Five years on

I'm not gonna say I remember it like it was yesterday, because I don't.
But I do remember sitting in Mrs. McDougall's english class, staring up at the television in the corner of the classroom, just like everyone else.
I do remember thinking "this is real and this can be happening", while I imagined most of my friends and classmates thought it seemed more like a blockbuster movie.
But most of all I remember thinking one thought, again and again: I'm sure glad I'm Canadian, and not an American.

I wouldn't call it patriotism. It's more like realism. I knew that things would change in the world as those buildings came down, but at the time I had no idea what was in store.

I obviously didn't know all of the facts of the world (and I still don't) because I was still something of a kid, but I did know that Western societies held the monopoly on selfish and exploitative practices around the world.
I knew about sweatsops.
I knew that I, personally, was ridiculously wasteful in a world of finite things.
I knew about government interventions in developing countries that ended in assasinations and coups.
I read articles about potential "terrorist plots" that could come to fruition in the U.S.
I had seen the news coverage of Palestine vs. Israel.

I guess you could say I had a better grasp on the realities of the world than most kids my age. Most teenagers prefer to live in a bubble, devoid of anything but self indulgences and personal problems that always take precedent over the world outside. It's easy to do I suppose, because it's impossible to understand what it's like in someone else's shoes when you close your mind to the world. We've never been opressed, or lived in fear of a power we are impotent to stop. We didn't have to work for our livelihoods at the age of 6, or walk for miles just to get fresh drinking water. We didn't have to live with dozens of other people in a single house, or have our possesions confiscated by a government that considered us to be worthless. We've never had bombs dropped on us by madmen bent on greed and power.

But these are the realities for some people. People you and I will never meet; never have to look in the face or pass by in the street. These are the people we must not think about in order to preserve our high-and-mighty moral fabric. Because if you were forced to think about it - if your neighbour's house exploded from a foreign bomb being dropped on it - you might start to question what's going on in the world, instead of ignoring a grotesque problem. And the strangest part is that we as individuals have the power to stop it. Only we choose not to. We elect criminals and warmongers, give them free reign over our countries and militaries, and never stop to question their lies and motives.

Because afterall, we need revenge, right? That's what 9/11 was the catalyst for in the public eye, but politically it served another purpose, and that was to further the objectives of a very small sector of society. And these people did a great job of encouraging hatred and fear in the public. They kept us all occupied with bullshit so they could go about their business unimpeded. They shifted blame to an innocent country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, but we didn't care. We needed revenge, remember? And who the hell cares who has to pay, so long as we're appeased.

But five years on, are you happy with what we've done? Does anyone feel safer? Do you feel that we're in Afghanistan and Iraq for noble and self-defensive reasons? Do you still trust the government? Do you trust Middle-Eastern strangers on the subway? Do you like what they've done to commemorate the deaths of those 3000 Americans down at Ground Zero?
Sorry, that last question wasn't fair.

Personally I feel less and less safe with every person that is killed in this war on terror that arbitarily targets anyone that doesn't agree with our governments' ideals and goals. We are making more and more enemies by the day, and the hatred agains the U.S. in particular must be at an all-time high. And there's no doubt that Canada is losing global favour as we kneel down to our master and commander.

Soldiers who are supposedly bringing peace and freedom to Iraq (a country that was at least habitable under Saddam Hussein) are killing innocent people every day. They are killing families indiscrimintely. They are raping children, killing women, and torturing young men with malace in their eyes and an undying belief in their hearts that what they are doing is necessary for you and I to live free.
Commanders are dropping illegal chemical weapons on civilians and firing bombs from distant warships. They're sanctioning the abuses that we see in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.

Under the guise of democracy they deliver nothing but oppression.

And I find it unfathomble that people can actually believe that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, and that all of this is actually accomplishing something. (Beyond inciting and maintaining hatred for the U.S. and it's allies.) People actually believe that 9/11 came out of nowhere, that somehow we are all completely innocent in the global community; that we deserve to have our freedoms and rights and liberties because we've somehow earned them. While in truth we haven't earned anything.

There's a huge difference between ignorance and innocence. Just because you ignore a problem doesn't mean you're not culpable for its effects and outcomes.

9/11 should've taught us that. You'd think that considering we've been educated since the age of our most basic reasoning, we'd have the smarts to think outside of the box that our education has closed us within.

We should've learned to stop what we were doing and treat the rest of the world with respect. But we've done the exact opposite in the past five years. We've only gotten worse, and the world has been dragged into the gutter that all of those lazer-guided missiles and car-bombs have created.

Down here at the bottom of the trench it looks like a fucking slippery slope to climb.