One Tuesday Morning

Six years ago, on another Tuesday, I awoke late (for me) and had to rush to make it to work on time. I worked at the local university, and we had our weekly staff meeting on Tuesday. When I entered the conference room, I immediately noticed that something was different. On the table that normally was home to coffee and doughnuts there was a television (I didn't know that we even had a TV in the building). There was the image, repeated over and over, of the second plane hitting the second tower, with the first tower already engulfed in flames. My immediate response was "Oh, fuck. Bin Laden pulled it off!". The head of the department (one of the best bosses I've ever had) looked at me and said "Wow, that's what I was thinking". We spent what would normally be a business meeting discussing what the attacks meant for America's future, and while it was all speculation, it was uniformly grim.
Was it a day that "changed everything"? It didn't have to be, but apparently it has.
Later in the day, I had a meeting with a sales rep. My job at the time was office supply buyer for the university, so I had to put up with salesmen (I hate dealing with salesmen). This particular salesman was amongst the most annoying, a total phony AND a "Limbaugh ditto-head". He was ranting that we "should just nuke the entire middle east" and "kill all the ragheads".
And that scared me.
I wasn't frightened by the terrorist attacks- the world has always been a dangerous place. But how we react to terrorism- well, that had some really frightening possibilities.
Now, six years later, some of those fears have been realized. We're stuck in an unwinnable war in a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. We're creating more terrorist, and haven't dealt with those behind the attacks. We're spending our treasury and our future in ways that do nothing to protect us.
Six years later, we deserve better.