have had an opinion when the towers fell. I would have known why there was so much anger in the hearts of a nation of "tools."
There's nothing worse than being discarded as a tool after being used to do another nations dirty work. Now that I am nearing 30 and remembering that day when everything took a sharp left turn, when the fanaticism of one man brought a whole religion back onto our radar screens and our destination was locked into a spiral of conflict and empty resolution. We will continue to see the ripples of this event for a few more years and then another drastic event will shake us to the core and leave us recalling the date and time of it's transpiring. It will change our moods and possibly leave us traumatized ever marking our calendars and watching to see how long our memories hold to events that shape our decisions about things to come.
Until then watch the skies for falling buildings. My condolences to all who have lost never to regain.