“This Is War” is a song by the American rock band 30 Seconds to Mars and written by lead vocalist Jared Leto. It was released in March of 2010 as the second single from the band’s third studio album also entitled “This Is War.”
In the song’s music video, the band wears US Army fatigues and goes into battle. The clip was directed by Edouard Salier, and filmed just outside Los Angeles. Leto told MTV News “The song is really about conflict, and the album really is about it too: the inevitability of conflict, the blessing of conflict and what we can all learn from it.”
Like many Americans, I lost a family member and friends in the Twin Towers on 9/11.
So on this day of remembrance, I am voicing my opinion on the Syrian situation as an American with children, family in the military and having lost loved ones in a terrorist attack. The attempt by President Obama Tuesday night to convince me and others to support a plan of intervention as the lone ranger fell way short of the mark. I am not alone in that point of view. In a poll released Tuesday by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, 58 percent of respondents said their member of Congress should vote against authorizing force, compared with 33 percent in favor.
Failing to provide a logical case for intervention and seeing the poll numbers crash around him, Obama tried arguing a moral case by invoking gruesome images from the Aug. 21 attack outside the Syrian capital. There was no mention of 9/11 or the gruesome images that myself and other U.S. families saw, endured and suffered.
Here’s some more private moments that occurred behind the scenes away from the TV cameras: we sent hair samples from an old comb to try and match the DNA to bodies found; learned our loved one jumped out of a 90-story window because it seemed like a better choice than burning to death in the tower; called hospitals for days unable to get through wondering if there was a chance he was alive; collected the pieces of his body that were found among the rubble on the ground many months later; we lost a father, brother, uncle, friend, husband; and we prayed continually. We were lucky in that we found some closure and could piece together a story but the devastation destroyed our family, like it did many other families. Our country and children forever lost innocence that day. Those memories are real and gruesome but were not mention by the President and they should have been.
“I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad’s capabilities,” said Obama in his speech. I guess the rest of us must be having trouble with our crystal balls and I am not sure proclaiming our military limits is the best strategy when dealing with over-reaching dictators – even if the limitations aren’t realistic.
So enough of this primrose path and false righteousness when it’s convenient. War is war whether our troops are on the ground or not – American soldiers will be at risk and lives will be lost sadly at the hands of enemies we might find out later we trained, funded and armed only a few years ago.
To paraphrase Leto, the blessing of history and past conflict is what we can learn from it. Thank you to all who helped on 9/11, and the days after. May we now grow, learn, question, pray, remember and find peace.
25 Indelible Images of 9/11 from National Geographic click here.
