![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ten years ago tomorrow, 2,977 people lost their lives in a cowardly act of war against the United States of America. The human toll of loss and sorrow, and the economic impact on our nation, were unimaginable - but not deadly. As a nation we were wounded to the heart, but not defeated. We are still healing, and we will emerge from the ordeal even stronger than we were before.
The aim of those who perpetrated this act of shame was to bring our nation down, to destroy our culture, and to impose their own brand of fascistic thuggery upon a free people. They failed.
They failed so miserably that they became a hiss and a byword among a billion people of their own faith. They disgraced their parents, their families and their nations. They disgraced their own religion. By their weak and shameful deeds, they bound their own Qur'ans in pigskin. And one by one, they are being hunted down and brought to justice.
But there is one failure of this nameless, faceless, band of cowards which looms the largest: they wished us to descend to the same level of hatred and ignorance which they harbored, and we refused. In a nation of 300 million people, simple statistics dictate that there will be some who will live in resentment and revenge, but the vast body of our free people reject outright the notion that hatred is the way to peace. We remain a strong and open society where all peace-loving people, regardless of faith, language or culture, can reach for their dreams.
We live. We grow. We move our lives forward.
But we will never forget.
And we are watching.
The aim of those who perpetrated this act of shame was to bring our nation down, to destroy our culture, and to impose their own brand of fascistic thuggery upon a free people. They failed.
They failed so miserably that they became a hiss and a byword among a billion people of their own faith. They disgraced their parents, their families and their nations. They disgraced their own religion. By their weak and shameful deeds, they bound their own Qur'ans in pigskin. And one by one, they are being hunted down and brought to justice.
But there is one failure of this nameless, faceless, band of cowards which looms the largest: they wished us to descend to the same level of hatred and ignorance which they harbored, and we refused. In a nation of 300 million people, simple statistics dictate that there will be some who will live in resentment and revenge, but the vast body of our free people reject outright the notion that hatred is the way to peace. We remain a strong and open society where all peace-loving people, regardless of faith, language or culture, can reach for their dreams.
We live. We grow. We move our lives forward.
But we will never forget.
And we are watching.
