Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks. It's a "national day of rememberance."

If that's the case, let me remember where I was about a year ago...

I was sitting in my apartment, getting ready to turn in early so that I could take a nice morning walk with the woman I love.

I was naive, or at least less imaginative, about the resolve of those who abhor Western civilization-- or, at least, Western imperialism.

I was me. The same, 'cept different.

I've been reading editorials, watching tributes to the victims and investigations of the hijackers on PBS. The swirl is a bit much, somehow making more (info) less (comforting). There are no easy answers, although the clamor for war-- against terrorists, against Iraq-- grows louder by the day. It is truly troubling to realize that the current administration is doing now what it did in the aftermath of the presidential elections: mounting a clever marketing campaign. I feel like much of the American public, deep down, doesn't have a clue or a rationale as to why Iraqi women and children and men and combatants and non-combatants should be bombed. For what? To make us safe? From who? If we were a little Boy Scout troop sitting around a campfire this would be an interesting diversion before hitting the sack: "There was once this evil monster named Saddam..." But this is a nation making a monster of a man (who has done monstrous things) in order to send American troops to kill and die. For what? For who? We cannot bring back the people who died in the September 11th attacks. We can only, in our anger and grief, lash out with our own weapons of mass destruction-- for that is what they are, despite our talk of "smart" and "laser guided" and "unmanned" materiel. They are intended to inflict mass destruction. To pulverize and eliminate life. And, by some rationale I do not understand, to bring peace and security. (?).

Bob Marley said that if we don't fight war the Rasta way, there will just be another war. I wish more people thought that way. Not "Rasta", but peace-like. Fighting back just keeps the fighting going. I don't know. There's got to be another way.