Culture Shock - Sorry I’m Writing It Edition

September 14, 2001

I have been meaning to write this for the past few days, but never seemed to get to it. Perhaps I was busy, perhaps I was putting it off because I don’t really want to write it. I think it’s the second. However, I feel like ten or twenty years from now, I’ll look back on this, and if I don’t write it, I’ll wish that I had. And now I can tell that even though I’m sitting down at the desk and typing, I’m still avoiding the reason for the action in the first place. This past Tuesday, September 11, 2001, A Day That Shall Live In Infamy, the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were hit by hijacked airplanes which leveled the entire structure, as well as some surrounding buildings. Also hit was the Pentagon in WA DC, although only 190 or so people were killed, and only a portion of the building was demolished. In New York as of 7:31 PM today, 94 bodies have been found, and app. 5000 people are still missing. A fourth airplane, either heading to WA DC to attack the white house or Air force One, or to Fort David, was taken over from the hijackers by several passengers, who caused the plane to crash, killing only those on board, instead of however many hundreds of other people would have been killed had they not stopped it. I apologize for the roughness of the writing, I’m ignoring the formats and all those things you’re supposed to do when writing because I just want to get through this. But just so the whole thing’s not one paragraph, I’ll end this one here.

I read about an hour ago on an internet poll that 40% of those surveyed wanted the US to go to war to fight whoever did it, and 48% wanted us to go to war, as well as do some other things. Only 5% wanted us to be diplomatic about it. This frightens me greatly. I have believed for a long time that if we had a world war III it would pretty much be the end of everything due to the power of our weapons and those of our enemies. I, for one, do not want to die. And I don’t want my friends to die. I am about to be 18 years old, which means that I, along with almost every one of my closest friends, am (are?) just the right age to be rushing into the recruiting office to fly off to Afghanistan or where ever we go, and be killed in a blaze of glory. My thoughts are that if we feel all this grief when terrorists kill up to 5000 of our people, how will we feel when we go to war and lose however many more thousands or even millions of people? War is not the only option. When I was little I learned that when someone hits you, you’re not supposed to hit back, and when you’re mad is the worst time to make a rational decision, and from what I’ve seen, we, as a country, are mad as hell.

I don’t want to write any more, but I think I’ll want to read more later. I’m scared of what might happen. I don’t want to go to the world war III memorial ten years from now to lay flowers in front of the names of all the people I have loved over the years. I don’t want some teenager in Afghanistan to have to do the same with his friends and family. As much as I dislike Bush, I have to put all my faith in him that he will do the right thing, and I’m scared that he won’t do it. I’m done for now. I’ll write more another day, but for now, I don’t want to say any more.

NATHANIEL JONES