on the other side of our bombs

I didn’t want to write anything about 911 because I hate the fact that horror over the deaths of so many innocent people became the rationale for more deaths of more innocent people. I hate it that I’m supposed to feel horrified not because so many people died that day but because the people who died were Americans. I hate it that people acted like it came out of the blue, as if there was no context, and that now I have to explain that I know there was no excuse— there was no excuse, but there was a context. I hate it that people acted as if a tragedy of this magnitude had never happened to anyone else, that suffering was ours alone.
When I saw what happened on 911, I thought: this is what it looks like on the other side of our bombs.
Yesterday I was stopped at the light on 9th Street behind a car with three bumper stickers: an Army bumpersticker, a bumpersticker of a prayer, beginning, Dear Jesus, and a bumpersticker that said, Attack Iraq.
I don’t understand how we can care so much about one group of people, but not another.