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The Truth is Out There

I feel as though I am on a quest. I go from NPR to The New York Times to the Department of Justice Web site. I scour President George W. Bush’s speeches, highlight passages and read them aloud to my co-workers. Late night discussions on the repercussions of U.S. foreign policy are followed by over-breakfast debates about the obvious need for America to respond. I ask everyone — taxi-drivers, my grandmother, ex-boyfriends, bartenders — their opinion, hoping to get some sort of definitive answer. Instead, I am left with a feeling of deep-rooted confusion. Tossed on the turbulent waters of progressive rhetoric and patriotic fervor, I am desperate for someone to throw me a life-raft labeled “truth.”

Our leader George W. Bush said — of the perpetrators of this crime — “They hate our freedom — our freedom of religion, our freedom to vote ...” This weekend at a “Women United for Peace” gathering, Rona Popal, of the Afghan Women’s Association International, said: “Here I am in the greatest nation on Earth, but in my country, women are trembling in fear.” One friend shows me pictures of a recent peace-delegation to the occupied territories of Palestine, where he walked through the bombed-out homes of a war-torn people. While another friend recounts stories from her father, who is working as a volunteer at ground zero in New York City. It is not so much that these words, these images, these stories conflict — but more, how tied together they are that keep me up at night.

As one person, I am lost. As a nation, we are shell-shocked. Perhaps as a global community, working together to examine the knots we have wound ourselves into — we will be able to truly free ourselves.

— By Managing Editor Neela Banerjee