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Attaturk, I think this day belongs to New Yorkers and Washingtonians, who bore the brunt of the attack. It's not about me, and it's certainly not about Bush, who after his famous Pet Goat moment cowardly fled and hid out in Nebraska in fear -- the same kind of abject fear they'd spend the next five years selling to the American people.
For me, the worst part of the day was telling my mother, who had called me singing "happy birthday", to please stop and go turn on the television. It was a jarring moment. She thought I was telling her to stop because I felt too old at 30. In reality, I felt like throwing up because the world was changing overnight, and not for the best.
Yet in the years since, it has been the New Yorkers who have shown the most resilience and courage. This was their trauma, and they have worked to recover why conservatives around the country scream for war and piddle their pants in terror while cowering under their beds.
Cheney said:
The vice president said U.S. allies in Afghanistan and Iraq "have doubts" the United States will finish the job there. "And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we've had in the United States," he said. "Suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists."
Actually, the strategy of the terrorists is to sow terror. I thought that was self-explanatory.
And if sowing terror is their goal, this administration has made the terrorists' strategy a resounding success. We, as a nation, have evolved from Patrick Henry's inspirational, "Give me liberty or give me death!", to Bush's "Give me your liberties or you'll die." We have even color-coded our fear.
But ironically, not in New York, where its people have refused to be cowed into perpetual, submissive fear, no matter how much this administration wants to use their day of trauma to cow them (along the rest of the country) into panicked submission.