War is useless

On the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, my friends and I prayed in the morning before school. We prayed that the people who died that day will never be forgotten. We also prayed for terrorist leaders to be forgiven for what they helped do to our country.

The anniversary did not spark any extra sadness for me. I think everyone should have a moment of silence for the innocent people whose lives were taken on that tragic eye-opening day. But I also think, why should we need a tragedy such as this one to become a truly patriotic country?

My English class had many opinions on this anniversary. During our class discussion, some people thought we should blow up all of Iraq, but then another person spoke out making an excellent point: Terrorists flew the planes into the twin towers; not everyone in their country is a terrorist.

I also said not everyone from a certain country or a specific religion is a terrorist. A few people do something horrible that kills thousands of people and scare us, and we believe everyone who is of that ethnicity or religion is going to repeat that action or do something even worse.

I remember going to church a few months after September 11 and hearing people ask others to pray for the soldiers who are overseas. At church, people are continually asking for prayers from others. I hope we will continue to pray for them until every one of them is home.

A few people say war is a good thing. To me, war is useless. This is what I see: One small group attacks our country; we go there, kill hundreds of people and leave.

Out government tells us they want to "prevent future attacks" because Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, which we never found, so we take over that country. Almost five years later, we are still in a country that did nothing to us before we went there.

In my eyes, our soldiers are terrorists to people in Iraq, like the people who attacked us.

September 11 left different impressions on different people. For me, it left an impression of curiosity, everlasting sadness and extreme amounts of fright.

(11/16/06) [[In-content Ad]]