The Missing Signs

I'm writing this from New York, and last night I walked past St. Vincent's hospital in the West Village, where scores of victims from the World Trade Center victims were sent. On an outside wall of the hospital they've kept and preserved hundreds of hand-made missing signs posted there just after September 11, from family and friends striving desperately to track down people who worked on the uppermost floors of the twin towers. It struck me that in the two and a half years since that day, 9/11 has become politicized as a lightning rod relating to the war on terror, Iraq, the Bush administration, and so on. But standing there looking at the missing signs, it all was so simple again. Thousands of people died tragically on one day, and it's just hopelessly sad. End of story. St. Vincent's is just blocks away from many places in New York I used to hang out happily, from Ray's Pizza to the Village Vanguard jazz club. But it all seems so long ago now.

Comments

[david]

are you still here?

[allan]

When I learned what happened on September 11, 2001, my initial reaction, like most people's, was anger -- but anger at our own government. I new that our government's quest for an American empire was what brought on the attack. We asked for it! As long as we define terrorism as the work of "bad guys" who "hate freedom", there will be more of the same (is it terrorism when it's carried out against a repressive regime?). If freedom is defined as the right to subjugate the rest of the world, then I hate it too.