The other afternoon, I was driving down Magnolia on my way to work - traffic was somewhat thick and I spent most of the 3-mile drive behind a truck with a large 'Remember Sept 11th' sticker on the back window.

After about a mile, I stopped singing along to the Smiths I was listening to, and began thinking about that sticker – what it really meant… what ‘specifically’ it was suggesting we remember. Perhaps I just had too much time on my hands during all the red lights, but all the same:

Should we remember the lives that were lost? Should we remember those who were directly responsible for the deaths of 3,000-some people? Or should we remember something deeper – should we remind ourselves of their (hijackers) motivation? And, no, I’m not referring to the black & white Saturday-morning-cartoon antics of “freedom-hating” terrorist. I’m referring to the ‘cause & effect’ chain reaction that traces back some 30 years.

Because when I see a “remember” sticker – I (more often than not) don’t think about the day, as much as I wonder, “what’s it going to take”? If the terrifying reality of two enormous jets exploding against the tops of two world-famous skyscrapers isn’t enough to get people really digging… than what the hell is? When will come the point when people ask, “What is our oil consumption really costing… and not just ‘me’, but everyone”?

All politics aside – which might be asking too much – for the last 30 years, our country has been directly involved in ensuring a large number of countries remain under a dictatorship… why? I think it’s an obvious enough answer.

If Carter had his way – or even better, Reagan wasn’t such a poster-boy asshole – our country’s oil consumption wouldn’t have increased (over 30 years) by 12%, it would have dropped by that much. Almost completely eliminating our need to do business with dictatorships that cut us a fine-deal at the expense of their people. If we didn’t do business with dictatorships the whole “Shah/ Mossadeq” thing wouldn’t have happen (which Osama Bin Laden cites as his main reason for anger). There would be no involvement with Saudi Arabia. And if there were no Saudi Arabia deals, we wouldn’t have gotten cocky and moved onto Iraq – which means no “Gulf War”… no “Operation Freedom” years later. So on and so forth…


I guess I got to thinking about all this because the night we had the party, a girl was telling us how her older brother had signed up to be a firefighter – but apparently there is some fine print that forced her brother to be trained as a “firefighter” by the military… then after his training was complete, they up and shipped him off to Iraq, and guess what he spent several months doing there. Fighting fires? No, not really, not at all actually – he guarded the oil pipelines and got shot at day-in, day-out. Luckily he is now back home, but they want him to go back – she said he refuses to go back; he’d rather go to jail than stand guard outside an oil reserve.


So, again, I’m wondering, “what’s it going to take”? Will we wake up before or after another 3,000-some people are murdered out of revenge? Maybe this post is a bit preachy, but what the hell, it feels good to get that off my chest.