MY SEPT. 11 BLUES

The thing about the Sept 11 Anniversary, along with all the understable mourning year to year, is: have we learned anything? Are we more loving, sensible, strategic? Are we generating more peace? Because, over 500,000 people died when we struck back, tricked by some among us, at the highest levels, into attacking Iraq, among others, a country not involved in the 9-11 massacre. And so many more wounded, displaced, etc. My feeling for many years has been this: We blew an unprecedented, global, and historic chance to set a high bar for the whole world regarding justice, human rights and appropriate, effective, proportional response to being attacked. Instead, we attacked an innocent country, setting off a chain reaction of ill will that will reverberate for decades, for generations, towards the US and the West. That was a big fat war crime, and more tragic than the attack itself. We were the Good Guys, the whole world was behind us, ...and we blew it.