The recent attacks on September 11 have pulled on the heart strings of people around the world. Some people rejoiced that Americans were killed, some people became deeply saddened, many people suddenly became mad with Osama Bin Laden, and others grew angry with America. I have had mixed feelings about everything that has happened in light of the most recent terrorist attacks.

     I can remember walking into my third period history class on September 11, and being greeted by the televised collapse of the first World Trade Center tower. I wasn’t really sure what was going on just like everyone else at the school. People were saying things from “Iraq bombed us!” to “Oh, it was just a plane crash, who cares.” When I found out that three planes were deliberately flown into three buildings that contained thousands of people, I was shocked. I was mortified when NBC decided that it would be great entertainment to show people holding hands and jumping of the tower. I had no idea what they were trying to gain by doing this. Maybe they were trying to make people mad at the terrorists, but in reality, they were helping them out.

     Eventually I heard many, many people around the school saying things about how movie-like the whole scene was. I even thought to myself how all of this seemed all too familiar. I still haven’t really grasped the fact that this horrible event actually took place and all of those lives were actually lost. It’s hard to think of this as real when I’ve been watching movies where things like this have happened ever since I was a baby. I feel bad that I’m not more emotional about the September 11 Tragedy, but I don’t think anyone was hit as hard as they would have been had we not been exposed to this kind of thing for all of these years.

     A few days after the attack a great number of people suddenly became “patriotic” by flying flags and wearing “God Bless America” t-shirts. At first I thought it was nice that people wanted to feel united with the rest of the country, and if wearing the U.S. flag helped, then I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Then I saw people around my town growing angry with those that did not fly flags or wear patriotic shirts. Then, on top of that, I saw people only flying flags and wearing patriotic shirts to appear that they cared about the U.S. It really bothered me that someone who never cared one way or the other about this country suddenly became the biggest patriot I ever saw in my life. It bothered me that Americans were using this tragedy to make them a hefty profit. It bothered me that no one would say how they really felt about anything.

     Soon enough, so many people harassed my mom about making patriotic shirts that she had my dad design a shirt that they would print and give away to those that really wanted them. Her store made hundreds of shirts just for this small town of Americus. At first it seemed like a good idea, but eventually people were coming in and grabbing forty or fifty shirts apiece. At that point my mom realized that they weren’t getting the shirts because they wanted to show support for our nation, they were getting the shirts because they were free. They could have said anything on them, people would still have come in and picked them up. I do realize that some people did get the shirts because of what was screen printed on them, but half of those people only got them because they were free. And had it been any time before September 11, say the Fourth of July, no one would have bothered to pick them up. In fact, very few people would be caught dead in a shirt that had the American flag on it.

     It has been almost two months since all of this has happened, but now we have new problems on our hands. We have a war. I’m not really sure how to take this war. I wish that we lived in a utopian world where peace existed at all points in time, and war did not exist or was even thought of. But, unfortunately, that is not reality, and as much as I hate to admit it, war does solve problems, if only for a short period of time. If the world ran perfectly we would all look the same, practice the same religion, have the same morals, etc. But, of course, the world is not perfect. Humans tend to have this little thing called free will. Why nature has graced the human race with free will is beyond me. Our free will has lead us to create different religions…which leads to war…create money…which leads to war…create different forms of government…which leads to war. Our free will allows us to hate, and that, above all, leads to war. It seems that while our free will has taken over, reason has left us. We have forgotten how to reason and maybe that is our biggest problem.

     As much as I hate the idea of war, I cannot imagine how to solve this conflict without it. Actually I can’t imagine how to solve this conflict period, and if and when we do solve this one, another will just pop up. But that doesn’t mean that America should just sit back and take the blows. I wish that America could solve it’s problems like Gandhi, but if I recall correctly, Gandhi did not live to enjoy what he paved the road for.

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