So, this morning I got mail from my favorite uncle. Slimy mail, containing a link to a video (revisiting 9/11) and words about how peace protesters should move to Iraq.


Dear Uncle Jim,

I didn't watch this video, and I'm not going to. Let me explain a little bit about why, and see if you understand why this matters to me.

I live a mile from the World Trade Center. On the morning of September 11th, I turned on my TV to see that a plane had flown into the side of one of the towers.

When we first saw what had happened, we, like many other New Yorkers, laughed. Yes. Little plane, v. big building. It's been through so much (I was already here when the towers were bombed); what could a tiny plane do?

Then we saw the helicopter fly in front of the hole in the building, and we realized it wasn't a little plane, that something very bad had happened. And we watched in shock and horror and terror at what was unfolding. And it didn't stop.

So we ran outside. And stood on 14th St., a mile away, with our fellow New Yorkers, crying on the street, watching our towers fall and our people die. When the second tower came down, everyone on the street *put their arms up in the air* to try to stop it from falling.

Almost 3000 people died in those towers. Friends and family of friends. Everyone who lives here knows *someone* who died in those towers.

For 3 months straight, we lived with the constant burning smell. Finally, a strong rain washed it out of the air; for an hour. Another 3 months of intermittent smoke. Another 6 more months to finish digging out body parts and clearing rubble, putting out the fires as they went.

Charlotte and I volunteered down at Ground Zero during the relief effort. We sorted incoming donations, handed out whole, unburned boots, distributed saline, carried buckets of Red Bull and soda to the site workers. Picked up some of the solid foot of paperwork blasted across St. Paul's Chapel graveyard.

A friend of our worked in the overlooking buildings, inventorying & clearing up after the disaster, and so was witness to most of the body (part) removal ceremonies. Every time human remains were found, work on the site would stop, and a funeral procession would walk the find off-site.

All of our local fire and police stations are fronted with posters & flowers & candles for the missing men. There's a permanent memorial to the subway police from the post in my station, Union Square.

So now, I'm supposed to be happy? Happy that terror and death are being rained down from the skies on innocent Iraqi children? Happy that Iraqi family homes are being burned? Happy that their markets and shopping malls are being destroyed? Happy that there's been no water in Basra for 4 days? Who's going to die from not having water? Half the children, that 's who. Infectious diseases are going to shoot through the roof, and we're going shrug it off as "not our responsibility" (direct quote from Rumsfeld about post-war cleanup).

Happy to have young Marines drowning in tanks? Fathers of three carrying the bodies of little girls they've accidentally shot, tears running down their face? Scared young grunts who thought they were going to be welcomed, jarred by the hostility and shooting at anything that moves, killing almost a dozen women and chlidren who were escaping through the night?

Who am I supposed to be happy for in this scenario? The only people I see getting anything out of this are 1) Osama bin Laden (recruits for his terror machine), 2) Halliburton (oil clean-up contracts).

We are behaving like the biggest bullies on the planet. Might does not make right. If we, as a country, had any balls at all, we'd suppport the International Criminal Court and haul Saddam Hussein (and every other monster we've put into power) up in front of it.

Propping up tin-pot dictators and then trying to knock them down when their policies no longer suit us is one of our worst on-going offenses in the international realm. Does anyone remember the 70's? Popquiz: who's the enemy: Iran or Iraq?

None of which of is particularly relevant to the point that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attack on September 11th. Where is Osama? Who's the big bad now?

Not only are we using the wrong methods (specifically, unilateral war instead of working through the UN), but we're doing it for the wrong reasons!

So, I work for peace. Specifically, for United for Peace and Justice, http://www.unitedforpeace.org

And I carry a sign when I march for peace, that says "Our Grief Is Not A Cry For War!" Because it's not.

So please, please stop the propaganda machine from feeding on our pain, our loss, our terror, our grief.

Thank you,
Piglet, heartsick that her friends are killing her friends


I mailed it to everyone in the family, including my cousins and their spouses, all active in the Air Force. Oh, shit, I forgot my older sister & her family, in the Navy, hang on...... Okay, that's forwarded.

Now to see if (when?) the shit hits the fan.