Seven years ago today the world as we knew it ended.
A question that is often asked is "do you remember where you were and what you were doing on that day, at that moment"?
The question that should be asked is do you remember who you were and how it felt to live in a world where you didn't worry about anyone invading your home unexpectedly. Where an average American slept peacefully with the knowledge that he or she was always safe in his or her own bed?
We may have worried in general about home invasion of the burglar type etc., but home as a country was relatively safe!
We went about our daily lives with an assurance that we were untouchable. We were the safe ones. How arrogant we were!
Our arrogance bred a society that was easily led by what was politically correct and by what was easiest for us on an individual basis more so then on the basis that what affects one affects all. Where it came to world affairs we didn't pay much attention unless it touched us personally and made an individual's life rough. Most of us couldn't have told you where Afghanistan was or Iraq or even Turkey for that matter. If world conflict didn't cost us more then we were willing to shell out then we didn't care and we didn't even know there was a cost in human lives as long as ours were not affected!
I always thought we as a people were very similar to sheep being led to slaughter. Peaceful sheep in a lush pasture where the only concern would be which sheep got the best greens and sunniest slope to sleep on. The lead sheep set the pace and the rest would follow passively. As long as nothing came along to scare us, we would not stampede. We ultimately would follow the lead sheep's trail all the way to the slaughterhouse.
Our Democratic lead sheep kept us docile with an illusion of safety in order to grab the best for himself while an Al Qaeda wolf waited for the right opportunity to force us to slaughter according to his agenda.
That wolf was smart as well as underestimated! He knew that a flock of sheep would never challenge the lead sheep or change the path they trod as long as the illusion of plenty was intact. He watched and he waited.
I was a sheep. You were a sheep. We were all sheep and Al Qaeda ate us while we were preoccupied with mowing down the pasture.
I ask you now not where you were on 911 but who you were on September 11, 2001 and what was your perception of the world that you lived in? What was the world's perception of the world you lived in?
Now that the sheep are insisting that they be returned to the nice, sweet pasture is there another wolf waiting in the wings to gobble up those creatures of habit?
-Tereasa Sanders-Halligan
September 11, 2008
