We, the survivors of Osama
The war against terror has united us - we are all victims, regardless of where we come from.
It has been almost a decade since 9/11 and now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, politicians will have meetings, intelligence services will brief each other, armies will re-strategise - but what will the rest of us do?
We, the survivors of terrorism, the people who mourn loved ones on a daily basis and the people who live alongside drone attacks and bomb blasts - do we rejoice or do we look back over the last ten years and try to remember a world before all of this?
My heart feels heavy - because even as I write this I know somewhere, children, men and women are still being trained to become terrorists. Bin Laden may be gone but the havoc that he started ten years ago is very much present.
Why do we accept the way the world has become, because some people have given up hope?
Why have our choices always been wrong?
Today I mourn for soldiers, families, friends and those who have lost loved ones to acts of terrorism around the globe. But I also choose to see the broken hearts of the women whose sons, husbands, fathers and brothers have left them for a life of terrorism.
We are all capable of cruelty. This war,,, the war against terror is not just being fought by men with guns. It is being fought on our streets and in our homes - between families and friends and neighbours. It is being fought in our hearts and our minds. Its’ victims are not just on the battlefield or in the aftermath of an explosion. This is not just a war between the leaders of countries and terrorist regimes.
It is our world war and whether we realise it or not every single one of us is part of it.
This the time to eradicate the differences that we have accepted in a bid to be alone and angry.
Are our future generations, the children of our children doomed to live in a post 9/11 world forever?
We, the survivors of terrorism, the people who mourn loved ones on a daily basis and the people who live alongside drone attacks and bomb blasts - do we rejoice or do we look back over the last ten years and try to remember a world before all of this?
My heart feels heavy - because even as I write this I know somewhere, children, men and women are still being trained to become terrorists. Bin Laden may be gone but the havoc that he started ten years ago is very much present.
Why do we accept the way the world has become, because some people have given up hope?
Why have our choices always been wrong?
Today I mourn for soldiers, families, friends and those who have lost loved ones to acts of terrorism around the globe. But I also choose to see the broken hearts of the women whose sons, husbands, fathers and brothers have left them for a life of terrorism.
We are all capable of cruelty. This war,,, the war against terror is not just being fought by men with guns. It is being fought on our streets and in our homes - between families and friends and neighbours. It is being fought in our hearts and our minds. Its’ victims are not just on the battlefield or in the aftermath of an explosion. This is not just a war between the leaders of countries and terrorist regimes.
It is our world war and whether we realise it or not every single one of us is part of it.
This the time to eradicate the differences that we have accepted in a bid to be alone and angry.
Are our future generations, the children of our children doomed to live in a post 9/11 world forever?