Imagine intense heat.the smell of charring human flesh and fire coming toward you like a plume, swallowing your body whole in its wake. Imagine the ubiquitous sounds of screaming, and the palpable reality of experiencing your own inevitable death. You having to make a split-second decision of whether to stay and be cremated or to jump and fall to your death in a futile effort to escape. You know that one way or the other you are going to die. There is nothing you can do to stop it. Your last decision is to either be melted by an exploding accelerant or suicide. What do you choose? Imagine how you would feel if your death was played over and over like some bad family reunion tape or someone's favorite movie. Would you wish to be remembered in this way? At the end of the day, what would be the take home message of your death?
These are some of the all too familiar images that we are reminded of whenever someone brings up Sept. 11, 2001. Since we have just marked the third year anniversary of the Iraq war, and are presently engaged in several national debates on whether America's investment in the war is still appropriate, we have become more focused on a wound that has not yet healed. Seeing the red spray-painted stenciled images of body outlines and phrases such as "how many more?" and "three years in Iraq" at various places on campus, I was immediately transported back to my feelings on Sept. 11, 2001 and reminded how images are powerful. This date numbed us as a nation. It reminded us that we can be attacked on U.S. soil and that we are not immune to evil and the feelings of powerlessness. We gave this evil a name called terrorism and in my opinion began to go through the five stages of death and dying as a nation. The five stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
Since the media was quite effective in searing the images of the collapsing towers into our collective psyche by repeatedly airing them, practically everyone identified with the death of over 1,300 people as a personal loss. The media helped us quickly work through the stage of denial early in this tragedy. What happened when you first learned of September 11? Many of us got on our phones and called our friends and family, and were at first given an incredulous reply like "yeah right" or "that's a sick joke" by our relatives who had yet to hear of the tragedy. Many probably had to watch the news footage over and over again to realize that Sept. 11, 2001 had arrived and it was real.
Fast forward through the President's speech of condolence and vowing swift justice brought to bear on the responsible party to our discovery that bin Laden was thought to be responsible for this abhorrent act. Then the nation moved into the stage of Anger. The stage that says "you come over here to kill me, and I'll go over there to kill you back"!
Knowing that the American people would demand retribution, our leaders had to devise a quick solution, and due to this, we were told that bin Laden couldn't be found but that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and sold the "idea" that terrorism must be hunted down where ever it may be "hiding". Our "new enemy" Saddam Hussein enters the stage and in our country's blinding, unrelenting, and irrational rage, we assent to the war. Some of us even believe that we are getting revenge and for a while this energy drives the war machine. The media plays upon our country's psyche further by selling the concept of "embedding" journalist with the troops and showing live twenty-four hour footage of the war on television. Finally we were able to take out our favorite popcorn or other theater snack and watch the movie while simultaneously feeding our collective need for revenge.
Granted Saddam was no saint, however he had nothing to do with September 11.
His downfall was that he lacked one of the greatest gifts in the world. That is the ability to know when to shut up! Due to this he became the scapegoat in a war that the US is incapable of winning. Granted we can and will probably have successes in Iraq. Setting up a government and giving the individuals an Americanized sense of democracy in some respects has its merits. However, I am a believer in history. History tells us that one of the reasons that America is great is that we earned our independence through fighting for it. One day when we decided we had enough of what we perceived as tyrannical rule, we overthrew our enemies and kicked them off of our land. Although the Iraqi people have joined America and developed a government, I question whether the peace will remain when our troops have left. If one believes in history the painful answer is probably not. Afterall, we are in a country that was not yet tired enough of tyrannical rule to overthrow their own oppressive government. Yet we engaged in the war anyway, and gifted them with the kind of democracy that is only available on the other side of war. Unfortunately, democracy is not a gift but a sacrifice. If not valued enough to fight for to begin with, it is neither deserved nor long lasting.
So suddenly waking up and realizing the costs of this war, we are now in the stage of Bargaining. We make a deal with God for protection and tell ourselves that if we "just bring our troops home" all will be well again. The numbness is gone and the reality that people are dying everyday, our young countrymen and women does not fit the schema of our collective psyche as being anything that close to resembles okay. We cannot move through the remaining two grieving stages until we acknowledge that bringing our troops home will not address the reason we entered the war.
If we learn anything in hindsight, we should remember the concepts of our Founding Fathers. Stay away from entangling relationships; a little war now and again is a necessary evil. Since we did not heed the warning of history, we are now suffering heavy losses, and war is a painful consequence for disobedience. If nothing else, in the future, we will remember to obey and to not take the value of the right to the pursuit of life and liberty for granted. Once we remember this fundamental value, we won't be so quick to volunteer to pay the high price of giving democracy to anyone.
Eve Gatewood is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
