Obligatory 9/11 post

Five years since September 11th, 2005, and I can still remember vividly where I was when I heard about the attacks. It was Army basic training and our drill sergeant had called us together as a platoon to break the news: planes had crashed into the twin towers and the Pentagon. He even singled me out.

Private Wilson, you’re a damn intelligence analyst. [Of course, I was no such thing at the time; I was a basic trainee, with as much intelligence experience as the next guy] What do you make of this?

Ummm, terrorism, Drill Sergeant?

I hadn’t learned yet to always respond with confidence.

We went to the gym after that and they let us turn on the radio, which was usually forbidden. I was doing pull-ups when the word came that the second tower had collapsed. Everyone felt sick. There was so much confusion everywhere and we were twice as confused as most, because we had half the information. Rumors swirled through the barracks that night: people said Camp David had been hit, the President was missing, DC was in rubble. One guy was weeping in his bunk. We had all enlisted in peacetime and now we were facing the prospect of war. But when and where, and against whom? Nobody knew.

Well, we know now: Afghanistan and Iraq. And those are just the hot spots; the war on terrorism industry has spread its tentacles across every continent and facet of life. I don’t mean to be cynical, as much of it is well intentioned and some even useful. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that we are all cogs in the machine of our own protection. We fight the terrorists so that they won’t kill the people who fight the terrorists.

I never did fight anyone, never fired a shot in anger. Instead of Iraq or Afghanistan, I went to Monterey, California to learn Korean, and then to Korea, and then (inexplicably) to Texas. How many of my basic training class ended up driving HMMWVs down twisting Baghdad roads? How many died there? Were their deaths worth it? At the end, did they feel they were making a difference or were they counting down the days before they could go home to their wives and husbands and sons and daughters?

There aren’t any easy answers, except for politicians and ideologues. There are people who would pronounce every last one a hero and others who will brand them all war criminals. The truth is that they were just people – just boys and girls, really – from Montana and Georgia and New York, jobless or hoping to get an education, wanting to better themselves, trying to keep out of jail, bored and restless, maybe consumed with hatred. Five years ago today they just wanted to get out of Basic Training and drink a beer or smoke a cigarette.