I Remember. (9/11, 22 Years Later, One)

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran  

At around 9 A.M. on September 11th, I was sitting at my desk, looking out at that infamously clear blue sky, arguing with my ex-wife on Yahoo messenger. There was a knock on my door, my neighbor...a Saudi international student...stopping by to bum a cigarette. I got back to my desk and my ex was freaking out about something, demanding I turn on the TV news. I picked up my pack of Camel Blues just and the remote for my TV, thumbed on the remote (my TV was set on CNN) and pulled out two cigarettes for my neighbor. I was handing them to him just as we both watched the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

My neighbor said something in Arabic that I didn't catch.

My ex started freaking out online.

In a matter of just a few moments, the world as we knew it ended.

Classes were almost immediately canceled, I went to work though, because faculty and students and maintenance staff still had to eat. It made for a slow day, like I've said before that afternoon my boss and I stood outside after we'd taken out the cardboard and the trash, smoking and watching a solitary contrail in that clear blue sky, just a gray-green point on a silver-white spear...I knew it was a military aircraft (We'd already seen, on CNN, FOX and local news, videos of scores of commercial jets landed at every available airport in the country including disused Air Force Bases like KI Sawyer AFB-once my home station-near Marquette, MI and Wurtsmith AFB, near Oscoda, MI) and, to confirm such I went and got my binoculars out of my car, parked on the grass a few feet away...and showed him that it in point of fact was a USAF KC-135 Stratotanker. Not long after that, my Mom stopped by to check on me...her own classes having been canceled for the day as well. I'd been rolling out pizza doughs when she showed up.

I've written quite a bit about that day on here, about the surrounding events, about the feeling of national unity and spirit of engagement with the world...including with the Islamic world...that turned out to be only too brief. I'm a United States Air Force Veteran, and I've written also, about the bone-deep certainty that I knew what was coming next...and I was not wrong. 

As a conservative Republican disabled veteran, I likewise expected I'd end up with certain responsibilities in my community and I wasn't wrong about that, either...and I've written on here about that, too...though it ultimately took me in some directions I'd not expected at the time.

In those days, I learned as much about Peace as I'd once been taught about War.

I remember, oh yes, I do. And because I remember, too much of what I see today fills me with utter disgust. It simply cannot be said enough.

But I'm a say it anyway.

Republicans not only have forgotten that spirit of national unity, they deny it ever existed. They've not only forgotten that spirit of engagement with the world...unless it's for a couple billion dollars of Qatari or Saudi Arabian money...they want to wall off America and butcher or drive into exile most of its citizens, and Republicans...of all the fucking people...enthusiastically want to finish the work that Osama Bin Laden started, and paid with his life for.

That fucker tried to destroy America, and we hunted him to the ends of the Earth for it.

The same fucking people who wanted blood...not only the blood of foreign enemies but in some cases the blood of innocent immigrants in our own streets...when some foreign terrorists attacked America now threaten Civil War because Donald Trump has been indicted for nearly a hundred felonies by Grand Juries composed of his fellow citizens and is still very much alive. 

If Donald Trump loses the next election...Republicans, so-called Christian ministers loudly say the one after that will not be decided with ballots, but with bullets.

They'd rather turn America into the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a mall, than simply live with all the rest of us.

Bro, I've seen...hell, I was a part of...the great and terrible amount of Force that the State can bring to bear, Republicans. This will not work out the way you think it will. The government's stick...our stick, since the United States of America is a Republic with a representative democracy elected by WE THE PEOPLE as its form of government, is immeasurably bigger than almost any that has ever existed before it. 

And it's US that Republicans...and their greed-and-ideology-driven allies in foreign countries, the media and wealthy corporate boardrooms and medieval Catholic traditional masses and various political donor-class retreats and the bigoted mob of cowardly overwhelmingly-White consumers of all this mendacious crap...wish to overthrow.

Never Forget?

Republicans forgot as soon as they started using shit like the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act to start weasel-wording shit like outright fascism into our government and particularly our police agencies...certainly in the direct hope that somebody like Donald Trump would later come along and use it when America was on fire because of their own fascism and racism, and their poll numbers were in the toilet, and they were certainly about to lose an election. 

And now Republicans are mad that such things are being used against them and their pawns, the same as those laws and tools of their enforcement would be against any Arabic terrorist or tin-pot foreign dictator's infiltrating agent.

I said it three years ago when it very much looked like these matters would be coming to a head, that sooner or later the State would have to act to save itself.

And so must We, The People...who in the American system are the State.

But, the way our Founders designed our system, we have to live up to that responsibility.

Never Forget?

No. Fuck this "Never Forget" bullshit. You fuckers forgot a long time ago, by choice and with malice aforethought.

The oath I swore when I enlisted in the United States Air Force requires defense of the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I remember.

Remember that, the next time you motherfuckers start threatening to shoot my fellow Americans if a criminal trial or an election doesn't go the way you think it should, Republicans.

And people like me? We'll bring friends to this party, and we'll teach those who cannot defend themselves to defend themselves, and more importantly to do shit the right way, the first time, every time.

Because it's not all about guns and macho bullshit. A thing as simple as clean, dry socks or how you pack your gear or where and how quietly you take a step when in the field...or how you treat the people you encounter, the noncombatants, the prisoners of war, and so on...and that's not even touching the modern hyper-technological edge of warfare...can mean the difference between life and death.

But it's more, even, than that. What is in a person's soul will eventually show through.

Unlike you, I've always done the best I could to keep my word once it was given, because it's things like that, which define who we are.

Either you believe in freedom or you don't, either your Word is good or it isn't.

You cannot serve God and Mammon, you cannot follow both the Cross of Christ and the Hammer and Sickle. You cannot call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ with your mouth while making offerings to Dis Pater with your hands!

Life is not a logic problem or a magical incantation for getting what you want. You have to give, too.

More, it's in that give-and-take of life, where we find ourselves.

It's really that simple.

Remember that, because there's going to be a test, soon.

Last Post

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Bush, we can't hear you!

BUSH: I can hear you!

(APPLAUSE)

I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you. And the people...

(APPLAUSE)

And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

BUSH: The nation -- the nation sends its love and compassion. And everybody that is here, thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud, and may God bless America!

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP) ~Via CNN Transcripts.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press