Skip to comments.

Posted on 10/04/2001 4:37:22 PM PDT by ChemistCat

We want our lives back. We want OURSELVES back.

Walking around with teeth clenched, grinding them together at night in our sleep, we don't realize until we try to speak that we're actually straining our own jaw muscles. No longer patient as we were the first week or so after 9-11, we find ourselves irritable and even angry at small annoyances. Our sense of humor has changed--if it's not bloody and directed at terrorists, it's not funny.

Loud noises more than just startle us. And every day's ambiguous and scary news makes us want to tape all the doors and windows and just hide in bed until forced out for food. We find ourselves defending our pet theories with an almost bloodthirsty passion, while some of our most cherished beliefs may be shaken from their foundations. Maybe we're ready to commit or encourage actions we would never have endorsed before 9-11.

Friends and family have lost jobs. Maybe some friends and family have lost lives. We feel robbed and violated. More than that, some people are standing, virtually on the graves of dead heroes and innocents, to chant hateful slogans that attempt to assign the blame for this to the very aspects of our country we hold dearest.

Maybe some of us, blessed with above-average attention spans, are able to focus on our work. Others find their attention wandering from even the most vital projects. We have to tear ourselves away from our children in the morning to go to work or to see them to school. And some of us, full of anguish and fury, flock along in the search for gas masks, preparedness information, gold coins, and scripture that helps us to understand the frightening new world.

Some of us look upward at a tall building before we enter, and wonder if it will be coming down onto our frail earthly bodies like a house of cards, brought down by the incomprehensible hatred of someone whose hand we may have shaken in business or friendship.

These things were done to us, and not by some computer glitch or act of common human greed. We believe that as Americans we deserve to keep what we've earned. We have given so much to the world. If there's an earthquake we send aid. If there's financial collapse, we forgive loans, loan more. There are few among us who wouldn't donate bone marrow to an Afghan kid with cancer, yet their leaders DID THIS to us. We're as bewildered as any humans in history.

But we are mainly literate, and we've read history. We know what we have is precious and to a large degree holy. We gave flight to the world. We gave the internal combustion engine to the world. We gave the concept of vaccinations to children worldwide. Many agricultural innovations, and almost all aspects of modern life were born here! From all over the world, men and women come to learn from us. WE WILL NOT TOLERATE that knowledge being turned against us. We've had enough. We want our lives back. Our innocence cannot be returned to us, but we will fly again without fear, ride buses without fear, visit tall buildings without fear. I am sorry that we must beseige a very troubled people, but when the Taliban has refused our demands too long, and the bombs have rained down to protect our people, we will then rain bread upon the heads of their people, and they will rise up, and let us in. We know that the people imprisoned in burqas and forcibly drafted away from starving children will be glad to see us. We will cut off the heads of their oppressors one by one, and free the world again.

They made this personal; we all feel this to the very fiber in the muscles of our jaws. It's time. If we could all walk there and walk through that land we'd clean their house for them. Since we can't, we are waiting for W. to do it. And I myself don't want to wait very much longer.

Mr. Bin Laden: Go Directly to Hell. We've got your ticket, and we guarantee that the security isn't going to let you bring anything in that will help you now.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.