i have not forgotten
this is a little late for a 9/11 post, i realize, but i got fired up by something i saw recently. in regards to a 9/11 related admonition by a friend on facebook to “never forget” a comment was made that too many people had forgotten, including those who wanted to close gitmo.
i do not wish this post to be a delineation of why i support closing gitmo or how i feel about torture. i’ve already explained all that here and elsewhere. i do wish to point out how absurd and offensive this conclusion is in general, and to me specifically. in general, it shouldn’t take much common sense to determine that remembering and mourning 9/11 is not mutually exclusive with wanting to shut down a detainment camp.
perhaps it shouldn’t, but it upsets me GREATLY that someone would infer that a political and/or humanitarian stance would remove any and all sympathy, empathy, pain and suffering in regards to that tragic day.
perhaps i shouldn’t, but i take it personally. 9/11 hit close to home for me, in a sense. i don’t mean to put myself on the same par at all with 9/11 survivors or people who lost friends and family - i’m not at all trying to equate my experience with theirs. but it was none the less traumatic for me in a way it probably wasn’t for many people: my dad was deployed when we engaged in operation iraqi freedom. he was sent to saudi arabia to help command the satellite/space aspects and operations of the war, so he wasn’t on the front lines and in terms of war it was probably the safest place he could be. but i was 18, away from family at college, and i was scared. we didn’t know when he was coming home and there was that frightening nagging thought that none of us wanted to articulate: “what if he’s NOT coming home.” i remember that thought. i remember scrounging through magazines and newspapers looking for references to my dad’s base and his operations. i remember getting emails from him - and hoping i would continue to get them.
i remember all that - even now my hands are shaky, my heart is beating fast - i will NEVER forget. to say that i ever could, simply because of a political position i’ve decided to hold, makes me angry. it reduces the fright and the memories to nothing, based simply on partisanship. it infuriates me that my dad’s - and my family’s - sacrifice and uncertainty during those times could be so easily written off.
to say that i have forgotten just because i support closing a prison is completely unfair - and completely inaccurate.
September 18 2009 09:17 am | family and military