9/12/01…Where were you? Did you take the day for yourself? Did you gather your thoughts in the aftermath, recollect yourself, take the day to reflect on the carnage of the past 24 hours? Or did you “persevere”?

Were you one of the millions of Americans that hustled back to work or school, confused, tired, with a “quiet, unyielding anger”? Did you quickly put away the images of the 757 melting into the World Trade Center, did you put down the memories of the twin towers melting into the rubble of busted steel, broken concrete and smashed human bodies, or did you melt back into the “steel of American resolve,” going about your day in the American way so no twisted-minded terrorist would think he got the best of us?

Now let me ask you this: remember Columbine? Remember how we all persevered past that tragedy? All back to school and work the next day. How many school shootings have happened since? Can you count them? Don’t worry about it, the American people moved past it and I hear all the families of the students that were blown away with shotguns that day have been fully compensated in their own libel suits, problem solved.

So now that we’re all back to our lives, melted back into that steel, how do you feel? Want retaliation? Want Osama bin Laden’s head on a stake? Of course he was responsible, I mean, his face was plastered all over the news Tuesday night, and the media always knows and shows the most accurate information available.

You know who else’s face I saw a lot of Tuesday night? The Commander in Chief, the leader of the civilized world, George W. Bush. Did you hear what he had to say? “We will hunt down and punish those responsible.” And further, “we will not discriminate between those responsible for this act and those that harbor them.” Well, that’s reassuring. So while we’re all melting back into American resolve and perseverance we can rest easy because W’s going to organize an “international effort” of allies to bomb the hell out of wherever he thinks those responsible are hidden. Now where exactly is that? Why, the Middle East of course. Where in the Middle East? Does it matter? We’ve been having trouble with those nations for a while now and it’s time to put an end to it once and for all, right? Time to finally and completely polarize the world into the good guys and the bad guys.

Well I for one am glad we can all rally behind a man whose foreign policy can essentially be summed up in the phrase, “talk to the hand.” Here’s some food for thought: they said all over the news last night that this network of terrorists has been well established worldwide and must have been experienced and skilled to have executed an attack with such accuracy. Where do you think this organization has been for the last two, five, eight years? They’ve been around. But they attacked yesterday, eight months into our new Commander in Chief’s term.

Now let me ask you this, as we all melt further and further into this steel of American resolve, as the days pass and September melts into October and 2001 into 2002, as our memories of 9/11 melt into the residue of Columbine, as we rally behind our armed forces as the US retaliates for this unprecedented attack and we cheer as we watch our smart-bombs drop on more anonymous buildings in some anonymous Middle-Eastern country on CNN and we prove to the world and all those vermin terrorists that you can’t mess with the USA, will you, or I, or any other particle of metal that comprises this “steel of American resolve,” have asked the most fundamental question that perhaps one day of mourning and reflection might have provoke … WHY DID THIS HAPPEN? And perhaps more importantly, WHY NOW?

Sincerely,

Contemplating the Aftermath

UMassBoston Student