BE AFRAID...BE VERY AFRAID!

Do you remember where you were on September 11th? Do you remember what you did? Of course you do - we all do!

I went to work that morning just like I did every morning - hungover. The weather was cool, but sunny in Champaign, Illinois - so I hoofed it. I didn't hear anything about the twin towers until around 9:30 CST. I hadn't yet made my rounds of the news websites. No one had called me to share their disbelief. I hadn't been in my car to listen to the radio. And because I was late for work, again, I didn't even have time to flip the tube on. I was completely in the dark about the whole thing until I saw a bunch of coworkers huddled around a tiny television at the office.

'What's going on?" I asked. They all turned and looked at me as if to say, "That wasn't funny." But I wasn't joking. I really had no idea. After realizing what was going on, I headed straight for the office fridge and uncapped a Corona. If we were under attack, I wanted to be sure I was properly sedated. And as the rest of the day unfolded, we all found it difficult to do anything but stare at the images. Yeah...I remember September 11th like it was yesterday.

So what's with this new ad campaign asking us to remember? Yeah - an advertising campaign created to remind us how awful we felt that morning. But do we really need an ad campaign to remind us?

Here’s a link to an article by a guy who has some pretty strong feelings about these ads. Why do we need an ad campaign to remind us of September 11th?

The answer, of course, is that we don't. But there are some people in this country who are willing to spend a lot of money to keep those horrible events at the forefront of our national psyche - people who stand to gain politically from the promotion of fear.

Having us relive that day is not a public service. We remember it just fine and we're not going to forget it. This campaign is clearly a shameless attempt to garner support for a hawkish foreign policy agenda built upon the dangerous and costly premise that we need to pre-emptively invade every country that has the potential to arm terrorists with weapons, by which logic we would need to invade every nation on the planet.

Instead of chasing our problems overseas with bombs and infantry, perhaps we should consider developing alternative forms of energy so we can pull out of the Middle East altogether and let the terrorists shift their attention and ire to the industrious Chinese.