On the way to work this morning, a local radio station played a segment, a series of clips from their boradcast on 9/11/01. As they played it...their voices expressing shock and awe as they watched the video of the impacts...the towres falling...I could see it all again. The tears welled up in my eyes as I recalled watching it happen, feeling the anger, the hatred, the pain. A high school classmate went down in the towers. A West Point acquaintance died in the Pentagon.
The pain is as fresh today as it was then. In fact, even more so, as their is no shock and numbness to insulate me.
As much as I know intellectually that a true war on terror is more of a cloak and dagger exercise than a combat maneuver, I wish there was more that could be done. And, like many of you, I despise the violations of our rights that is occurring, but at the same time wonder if this is a sacrifice that must be endured, much in the same vein as my grandmother conserving supplies during WWII.
Not long after 9/11/01, I called some buddies and inquired about re-upping with the Army, to do something more than sit here in the middle of Ohio and prosecute people from seemingly inconsequential crimes. They told me to forget it, a law degree would make me a paper pusher in the Army, and I was doing more for the cause by keeping the homefront safe than I would be pushing legal papers around the Pentagon, or somewhere else.
Five years later, watching the war on the news, reading the Sprots Illustrated story on Pat Tillman, I wonder if sitting on the bench as a Magistrate is really enough for the cause...