History and Bin laden

These links reflect what I've been trying to convey - I prefer to be the better person when facing a bad event:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/today-is-not-a-day-of-cel_b_856535.html

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfu...dful-response/

It is very difficult for me to re-visit my feelings of 9/11. But I will try to explain. I apologize in advance to my international friends that have dealt with terrorism on this level for decades for being a pompous American.

The assault on the WTC was an unspeakable horror; but what got my attention and made my blood run cold was the assault on the Pentagon. This was an act of war from a foreign invader on the country I love. I am a sexual assault survivor but this felt even more personal than that. I have three sons; I feared for their future; surely World War III was breaking out and we are a military family.

I admire and envy those of you that can still see Osama as a human being and grieve the loss of life. I do not see him as a man, but evil incarnate. He has never showed even the minutest iota of remorse; in fact quite the opposite reveling in the destruction he has caused. I recently made the comparison to that scene in The Wizard of Oz when the citizens were celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch.

Bin Laden has been the boogie man haunting this country for many years. We did not give him enough credit before 9/11. I thought that I would feel some sort of sense of relief when he was finally caught; that the sun would shine and the world would somehow right itself again.

As I said before, had this happened on September 15, 2001 I would have been dancing in the street like a munchkin singing Ding Dong the Witch is dead. Right or wrong we made a statement at Pearl Harbor “Not on our soil!” Since it has taken 10 years (much longer if you take into consideration the previous terrorist acts) I worry about those he has trained and educated to take his place. I feel that by taking so long it has made America an open target and that we appear weak.

Without getting political, I am ashamed and embarrassed by some of the decisions we have made since 9/11. On September 10, 2001 I was a proud patriot; my heart was full of love and pride for my country and her ideals. Now I feel that we are like a child lashing randomly out in the dark trying to regain our balance. I am trying very hard to get back to that place because as long as I sit in shame Osama accomplished his goal. I also sit in fear. If he could shake my faith he could do it to anyone. I sit in fear because I raised my children to believe that we have been incredibly blessed to live in this country; her freedom comes at a price. On September 10, 2001 I wholeheartedly believed that price was in fact worth the most precious things I have in the world: the lives of my children.

On August 1, 2011 my youngest son will leave for boot camp. My views on this decision have greatly changed since 9/11 and events thereafter. I want something that is impossible, I want my life to be where it was 9/11/01; a time where right and wrong were clearly defined.

(((AAAAA))) thank you for sharing. I wanted to clarify this sentence:
I don't feel grief from Osama's death and this man has nothing to do with my opinion of cheering a death. I've long believed that as humans, it's not right to do this. It's equally wrong for other countries to do this too and I thought to myself - "maybe they're just not as civilized", until I saw it here in N. America. Cheering a death says more about the person cheering, than who it's for.

As a Canadian and a N. American, I think we've been privileged up until 911 to feel safe in this area of the world. I would ask you and others to think about other countries where war is an everyday occurrence. For example, look at Lebanon - for decades and through 3 generations they never know when fighting will break out, so safety is a privilege.....not a given - many other people in the world know what war feels like. The Middle East also has other countries constantly interfering in their affairs out of greed and this is root of all hostility coming from this region.

i WAS IN nEW yORK cITY THE MORNING OF 9/11. i WAS ON THE 17TH FLOOR OF A HOTEL ON 80ST AND RIVERSIDE DRIVE GETTING READY FOR A PERFORMANCE THAT NIGHT AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA.
I TRIED CALLING THE STAGE OFFICE NUMBER FOR TWO HOURS UNTIL 2 P.M. TO SEE IF WE WERE GOINg TO HAVE PERFORMANCE THAT NIGHT.
THE SUBWAYS HAD STOPPED, and I could not get a taxi, even thought I was to have a knee replacement in 3 months I got my Cello and walked from my hotel to the stage door of the Metropolitan Opera.
Inside everyone was standing around a television. At about 4 p.m. Mistro Volpe came down and said we were go for the performnce that night. He said we could not be stopped. Many musicians and some in the chrois could not get in because the bridges and tunnels were closed into the city.
The administrative staff was calling fills for the string section so we would have something that resembled an orchestra.
The Executive Director Mistro Volpe then called over to the Juilliard School, and told them that nay students who wished could attend that night for free. He knew there would be many empty seats but wanted to show that we could still proceed as near to normal as possible.
Well the show went on, with about 1/2 the usual staff, many who could not get home slept that night in rehersal rooms, using props as bedding. I asked a few musicians who had no where to go to "crash in my hotel room" Others did the same as every hotel room in the city was filled by New Yorkers who could not go home that night.
I was 56 years old then, and I learned something that night I will never forget. It was that you cannot let fear stop you. It was that as Americans we went on with our work and did not quit.
We had Mistro Volpe come on stage before the curtain went up and the house lights dimmed, had a moment of prayer, and the Orchestra played the Star Spangled Banner. Then it was work as usual. That night we allowed some three thousand New Yorkers who were in the house to have some hours where they could listen to beautiful music and be transported back in time.
We did not quit.
I fear we have forgotten those days when we were united and focused.
I live outside of Washington D.C> now, and still perform, but living close to Washington and having friends and neighbors who work in government and media, I fear that we have forgotten who we were on 9/11.
Obama will get a bump in the polls, but I guarantee by the time we have to face the 90 degree dog day's of summer the pride we have today as Americans will fade. We will be fightiong each other only a year from an election and we will look at cars driving by us that display bumper stickers of the candidate we oppose and wonder if we should give the driver the finger.

It will all be busines as usual again. I can only pray that the courage I saw in New York the night of 9/11, the dedication of the musicians and performers that allowed the show to go on and some people to relax a little on that night, will not disappear, but I fear it will. Americans have a short memory and as we face $5 and $6 dollar gas we will once again focus on what divides us rather than what unites us. Too bad the show can't go on every night and the spirit of 9/11 can be as short as a three hour Opera. Before long we will forget the courage of the men who brought Usama down, we will forget the rush we felt when we heard that the man who was responsible for killing so many Americans was killed by us, and we will forget the lessons we learned from 9/11

I am amazed that people think life was fine before 9/10/01, never in human history have things been clearly right or wrong. It depends on your viewpoint thats all. In WWII We put Asians, and Italians into internment camps but worked along side the Germans. The Cathlics persecuted millions and tortured thousands. In Africa there was genocide based on race. In Bosnia a City where three cultures had live side by side for years started killing each other. For thousands of years people have killed each other over a peice of land, each claiming it belongs to them alone. The Romans took over hundreds of countries and made each a slave to Rome, and called it democracy. I'm sure when the Roman way of life was falling, the Romans were scared of the "terrorists" that were changing their safe world. It is becuse of history that I fear humans more than any other thing on this planet. It is because of history I do not like violence, Bin Laden is not the frist, will not be the last, until we can set aside hate, and yes fear, we will not change. I try to work on my fear. All I can say is that at least I find no cause for celabration in a human death by violence. Even though he lived by violence. I find it telling that in his will he asked his children not to take up his way of life. Gandhi did not start out so great, he beat his wife, but he learned, he became great. As long as a person is alive I want to believe they hve the change to change, stop hating that which is different, or richer, smarter, and as long as I live I shall try to let go my fear. I hope this is not too poltical, I just find it hard to beleive that 9/10 was so much better than the days after 9/11. This entire thread has made me think, and forced me to face the reality that my fear, is just as bad as those who hate. I forget which person posted the link to the mindfulness site, but I to read that, it is part of what made me rethink my post. I still do not like violence, but I need to work on my fear and own it as a huge flaw. Peace

Just an FYI Lynn. The Martin Luther King quote is incorrect. He did not say, "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy."

Here's the full paragraph.

"Let us move now from the practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction."

Here's a link to the full sermon.
http://findingforgiveness.blogspot.c...rgiveness.html

This quote was given to me and said it was a Martin Luther King quote. For now I'll remove his name until I'm certain. A PM from you would have been nice.

Here's the quote which is in an article here at PC and for now I'll tag it "unknown"

"In his or her wisdom, an unknown person once said":

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfu...dful-response/

Okay...off topic(sorry). After doing some research and dissection, it seems the 1st line of this quote:

{“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy}. Is by 'Jessica Dovey', an English teacher in working in Japan. She came up with the 1st line and the rest (below) she attributed to MLK

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Here is a link to the above info - apparantly the whole quote has become mixed and very popular ATM in the wake of Osama's death. I've since changed my signature because I love MLK's philosophy and this quote. I also replaced Jessica Dovey's sentence, although her's is great with my own.

http://rawlinsview.wordpress.com/201...r-king-junior/

We have made mistakes in our history that is for sure. One of the reasons I am… dissatisfied with events post 9/11 is because in my naïveté was that I was positive we had learned from those mistakes.

I homeschooled my twins in junior high; the sentence in their history textbook (the very same text they would have used in public school) stated the reasons to learn history. The two the stuck out was to learn what has happened in the past and to learn from those mistakes. The very things you mentioned were in that text along with specific names and what happened as a result.

We live in the information age. Very little can happen in this day and age without everyone knowing about it immediately. There are aspects about this that bother me but to me. However I thought that if the government were to take my neighbor in a manner unfairly people like me would immediately stand up and say “you cannot do this.” I have learned that this is not true. It is in fact worse now in my opinion. All the government has to do now is utter “terrorist” and there is nothing that can be done.

The world has not changed. It is the same today as it always has been, but my perspective has changed. I don’t know if Bin Laden was actually insightful enough to know that the actions that have happened post 9/11 would make people like me (who were previously quite happy and content with our country as a whole even though I may not agree with the Politians running the country) question our collective sanity and intelligence.

wHY DO ALL YOU PEOPLE HAVE TO BRING MARTINLlUTHER KING INTO EVERYTHING. ISN'T IT ENOUGH THAT EVERY GHETTO IN AMERICA HAS A STREET OR AVENUE NAMED AFTER HIM. HE WAS LONG GONE BEFORE 9/11, CELEBRATE ON YOUR HOILDAY BUT DON'T BRING YOUR ISSUES INTO 9/11 ISSUES

they bring him, because he has relevant things to say.

and excuse me "your" holiday? Are you saying the USA is still divided between "us" and "them"?

BTW I thought you wrote a good post. I'm not bringing Martin Luther King into 911. I decided to put his quote on my signature because it represented how I didn't feel it was appropriate to cheer death. I happened to put an additional sentence that I 'didn't' know wasn't his...therefore I explained my correction. I wasn't deliberately bringing MLK into this thread, although I respect his philosophy.

If you live on the upper west side of manhattan everything is great, it is all us. If you go to the South Bronx yes it is us and them, and if you are not them and walk in their projects you may very well end up dead. we may like to think differently but those are the facts, so stop living a lie and face up to reality

I'm sorry to say this is not new, in the McCarty age of USA history, your neighbor could also be taken and no one would have stood up and said any thing for fear they too would be taken. At that time it was "communist" instead of "terrorist" that was the power word. History is a tricky subject, becouse a group of people who are in power at any one time are the ones who decide, what books shall be used and what shall be in those books. A history teacher(collage level) I know who also writes history text books was told to remove a picture of a woman linesmen(a person who works on phone lines, electric lines that run along the roadsides of warmer states-it would give woman too many ideas--2004) and a picture of a hipanic man influential in state politics. He had to decide which to fight for. He gave up the picture of the woman. The all white male repubilican board was deciding at that time what would be included in all school books, including history. History is and has always been defind by the winning group.
You are right that we can not change until we learn from the past and learn from the mistakes of history, but first we must know all the history. Not just that which has been given the ok by the controling group. I see post compareing bin to hitler and I don't agree, hitler lead an army, he is more like a Roman generals or Genghis Khan they wanted to rule the world, whereas Bin is more like the Americans in the revolutionary war, they were fighting for a freedom and idealogy. Had we lost our forfathers would have been painted with a very black brush and their capture and death celabrated. History is a big reason I can not celabrate the death of any man, woman or child. He did believe in what he was doing, who am I to say he is wrong. Our forfathers caused the death of many and they used terroristic methods to win. They had to, they did not have the training, or the might of the English army. Prehaps my experinces in life made me an early cynic. Maybe it is my knowledge of history, but 9/11 was no worse than many other times humans have made poor choices. It is just that the world is so much smaller now and the wepons and things that can be used as wepons are so much larger. His death, only makes me look closer at my part in the world, and America's part. We are not guiltless, any more than he is all guilty. Excuse my tpying my nerve condition(I try to catch it when my fingers hit random keys, but I've noticed I haven't been catching them all-sorry about that) is flaring up, and I shall put a trigger icon on this for posible political post. However I do wish all who reads this thread peace. I have no aguument with anyone, I just wish to express my POV and what I've learned about schooling in America. I do hope that doesn't make this political, but simply factual.

I agree sidestepper - how many lives were lost in Hiroshima...amazing how humans call things depending what side you're on.

Thanks Lynn P, Thats why the whole thing makes me so sad. I know everyone is entitled to feel what they feel, but what if the whole truth has been mis-stated. I can only speak from what I see and I know, but sometimes its hard to hear someone feel joyful over the death of a living being. Sometimes I feel it gets to be a huge quagmire and there just is no right or wrong.

Seems you and on are on the same page sidestepper - there's always 2 sides to war and no one really wins because lives are lost. I agree with you on feeling joy for a death - it's impossible for me to feel, no matter how much I dislike a person - I think of how am I appearing spiritually if I were to behave this way.

Last year my daughter found a toad near our pond - she kept it for 2 days but it died. She was sad and I didn't want to throw her loved toad in the garbage or over the fence. We put it in a shoe box and buried it in the rose garden and put a stone for a marker - there's respect and compassion for a living thing that was loved by someone, somewhere - this is what I think of before I feel joy in regards to death. I mean they are two opposite emotions - how do we feel them both at the same time? That's my opinion and reflection.

Ok, a man is dead, yes we know it now. But I really would like to not have to see it everytime I go to my homepage on the computer and every time I watch the news.

I feel like the media is encouraging some angry person somewhere to step up and do their angry deed.

I don't know about you but I am done, next please? How about something nice.

I am not being critical of the people here, I am just tired of seeing it outside here. Aren't you?

To be honest, I don't like seeing it over and over and over. Enough, its done. How much more does the new media have to keep it going? We have heard every opinion under the sun. It seems like they have to ask every person on earth about it.

Sorry, it isn't you guys, I am just over it and wish it would be over.

Open Eyes

Me too, Mostly I don't watch TV any more, just DVD's. I was fortunat not to have any TV during the 9/11, I wouldn't have been able to handle it. But sometimes being able to say how it feels to be bombarded helps me get rid of the anxity that it brings up. I wish it would go away.

I'm not a happy camper either and I was triggered by the celebrating. I never dreamed I would meet such opposition in not sharing the joy. What's more triggering, seeing someone who's neutral/solemn or cheering death? I would have been fine with not seeing this topic here at all. The Arabs have been the new people to hate since this all started. I married into an Arab family - this is a worldwide website with varied races and religion - is it fair to paint one side only?

Nothing gets better by hiding from it. Sending variations of these posts to our representatives is a worthy effect. It is clear from the many threads the death has generated no consensus can be reached on how to react. What also is very clear is most here are not happy with our leaders. They should know that.

I know we each have our own perspective. The text I was speaking of stated the facts. Further going into detail about several families that were affected by each event; giving first hand accounts when available. My perspective was it was justifiably negative about things like interment camps, Trail of Tears, biases against the Chinese, Irish, etc. Since I was nervous about homeschooling my children I purchased the exact same editions of their Science and History textbooks that they would have had in public school. I was very impressed with what I perceived as an honest unbiased account of events.

I was proud that we were able to look and speak honestly of the horrors in our history so that we may learn from those mistakes.

I am aware that the way things are now is not new. But I thought we were more educated, informed, and enlightened. I rationalized the poor decisions made by society as a whole as citizens only being informed what “they” wanted you to know. The internet gives you fountains of information, granted not all reliable but there are many more sides of the story available now.

I remember saying to my sons “Can you imagine what would happen if they tried to pull off those Congressional hearings on Communists in this day and age? What do you think would happen today?” We all agreed that there was no way that a person’s life could be ruined today by the government based solely on rumor or innuendo. Don’t I look like an idiot!

I bit off topic here Byz but I'm sure that my home state of Wisconsin made national news when our Senators skipped the flipping state to avoid a political issue. It was absolutely surreal. Unbelievable. They ALL got emails and phone calls.

Lynn, I found your posts triggery because it seems like you're trying to tell people how to feel or not to feel. Maybe you don't mean to, but it comes across that way.

I don't think there will EVER be any resolution to any of this anywhere. There's always going to be some kind of conflict somewhere. Sadly.

Oh Lynn This must be doubly hard for your family, I wish you all the best. I have no words for what it must be like.