Waste followed 9/11 attack

September 11, 2001, meant many things to many people. To some it meant leaving home and going to lands far away to lay down their lives for an idea based upon false information. To others it meant a chance to save strangers in a strange land from their own fellow countrymen.

To many manufacturers of arms and battle gear it meant a shot in the arm. To casket makers, undertakers, and veterans organizations it also meant an increase in business, even when that business was the business of death.

And for those who paid the ultimate price it meant broken lives, shattered families, truncated dreams, and orphaned children and widowed spouses. This was true for all participants, not just the United States.

How many schools could have been constructed, staffed and improved with the funds thus spent? How much research could have been done? How many diseases and conditions overcome? How many suicides and shattered lives avoided? Funds spent for destruction used instead for advancing programs of benefit to mankind?

We shall never know. But one thing is certain. The “American Way of Life” will go on. And we will continue to believe that what we have done was somehow noble and good even though it destroyed so much and hurt so many.

Victor Buksbazen

Spokane