This is my first diary entry. Hope you like it. I wrote it because I needed an outlet for deep deep frustration, and lately, despondency over current U.S. foreign policy.
Right after 9/11, before I even woke up from the horrible nightmare collapse of the twin towers; the television images of the Pentagon smoking, a hole blasted in the side of it; helicopter angled shots showing the scar in the Pennsylvania hillside where United 93 crashed to earth, I attended a "memorial service" for the victims of 9/11 in Salisbury, Maryland. We didn't even know who they were yet, "the victims." I remember that day clearly. Not 9/11, but the day of the memorial.
I debated that afternoon - struggling to choose what I would wear because everything in my wardrobe that was black was uncomfortably warm for that balmy September afternoon. The service was in held in the local AAA--baseball team's stadium. It's big enough to hold most of the town's population. The mayor along with every prominent politician and most religious leaders had a place near the podium and time at the microphone. It was odd - no planes were flying that day and the stadium is right in the flight path of the local regional airport and normally there would have been periodic jets or prop planes flying noisily overhead but there were none that day. For another few days no planes flew.
I was sad that day. I cried. But I was also horrified and frightened at the amount of red, white and blue everyone was wearing. I felt out of place in my black wool jacket over my black cotton shirt and black pants. The number of flags that were waving unnerved me. The chants of " U.S A!" "U.S.A.!" - as if we were at a World Cup soccer game and not a memorial service - confused me. The mayor reading from the Bible and the minister praying for soldiers disoriented and frightened me. The amount of drumbeating I heard made me angry then. Where was the somberness? Where was the mourning? Why were we going to war right away when we didn't even know who the enemy was and why they had done this? (Colin Powell had already said it, "it's an act of war")
That's what I felt in September of 2001. Confused, frightened, puzzled and yes - for a variety or reasons - angry.
I didn't think we should bomb Afghanistan. I still don't think we should have.
In 2002, when we began to hear rumbles about Iraq, I became angrier. I knew it was wrong. I knew there were no WMD and I knew Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 or Osama Bin Laden. I believed Hans Blix and had no faith in Feith and his cabal.
By mid 2002, I was protesting in the streets of Washington with alot of very angry Muslims (many were Palestinians who were also feeling a particularly brutal hand of Israel at that particular point in time.) Their fervor made me nervous but I understood their passion and shared it. Many of us saw Iraq coming. And we organized and protested and protested and protested.
2002-03 was my first year of law school in Boston and I was very stressed and anxious about a lot of things. Many of my classmates probably thought I was a little nuts over this war thing, I was vocally against it and very much in the minority even here in Blue Massachusetts. I spoke against the Bush regime and challenged its claim to the presidency at every turn. I felt very alone sometimes -- like Chicken Little squacking, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling" and no one seemed to be listening at all (except for you). I was still frightened but by then I was really angry too.
10 million of us marched in the freezing February weather of 2003 in New York, London, Rome, Paris and elsewhere. In March we marched again. Now here in Boston. And again. And again. We called and wrote congress. We held vigils. I even even attended a prayer service for peace. But the Bush Administration invaded Iraq anyway.
The sky WAS falling by then. It wasn't acorns, it was cluster bombs. They weren't knocks on my noggin' they were high explosives on the homes of Iraqis full of men women and children. It wasn't a children's story then or now - it's nightmare come to life.
We marched again a few weeks ago against "the surge."
And - and this is for a certain someone that talked to me about anger recently: I no longer feel angry. I'm beyond angry. I'm depressed. I feel helpless. Hopeless. I feel completely defeated and unable to fight the juggernaut that is the war-making machine of the U.S. government.
I'm despairing because Afghanistan has turned to Iraq and now we move ever closer to war with Iran. Lebanon and Palestine crushed this past summer under the military might of Israel backed by a U.S. Government that barely pays lip service to its responsibilities as a member of the U.N Security Council to bring that travesty to a halt.
I cannot bring myself to go to rallies anymore. I can barely stand to write this. I just know that indeed the sky IS falling. Its still falling. And I don't know how to stop it.
Someone asked, "Would I rather be happy than right?"
Well maybe -- though I've joked that being right makes me happy.....
But I would certainly rather be angry than this despairing. I WAS right about Bush and Iraq but being right about that didn't make me happy either.
I hope that I'm wrong about Iran. That would make me happy.
I'm no "Henny Penny." This is no fairy tale or nursery rhyme.
What do we do to stop this?