Objecting to Having A Mosque Near Ground Zero is Worse than 9-11.

While most people remember 9/11/2001 for the horrible attack on the WTC.  I remember it because it was the day I began my Ph.D. in neuroscience—another dark, shocking event in American history. 

I did my internship, for my Ph.D. in the Brain Lab of the Neuroenteric Disease Program, which is in the UCLA’s School of Medicine’s Department of Digestive Diseases.  As is often the case with many programs in medicine at UCLA, NDP was located in space UCLA rented from the VA Hospital, which is adjacent to UCLA. 

During my internship, I became very good friends with a U.S. Army Colonel who is the person who would be in charge of all medical personnel in LA if there was a disaster, such as an earthquake, or terrorist attack requiring LA to be put under Marshall Law.  Unlike most people in NDP, I liked the colonel. People never understood my friendship with the colonel.  I understood him.  I’m from a small town in southern Michigan and he was from Northern Indiana.  I grew up around lots of guys like him.  He liked women, corvettes, and red meat.  He didn’t like Arabs or Asians, and he tolerated Blacks and American born Hispanics.  The colonel was blunt.  I remember one time he refused to sell his used car to an MD because the MD was from the Middle East, and the colonel told the young doctor, “I don’t like you people and I don’t do business with you.  If you think you can do some thing about it, let’s take it outside.”   I assure you, you did NOT want to take it outside with the colonel who was 6’5, body-by-granite, and trained in deadly hand-to-hand combat.   So that was that.  Everybody was appalled by the colonel’s actions—except me.  I was disappointed, but he had the right to sell his car to whomever he wanted to, or not sell it to whomever he didn’t.  

 Anyway, one time,  I had a long talk with the colonel when he came back from this special training in Atlanta because they were expecting a terrorist attack on the movie studios in Hollywood.  Here’s what the colonel told me.   The colonel said, “I understand why 9-11 happened.  Imagine if you went home and your family was gone, your neighbors, everything you had worked for was destroyed by some foreign nation for some reason that you didn’t understand.   That might make you go insane and do something like fly a plane into a building and kill a bunch of innocent people and yourself.  We’re crying victim here, but this was bound to happen—we’re not innocent.  America has a lot of enemies, because we’ve done a lot of bad things to a lot of nations, and that’s just how it is.”  Hearing this from the colonel made me sick in my stomach, it was like when I learned there was no Santa Claus.  I knew it was true.  I just did not want to believe it.

I’ve thought about that conversation for a long, long, time.   Now with this inane and absurd objection to building a mosque near where the WTC once stood, again, I find myself again feeling sick in my stomach, and not wanting to believe that Americans would even object to this.  We’re not in a religious war.  How dare people object to building a mosque?  Would they object to building a catholic church, a temple, or a protestant church?  I certainly hope not, and we both know their would be no objection.   So let’s look at what’s really going on here.  The people, who wish to divide and separate, and promote ignorance are once again trying to direct our attention away from the issue.  The issue is we’re humans, and humans are a social species and until we have one world, and one people, things like 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, Korea, etc., etc., etc. will happen over and over and over again.   I have no issue with Muslims, but I have serious issue with people like Sarah Palin and others who try and exploit the tragedy that was 9-11 for their own personal gain, because it was the greed and ignorance of people like Sarah Palin that caused 9-11.  People like them, and people like you and I who were too busy with our own agendas to do anything about people like the Sarah Palin’s, the Bush’s, and the Oil Company executives. 

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we in tandem with our leaders brought 9-11 on America.   There are no victims, only volunteers.   We are all to blame, because we allowed the custody of our nation to fall into the hands of people who simply did not have the heart, soul and decency that is the essence of the American people.  Nor did they have the interest of the American people at heart.   So I do not want to hear it.  We have religious freedom in America, which is a difficult thing.  Personally, I wish everyone was like me—officially Catholic, but in actuality a closet Buddhist.  But I don’t get what I want.  What I get is the right to be who I am by allowing other people to be who they are, because I live in United States of America.   People who do not understand this, need to write their high school’s and ask for some of their some of their money back, because obviously some civics lessons were missed.   

Objecting to a mosque being built near ground zero, is worse than 9-11.  A few terrorists, already destroyed our World Trade Center, killed hundreds of people, changed America for ever... after having all of this taken... why would we give them our minds by hating Muslims? Such thinking, allows the terrorism to happen over and over again.