What Are You Feeling?
- bosnie2
- Aug 22, 2021
- 2 min read

“Anger and Fear” I said as the tears started to fall.
“Anger at how this is playing out and fear for what’s coming. It was all so unnecessary. You knew you were going to pull out and walk away, why didn’t you start withdrawing American citizens, and those Afghanis that helped us, starting in June?”
Pause.
“And I’m afraid of what’s coming next. Seeing how this is going, anything could happen. What will he do next to screw us over? And who were those people who decided that he would be the President? Those people were cynical and hateful, they didn’t care about this country or the American people.”
“In seven short months, look at this situation. Whether it’s the border or it’s shutting down our oil industry or this humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, I think this is the lowest we’ve been in forty years. And the other thing that makes me so angry is he chose September 11th as the end date.”
“What a slap in the face to the police and firefighters who gave up their lives, or the hundreds who’ve died from lung cancer or emphysema since. A slap in the face to the families who lost a loved one. Just disgusting cynicism and hatred for the American people.”
This year we will be in Shanksville, Pennsylvania for the 9-11 memorial. Months ago I reserved three hotel rooms and I asked my children and their partners to join us. In the twenty years since 9-11, my children have become wonderful, productive adults but I am not sure how much they remember of that day.
That day is seared in my memory forever because I was in Miami attending a conference and my husband was working at the Pentagon. I had no idea for some time where he was. I spent some time shaking violently as I tried to get through busy phone lines. His shift ended about an hour or so before the plane hit and he was home.
Then I and my colleagues from D.C. chartered a bus to get home, a long twenty-seven hour ride. When my husband picked me up at the empty Baltimore airport he said I looked like a refugee, disheveled and wrapped in a Mexican blanket I bought at a truck stop in South Carolina. That was an accurate description because I felt like a refugee trying to get home to safety.
The Afghan refugees have no certainty that they will ever make it out, much less make it to safety. And all of it was completely unnecessary.
So who were the people who decided Joe Biden would be President? That’s what I want to know. That’s what the American and Afghan people deserve to know. And what is their next plan for us?
This week has been an endless cycle of anger and fear coming in waves. It is time to take our country back again. First it will be the mid-terms and then it will be 2024. And if you forget about this time, right now, you and your loved ones will pay a terrible price. And even if you do forget about this time, I will do everything I can to remind you.
As a great President used to say “Believe Me.”
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