Remembrance

From "Corruption of Remembrance" by Michael C. Gilbert:

We remember the dead by how we live. I live in a country that is in the midst of its own acts of remembrance. As I look back over the last five years, although I am continually touched by the efforts of thousands of individuals and organizations, I am heartbroken and ashamed by our collective response as a nation.

As a country, we have chosen to remember the dead of 9/11, not with life and love, but with death, greed, repression, and lies.

We preyed upon the people's collective anguish to invade the Middle East and in the process kill far more people than were killed on that horrible day. We've transferred untold billions of dollars out of the public coffers and into the hands of the wealthy few. We have worked to build up the machinery of private profit and a network of private killing organizations.

At home, we continue to choose to remember the dead through systematic spying on citizens and through the erosion of civil liberties and other key foundations of civil society. Barely within the reach of our crumbling legal protections, we've engaged in widespread kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture.

I can hardly contain my tears when I ask the dead: Is this how you wanted to be remembered?