9/11 and how time does not heal all wounds

I've been watching MSNBC all night - they're rerunning their original coverage of the 9/11 disaster. I'm crying non-stop here tonight. I didn't cry when it happened - I was so in shock it took days, years, for the tragedy to register. But tonight, with the safety of time and distance, I just can't hold back the sorrow anymore.

I'm especially sad for all those wonderful rescue workers - those who willing risked their lives to help others, who had to pay a horrific price for their kindness. It's just unthinkable.

In this moment I don't care who is responsible. I'm just so very sad for all who lost their lives I can't think past that.

I'm also grieving the 600,000+ Iraqis who did nothing to us, who have been scapegoated for this crime. Imagine 9/11 happening every day of your life. Every day, another landmark disappears before your eyes. Every day, another person you know disappears forever from this planet. Every day, the moans of those hit by gunfire or bombs haunt your dreams. I'm only reliving this now, many years after the event. But the Iraqis have to live with this horror every day of their lives. AND THEY DID NOTHING TO US.

President Bush should be impeached. Vice President Cheney should be impeached. Gonzales should have to suffer the torture he approved. And General Betrayus (it's spelled Petraeus) should speak to the Congress UNDER OATH, for a change, and give us the real story of what's going on in Iraq. I heard that he admitted he can't tell if our actions in Iraq are making us any safer. DUH!!! OF COURSE THEY ARE NOT!!! When we attack the innocent and protect the guilty, who in their right mind on this planet would support us?

I'm sad that this country is digging its own grave, and so few seem to notice. Habeus corpus is gone. NSA spying is unchallenged. Rights are disappearing right and left, and our vote is under seige from all quarters. And I'm expected to just go about my life and be cheery and act like none of this affects me???

I'm sad for all the deaths of the many due to the avarice of a few. That's a theme that is not limited to 9/11, but echoes throughout history.

What keeps me going are people like Kathy Dopp, whose letter to the editor should appear in the Washington Post in the next day or two; the people at NRDC who wage an unending battle to protect wild places from unnatural exploitation by private interests; the people at the ACLU and other organizations who want to protect your constitutional rights. How sad that they need to be protected at all, and how sad that they are so vilified for doing that. I thank God for unions, which protect those who put food on our tables, who clean the halls we walk in, who throw out our garbage, who prepare our food, who take care of us in hospitals, who work below the radar to keep us going. And God bless all the activists, who live without couches or creature comforts because they love the rest of us so much they sacrifice wordly needs for the benefit of humanity.

The lessons of 9/11 are many. If we can learn even a few, we'll be so much better off. But that's all in the future.

Tonight, and I simply grieving, deeply, for so much needless loss of life, all over the planet, across all of history.