A PHOENIX RISEN FROM THE ASHES
(…of terrorism’s greatest day of infamy)
Yesterday was the 12th commemoration of the Nine Eleven attack against our country. A traumatic event against our national psyche from which we still suffer a collective case of PTSD.
What made that event so painfully horrendous for us was that, unlike Pearl Harbor, this was not a military act of war, but simply an assault by a criminal gang of thugs using a perverted version of religion to justify such indiscriminate slaughter. It was terrorism’s greatest day of infamy because of that.
While our national consciousness will probably never forget that event, we can console ourselves with the thought that…the attackers failed in their objectives…because we’re not only still here, like a phoenix risen from the ashes, but even stronger than before; while they, and all their kind, remain still mired in hate, internecine conflict, and useless strife, defaming their religion, destroying their own people and their own countries.
Theirs was a useless act for which they died…stupidly…as have many of the masterminds that set them on that path…since then.
The attached is a copy of a painting done a few weeks after that event. While not the greatest work of art, it commemorates the heroism of all the first responders who saved so many lives that day, and evokes the indomitable quality of what our country is all about.
Well, somewhere in this favored land of ours, that painting may be hanging quietly on some wall, or perhaps just stuffed away in a storage bin somewhere. Who knows where it may actually be today? It would be interesting to know what happened to it.
CENTURION
