How our lives have changed since 9/11 by Cindy Sheehan

(REMARKS FOR L.A. AND NYC 9/11 EVENTS)

Many people here today just woke up (whether abruptly or gradually) to the fact that the US Empire is a criminal construct capable of murdering, oppressing, impoverishing, and enslaving its own citizenry for the sake of power and profit.

Just because we awoke that day, doesn’t mean that the Bush regime was the first to perpetrate these crimes.

Speaking of awakenings, on the morning of 9/11/2001, right before I awakened from my sleep on the West Coast—I had a dream. I dreamt that I was putting a large, delicate crystal vase on the back of my toilet and it slipped out of my hands and crashed into the bowl and broke into a million pieces, some of them getting into my eyes and imbedding them into my face—my thought in my dream was: “Great, now I have to go to the ER and wait to have these splinters removed from my eyes.” The very next scene in my dream, a fire fighter was escorting me out of my office and we were both covered in soot and grime. When I awoke from this nightmare, my daughter told me of the real life horror that was unfolding at the World Trade Center.

My dream was precognitive about what was in the planning to ruin my life and this world for the neocon agenda. My life has been profoundly changed since 9/11 with the loss of my son and with personal and public struggles to make meaning of these losses and sense out of what is so senseless.

However, as tragic and awful as 9/11 was and still is, we can’t ignore the fact that this nation was never “noble” and the founders were just men, slaveholding men, that excluded women from participating in civil society—they were not gods to be idolized or paragons of virtue to want to “return to.” Our Constitution may as well have been written in the blood of our native population and nailed to every slave-whipping post in the South.

The model of a representative republic was probably not the worst model for a fledgling government, but we the people have never been represented and the plutocracy has always ruled this country. We the people have only gained mild concessions from the plutocracy and only out of decades of struggle and sacrifice.

Slaves should never have been kidnapped from their homes and brought here to suffer for the profit of the Southern Aristocracy.

Women should not have been imprisoned and beaten because they claimed the right to vote with men.

Black people should never have had to be lynched, or had dogs and fire hoses set on them so they could have equal rights with whites.

Children should never have been chained to machines and made to be virtual slaves for Northern industrialists.

Many people had to give their lives to claim rights inherent for all humanity at birth—not just rich, white, Christian Americans. And that’s just not right.

Some of you who recognize that the rulers of the US didn’t just wake up on 9/11/2001 and have an “origins of evil” moment, want to say that 1963 (assassination of Kennedy) or 1913 (creation of the Federal Reserve) were the turning points to steer this nation down the wrong path—I just want to call “bullshit” and say that those events were evil, but Andrew Jackson fought bankers and if this nation didn’t become an Empire in 1492, it did in 1823 when the Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed making the US a written in stone, dyed in the wool, no holds barred, hemispheric Empire.

We stole Mexico because of a false-flag op.

We stole Cuba and the Philippines because of a false-flag op and we said we were “liberating” the peoples from colonial Spanish oppression, to put in place an even harsher rule.

Hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens were murdered by firebombing, or nuclear bombing during WWII; millions of Vietnamese were murdered and we want to “get back to our roots?” Well, I say our roots are diseased and we need to create something new from the ashes of this Evil Empire.

This 9/11, all I can say is, they will keep coming as long as we fail to recognize that 9/11/2001 was not an isolated event and that for centuries the US has murdered people and stolen their lands and maybe, just maybe, nine years ago, the chickens did come home to roost—with the help and encouragement of the foxes.

I submit that nothing structurally changed about US Imperialism on that day, except the crimes and police state oppression of the Empire became more overt—and we the people have mostly stood down for this, because of fear.

Three thousand people were murdered on 9/11 by either the Empire or in response to the crimes of the Empire, but probably it was a combination of both. And the only thing some people find shocking is that they were Americans this time.