Ten Years

I woke up this morning (too early thanks to baby girl) and there were already half a dozen friends with  facebook status updates remembering where and what they were doing ten years ago. For me, it was my freshman year of college. I was just getting to know my dorm mate and life already felt a little upside down. But this post isn't about me or what I was doing, it's about that day and all the days since.

So many have said that 9/11 was our generation's Pearl Harbor but I disagree. It could have been. Many would say it should have been. But it wasn't because we didn't respond the way our grandparents of the Greatest Generation responded. We haven't been forced to sacrifice and we have forgotten. It's been ten long years of war and though we remember what happened to us as individuals on one day, the battle that has waged on since does so silently. Outside of the 1% of the population directly affected and the minuscule amount of people who actually pay attention to politics, our country has moved on.

Earlier this year when I told our neighbor that Joshua was preparing to deploy, her response was "Really? I didn't think we were still sending people over there." She's not alone in her blissful ignorance. On one hand, I understand...it's easier to change the channel when the news turns to the war. War is frightening and unpleasant and our generation is one which, for the most part, runs screaming away from such things. We bury our heads in the sands of reality TV and our own social networking dramas. But the fact is we are still living with the remnants of that horrific day. We are still at war. There are still people who want America to fall and are prepared to give their own lives in that pursuit.

So, as we mark this historic anniversary, let us not just remember what we were doing ten years ago but more importantly remember those who gave their lives on that terrible day as the first casualties of this war and those who have continued to fight and die for our country every day since.