Today it's 18 years + one day ago. To me it is more like a lifetime ago. Our world changed, our country changed. People who once looked with gratitude to the USA cheered our humiliation. Friends visiting my parents home in Croatia scolded those cheering, saying not one house would have been rebuilt after WWII without money from the USA. Some folks actually did dance in the streets.
It was/is another Pearl Harbor -- no matter what some folks say. It was a strong Declaration of War. Do not deny that reality.
I lost folks I knew in that attack. Friends and children of friends, husbands of friends. It was WORSE than Pearl Harbor which was an attack against a military target. 9/11 was an attack on our way of life.
Today some who have benefited from living in the USA rail against everything "American". They HATE "old white men", never looking at context, never looking beyond what THEY want to see. The truth is, we are still at war against radical, fundamentalist Islam, and hav been for over 1400 years.
This is not to say we do not have other enemies - ultra right wing pseudo-Christians for example. Still, let us not forget this never ending war against some parts of Islam, no more a "religion of peace" than any other.
