Remembering deaths

[morgan_dhu]

Five years ago today, several thousand people were killed, in New York City, and Washington, and a lonely field in Pennsylvania.

Since that day, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you choose to remember deaths today, remember all of their deaths.

Comments

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Yes, having been frightened watching the sky in DC that day, worrying about my father on the road outside NYC, and friends in NYC, all I can say is 9/11 is just one day among many with the death toll we've exacted since.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

An acquaintence of mine (close friend of a close friend) works for Morgan-Stanley. He worked at the World Trade Center. He was lucky enough to get out. But it wasn't until the next day that I heard that he was alive.

Two close friends of my partner lived in NYC on that day. We heard from one of them later that day, but it was several days before we knew the other was safe.

A good friend of ours works at the Pentagon. She wasn't near the impact area, and survived.

Many people think that only Americans were at risk, or died that day, and assume that, as a Canadian, I can't possibly understand what it was like to watch the TV and fear for friends and loved ones. They're wrong.

The way I felt on that day doesn't change my opposition to the response of the American government to the attacks and my horror over all the bloodshed - on all sides - that followed.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine worked in the World Trade Center but thankfully was in London on 11 September. Indeed, he was in a conference call with his colleagues at the WTC. Likewise, I didn't hear until afterwards.

As a Canadian, how do you feel about the response of the Canadian government?

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I'm proud of our immediate response to accept air traffic inbound to the US when the planes were grounded and to shelter those passengers and flight crews until they could either resume their journey or return to their point of origin.

Since then, it's been pretty much all downhill in my opinion.

The government has passed a number of bills since 9/11 that have eroded civil rights, including the right to associate and the right to free speech. It has imprisoned a number of Muslim men on special certificates, which means that they are being held without access to bail or any other normal legal procedures, and that their lawyers may not see the evidence against them in order to mount any kind of legal defence. Just as in the US and Britain, my governemnt has traded away freedom for the hope of security and Canadians are almost certainly going to lose out on both.

Under the guise of national security, my governemnt has strengthened the process of integrating with US systems a number of areas which should be under national jurisdiction, thus eroding our sovereignty and making it more difficult for Canada to establish independent national policies in those areas.

These trends are profoundly disturbing to me.

As you know, I feel that the invasion of Afghanistan should have been the very last resort rather than the first, and I disagree with my governemnt's decision to support the invasion without making a stronger argument in the international community for trying diplomatic or other, limited military actions rather than going directly to war with Afghanistan.

The one thing my governemnt has done in the whole post-9/11 string of responses that I do approve is that it elected not to fight in Iraq. Hussain was not a threat, was not in any way implicated in the 9/11 attacks, and the invasion of Irag has, if anything, only made the whole situation worse from all angles.