We Are Not Alone.

For the fifth year anniversary, our nation will look again to New York and remember. We will remember the planes, the screams off of a shaky, handheld video camera in New Jersey. We will recall ashen figures in suits and fingers pointing skyward. We will try and forget the tiny figures that plummeted downward and the brave last calls. We will also hopefully forget the anger that sometimes still ensues when we see the lonely figure of the Empire State Building searching southward for its lost friends. Let us not forget, however, that we are not the only ones in our grief.

Since September 11th, 2001 the world has seen a seige of a school in Beslan, Russia which resulted in the death of 187 school children and the reprisals which most likely killed thousands, an estimated 100,000 people butchered in Darfur and the number is still climbing. We've seen most recently a stupid miscalculation in the Middle East between Hezbollah and Israel which have cost hundreds of lives and the nearly 1,000 protestors in Uzbekistan who were murdered in the street for no reason except that they were protesting. Meanwhile, in China maybe a million or more "dissidents" are forced into labor camps or worse, into prisons without hope of ever being released. The same is true in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Israel. Across the globe, September 11th is happening every day in some countries. The tragedy isn't that it happened to us, the tragedy is that it happens to everyone.

So when you recall that day do not feel as though we stand alone. Quite the contrary. All we have to do is look around and see that the world is filled with those who mourn the loss of countrymen or loved ones. Each one with their own anniversary. On September 11th, let us grieve for our loss, but also recognize that the world is waiting for us to understand that our remembrance is but a drop in a vast and global bucket that yearns to someday be dry.