September 11... A little differently

The United States was attacked 13 years ago. We learned that not everyone likes us, that our government agencies fail at communicating with each other, and that mortality is fleeting. 

However, apparently we did not learn that there are consequences for our own terrorist, subversive, and destabilizing actions in the Middle East for the nearly 50 years leading up to 9/11. We did not learn that destroying a democracy we don't like makes it difficult to use "establishing democracy" as a valid excuse to expand military action beyond those responsible for 9/11. And we did not learn the big lesson from the aftermath of WWI: that love, compassion, and help will prevent future violence better than violence, intimidation, and fear.

What happened that morning was tragic. Thousands lost their lives in the space of a few hours. Looking back at the journal entry I wrote as a middle school kid, there was a lot of anger and fear - even though I was just a kid. But with a more global (and still ridiculously limited) perspective, I can't imagine how kids in the Middle East must have been feeling when some white people from across the world spent 48 years inciting rebellion, arming/training terrorists to fight for them, using world-ending weapons as threats, being abandoned, and then being condemned for not having stable governments . How like an abusive father we must have seemed to them - sometimes showing up to wail on them, sometimes their friends/neighbors, sometimes the central location for their entire religion... How hopeless, how terrifying, how entirely powerless would that make me feel? How eager would I be to listen to someone who said they could make me feel safe again? If I thought that there was even a slight chance that my children would grow up in a world free from what I had seen growing up...

What happened that morning 13 years ago was wrong and unconscionable... But even though I disagree with the use of violence in almost any imaginable scenario, I can at least understand what those responsible might have been thinking/feeling. I guess what I'm trying to say now that the years have calmed the initial sea of grief and anger is that instead of saying "we're coming for you", I wish we would have learned how to say "we're sorry".