Warning: 9/11 post ahead. It isn't a sad post but it is an angry one.

This isn't really going to be about 9/11, per se. Not really about the terrorists, the horror, the many hours spent glued to frightening images being played over and over again. It's not going to be about the dread anticipation as we waited to find out what was happening with that missing plane. Not about the mental inventory of family and friends to determine if anybody we knew was in the towers or the City. It's also not about the frustration of being at work and not being able to get any news or the partial relief when Lovely Wife started sending simulcast emails as she watched everything on CNN. It's not about the tremulous "Did you hear"s as people arrived in the office or the silence when their look told you that yes, they most certainly did already hear. It's not about the many phone calls with Lovely Wife that day as we took turns calming each other down. It's most certainly not about the shattering of my illusions.

No, wait. That's exactly what it's about. The shattering of my illusions. Not the illusion of safety that many people lost that day but the illusion of my own lack of bias. This is about how I became racist for the first time in my life.

I've lived and worked all over the States. As a kid my best friends were Suman and Parul (who were from India) and Mark Mittlemark (who was Jewish). In High School I was in with the Jocks, Brains and Stoners. I was in the Navy for 8 years, serving with every minority you can imagine. I've lived in suburbia, urbia and borderline slums. I've lived in a house of women and roomed with a homosexual man. The personal trait I am most proud of is my lack of racism and bias and I've spent a lifetime minus two years enjoying the benefits of it.

Before September 11, 2001 I was a borderline apologist. Oh I didn't go so far as to voice support for the PLO or anything like that but I was always the one person who would say that we couldn't paint all Palestinians with that brush. Similarly, I was the one who said we needed to respect the culture of the Arab nations. What's normal for one people is not normal for another but that does not give one the right to criticize the other. When talk turned to Islamic terrorists I very quickly spoke up that the vast majority of muslims were just as peaceful as anybody else. When fundamental Islam came up I made sure that everybody knew that most of them were simply firm believers and we shouldn't let some bad apples spoil the bushel.

Boy was I an idiot. And it only took 3000 deaths and one day of emotional hell to educate me. There can be no respect for things that are, by their very nature, abhorrent. If your culture says it's okay to target civilians to achieve your ends then your culture as a whole is wrong. It is not just this person or that person, it is every single participant of that culture. If your culture says that it is okay to mutilate your daughter and cut off her clitoris then your culture is wrong. Every member of that culture is just as guilty as the person who wields the razor. If your culture says it's okay to kill your daughter or sister to protect or avenge your family honor then every member of that culture is a murderer. If you drive an airplane into a skyscraper and your people dance in the streets with joy at the mass murder of your civilian targets then those people need to be dancing at the ends of ropes.

9/11 taught me how to hate an entire people. It opened my eyes to the fact that some cultures are simply wrong at their very cores. It educated me to the fact that some people are evil and dangerous and wrong simply because they are part of something that is evil and dangerous and wrong.

I know now that there is no such thing as a good or peaceful radical fundamentalist. I know without a doubt that anybody from the Middle East really should be viewed with distrust and suspicion until they can prove they are trustworthy. I know that arabs don't want peace and they will never, ever leave us alone. And I know that there is only one realistic way for us to be safe and it does not include autonomous muslim states.

That was then, this is now.

Pretty scary stuff, eh? It scared the hell out of me, that's for sure. I felt that way for a decent portion of 2001 and right into 2002. Gradually I came out of that cloud of hatred and bias. I no longer think that our best bet would be to give Kansas to Israel and then create the Great Glass Plains out of the former Middle East. I'm not quite back to where I was though, and I doubt that I ever will be. I still think that fundamental Islam is wrong by its very nature. I'm still a bit leary of arabic people. I'm still quick to think any act of violence was muslim terrorists until proven otherwise. I still think that any permanent solution to the terrorist problem must involve a wholesale change of arabic culture and the elimination of fundamentalist dogma. I am still more than ready to blame every single supporter of the cultures that breed this evil for the actions of that evil.

That's my legacy of 9/11. I doubt that's what they wanted - to galvanize the people of America against themselves and their kind - but that's what they got. As you sow, so shall ye reap. Reap it, you bastards.