09.15.01

Hi Lenny,

I read your mail the other day...it's been a difficult week for all of us, and I've spent much of it listening to my radio at work (while making my best appearance of "working") and Tuesday was shot to hell as I spent most of my time in front of the TV. Many of the people I work with couldn't find Afghanistan on a map, much less tell the difference between it and Pakistan, although I suspect that is about to change.

I wanted to share with you some things I've experienced the past few days...Friday night Brian and I went down to the Civic Center in Denver, just south of the downtown core where the state capitol building and city/county building sit facing each other with a wide mall of grass, flowers and statues in between them. I'd heard there was a vigil at the city/county building, and we went down there just before 7 -- a few minutes before it was supposed to start. There were few people there, but we saw a large crowd at the capitol, so we headed over.

It wasn't an organized event, but hundreds attended and many had flags, an Air Force flight nurse in a stars and stripes shirt and desert storm hat was handing out candles. A double rainbow appeared as a thunderstorm began to come across the Rockies. An Army guy started with the national anthem and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance before our moment of silence for the dead and survivors in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

People began to speak, one CU college girl whose father is an Admiral and worked in the Pentagon whose office was demolished, others who had fought in Desert Storm, and several got up to say things like "we need to commit ourselves to no acts of violence in Denver against Muslims", I was truly moved. I had some of the best cries I've had all week. After some time, the tone of the vigil got a little too much talk of war and "supporting the troops", and I got a little uncomfortable. Not quite ready to think about a land war in Asia/Europe, apparently.

Brian and I left the vigil and walked across the mall to the City/County building where another 100 or more gathered, many with candles, but oddly not a flag in sight. More organized (the speaker had a megaphone), there were Muslims there, including several women. The tone of the vigil was against any war, and promoted "Mideast Peace", something I believe to be an oxymoron, at least if we continue business as usual. Oddly enough, I felt even more uncomfortable among the hippie chicks handing out fliers saying the day our attacks begin there will be a demonstration against it.

Brian and I left that vigil and headed towards home. We both felt a little weird.

I was against the war in the Gulf 10 years ago because I thought my government was lying to me about WHY we were there. We weren't going to save Kuwait, we were there to protect our OIL. I marched in protest with 20,000 people in Seattle the day we started bombing.

But this time I don't think I can march against an attack, as long as we've got our ducks in a row and Afghanistan doesn't fork over the pig Oslama Bin Laden for this.

I have tried to talk with people in a calm way about what this terrorist attack was about. To me, it boils down to blatant favoritism with Israel - ignoring the needs for Muslims (including Palestinians) to be treated fairly. Israel has killed 500 or more Palestinians in the past 6 months, while Palestine has only killed 50 Israelis. They're stuck with rocks and sticks, while Israel has OUR tanks and OUR F-16s to trample them with. That's not fair, and then we wonder why the hell Muslim countries hate us? I don't think we should abandon Israel, but we need to be more evenhanded. Only then will we begin to be able to talk with Muslim countries and work towards peace with them.

The other thing I've talked with people about is the Muslim religion. They, like Christians, have their right-wing wackos. They, like Christians, are 99.9% peace-loving people who want to raise their children and grow old. But we have the militia, the Klan, and a number of others who hide behind the flag and religion. They hide behind sheets and guns and in their camps in Idaho, complete cowards to deal with the outside world. We haven't done a hot job of infiltrating them either, and their hate spreads.

Hate is the child of fear and ignorance. If we knew more about Muslims, I suspect we wouldn't be hearing so much about people "hating" Muslims as they do today.

There are many things in the coming weeks and months that I want to see happen. I want to catch the assholes who coordinated this attack. I want them to pay for this. I do not want to just start bombing Afghanistan or Iraq until all the facts are in. The media needs to back off this "Americans want swift retaliation" shit and stop acting like we're war-monger 4-year-olds with short attention spans. I think most of us will accept higher security at airports and around monuments in exchange for a safer environment. I think if it took a year to find out who did it, it wouldn't take much for people to get fired up about taking care of it. I just don't want to bomb the shit out of Kabul and wonder why some other extremist bombed the White House 10 years later.

It is natural for us to look at this tragedy and mix the human part (losing 5000+ people) with the military action. But we must not rush to war in anger. Americans' sense of justice is one of our greatest traits. The most important thing for us now is to stick together, all of us, as a nation. We have the luxury of being the most powerful nation on earth, and when it comes time to kick some ass, I'm pretty confident we'll do it.

On Wednesday night, after being unable to find a flag in this city, I got frustrated and finally said "screw it, I'm going to MAKE one." And I did. Terrorists can only break us if we let them, and I decided that since they caused this rush on flags, they weren't going to stop me from hanging one outside during this week of mourninng.

I received a wonderful e-mail from a Swedish journalist friend of mine, and I will forward it to you for inspiration -- to remember we are not alone in this.That's about it for now.

-- JM

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning. -Catherine Aird-