7 years later

7 years ago, the worst terrorist attack in American history took place on American soil. Today, we have done nothing to remember the people we lost as well as the image that was shattered. We sit and have a moment of silence, but that moment means nothing for we have lost all the ties that it created. After September 11th, we were a county, united on all fronts. While we may not have agreed as to who the president was, we all got behind him, rallying for one cause.

I am not ashamed to tell the world what I thought when it happened. For so many years, countries had been criticizing Israel when a terrorist set off a suicide bomb or sent rockets into towns. For too many years, these countries, the US included, didn't understand what it meant to have their homeland invaded by unwanted people whose sole purpose in life is to get rid of you and everyone like you. So while I mourned for those who lost their lives, cried with the country and sat in shock in front of my television, I was glad that the US would never again criticize Israel for taking certain measures.

And while the US has ceased critique of Israel, their efforts are nothing to be proud of. The galvanized feeling that we all had, the love and concern for our neighbors, was gone after a year. When George W. Bush announced that we were heading into Iraq, I was a senior in high school. There were students who felt that this was the wrong idea, that we were already fighting a war that couldn't be won, that we'd entered Vietnam again.

So they protested. The bell to end lunch rang and the students wouldn't move. They wouldn't go to class. Things escalated and we had a full out riot on our hands. I don't know how it started, but when things got loud and I saw fire, I got pushed in the opposite direction with the rest of the masses yearning to be free.

The instigator of that protest was in my next class. Fortunately, we had a fabulous teacher who wouldn't lock people out of class (as so many of the teachers at my high school were prone to do). He walked in to class afterwards and I remember thinking what an odd thing, to hold a protest. Weren't we united? Why did we need to fight?

Jump forward a few years and I am in college, heavily involved in LGBT related issues. I participated in all of the events I could, organizing the Day of Silence for three years. People had not been united for a very long time. I began to get more radical in my thoughts, researching ideas on radical feminism and realizing that while perhaps I fit, I didn't fit wholly. Why couldn't we unite?

We exist because we are not all the same, we do not lead the same lives, make the same decisions, worship the same way or even brush our teeth the same way. And yet it is those differences that brings us together. However, most of the time, it brings us together because of how we feel about other differences. During World War II, Russia and the US, countries soon to be bitter rivals, came together to stop a common enemy - Germany. It was the Us-Against-Them narrative that has come to envelop so many conflicts. And we are no different here.

We cannot agree upon civil rights issues. We cannot agree on gay rights issues. We cannot agree on women's rights issues. Because there is always the Us-Against-Them idea pervading through everyone's mind.

7 years of nothing. 7 years and what change have we seen? Increased fuel prices, increased food prices, more starvation, more suffering in the world. 7 years and while we've had some breakthroughs, it cannot make up for what we have not done.

So thank you, 7 years, for showing us our shortcomings, our failings and our mistakes. Maybe the next 7 years will be better. We can only hope.