[MsDemeanor]

I was in Barcelona, visiting the Olympic Village. The news was playing on a TV at the coffee shop, but no one in the place spoke both Catalan and English, so I couldn't know for sure what was going on. I eventually found out.

It was Catalonian Independence day and high tourist season, so the air was festive, and the attack was taken there the way we take in any tragedy that happens outside our borders - watch television for a bit and then move on. I traveled on, meeting many sympathetic travelers from many countries and of many faiths. I spent evenings at my hotel in Paris talking with the Muslim night clerk..his perspective was enlightening, his fear of retaliation very real and very raw.

I didn't return to the US until the media hysteria had been usurped by plans for unfounded wars that would kill even more Americans and tens of thousands of other people and suck billions of dollars out of our economy and lead us to the devastation that we face today. While I understand that the grief is very real for those who lost people on that day and for New Yorkers, and I do respect that grief, for me the loss of tens of thousands of lives in unjust war, the hateful rhetoric being spewed by conservative christians toward Muslims, the ongoing health and financial battles of first responders and victims relatives, the loss of jobs and homes and dreams and lives from the financial ruin brought about by the sucking of billions of dollars out of our economy and in to Friends of Bush accounts in Dubai is also tragic. The few thousand lives lost on that day in those towers are the tip of the iceberg.