911

I thought it interesting that Bush came to town to celebrate the fifth anniversary of 9-11 on 9-10, at night, when he wouldn’t have to face crowds of angry New Yorkers asking uncomfortable questions about Iraq. All the local politicians were there except Hillary and Schumer. So much for a non-partisan approach to the holiday.

I went over to the WTC site today at lunch to have a look at what was going on. I try to get over there every anniversary of the event to mourn, to remember, and to see what sort of off-center folks an event like the 911 anniversary brings out. This year there were an especially large number of evangelical “Christian” groups aggressively handing out their tracts. I asked one of them if God had taken a vacation five years ago. He had no answer. Perhaps he was fighting for the other monotheist team that day. I was also surprised to see at least 30% of the people down there at about 1:15pm had on t-shirts calling for a further investigation into the attacks. Far from being ignored or sidelined (besides by the mainstream media), I saw a number of them having in-depth engaged conversations with firemen and police officers about the inconsistencies in the official story about what happened. Strange this isn’t getting more coverage.

I stopped into St. Peters, across the street from the WTC and stayed for the end of the mass. I suppose that behavior is inconsistent with the comments above, but I have a history with St. Peters and being raised a Catholic, old habits die hard. I also find Catholics to be, on the whole, more sensible about issues like peace and inequity. Anyone remember Dorothy Day?

Have a nice day everyone.