One Year

So much can happen in a year. An anniversary of past events. Celebrations of life. Reflections on passings. Seeing the renewal of life.

Of course, this past year was not like years past. It was the year after September 11, 2001. The day that the United States was attacked by Islamic fundamentalists hell bent on destroying our way of life and killing as many innocents as possible.

In the coming days and weeks, media outlets will be producing retrospectives on the year that has past, from eyewitness accounts of the collapse of the World Trade Center and attack on the Pentagon to the heroic efforts of the passengers on board Flight 93 to prevent a further attack on Washington D.C. There will be a scorecard on how the US has done in its war against al Qaeda and terrorist organizations that have banded together to attack American interests in the US and abroad.

Those media outlets will also look at how the war on terrorism has affected the Arab-Israeli conflict and the coming struggle with Iraq. It is not a question of if, but when. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein has spent its considerable economic efforts to destabilize its neighbors and increase the strife in the region. The UN went to war against Iraq in 1990-1991 to free a sovereign nation of Kuwait from Iraq's clutches. Now, the UN might be called on again to enforce its resolutions calling for transparent inspections of suspected chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons facilities (which Iraq has claimed either do not exist or were dismantled prior to inspectors being kicked out).

Of course, the media outlets will sanitize the remembrances by limiting the replay of the fall of the towers, claiming to respect the wishes of those who lost loved ones or not wanting to inflict additional emotional trauma on the American people. When the US has been attacked in the past, it was seen as a rallying cry - "Remember Pearl Harbor" drove the American military engine in 1942 when victories in Europe and Asia were few and far between. Those rallying cries sustained the American people until the economic might of the US could be brought to bear. Newsreels of our military forces taking losses and beating back the enemy provided a source of strength.

Now we're being told that the WTC attack is not suitable for a discerning American audience. The sad fact is that the more Americans see that horrible footage, the more angry they will be with their leaders - both Democratic and Republican - for failing to do what is right in the past, present, and possibly in the future by their collective inaction.

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