All the Horrible Girliness

There's something sleek, passionate, almost sexy, about flying planes into buildings. It's easy to think of it like that: inanimate object vs. inanimate object; objects go boom. And there is the matter of the terrorists themselves: pilots, even if not trained to take off and land, and pilots are intelligent men, interesting men. It's innovative, too. Nobody had done it before. And so premeditated! So planned! Spending all those months or years gaining access to the devil country, taking classes, then giving their lives for their faith. It's understandable, almost, how some American people felt for them. For their cause. Guilt is nothing new to Americans. We are an idealistic but rich country, and that means a heavy conscience. Some believed we had it coming.

***

There is nothing sexy about Beslan. Shouting Allahu akhbar, dozens of terrorists attacked a school on the first day of the school year. There was an assembly that day, where first graders, carrying flowers and balloons, would be presented to the town as new students. Parents and grandparents joined their children for the celebration.

***

What does it take to kill people, methodically - wait, no, to kill children - for over fifty hours? How do you listen to their screams? How do you kill parents in front of them, kill children in front of their parents? How does the human brain allow this?

How do you point your weapon at a child with bows in her hair and pull the trigger? How?

How do you string bombs over the heads of innocent families?

***

I can't begin to relate to these animals. May they all fucking die. May they all die horribly. Fuck them all.

***

Yes, I know about the horrors done to the Chechens. I know of all the children killed there. I know their desperation.

I know I've always been free, so I'll never understand.

I don't care where the evil began. If you can look into a child's eyes and kill him, you aren't human. Your mind is gone, and you cannot live in society anymore.

Maybe that makes me overly simplistic, and maybe that makes me stupid. You can think what you like. My days of liberal rationalizing ended on July 26, 2005.

***

Last year, on Mother's Day, I received a rose at church. I was seven months pregnant and just starting to really show. I told Mister Aran that it was my first Mother's Day, and he said, Not officially.

He felt like a jackass for saying it, and my mother and I laughed about it, but he was right.

posted by Samus @ 10:17 PM