‘We don’t want our loved ones who died in 9/11 used as an excuse to start war’http://www.sundayherald.com/44531the Protesters: Relatives of terror victims are foremost in the mass demonstrations that show not everyone loves Bush
DAN Jones starts to cry. He’s in the middle of Union Square in New York City and he’s trying to
explain how his children felt when they lost their favourite uncle – his brother-in-law – on September 11, 2001. Jones is one of the founders of the September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows organisation and it’s been a rough week for him.
His brother-in-law, he feels, has been wrapped in the Stars And Stripes and his death expropriated by the Republican Party, which has come to town just days before the third anniversary of the attacks on America for its pre-election convention.
The decision to hold the convention just a few blocks from the site where nearly 3000 people died in the World Trade Centre attacks has been condemned by many opponents of the Republican Party as a gross exploitation of America’s suffering. Each day of the convention has invoked the memory of 9/11 as a reason to “never forget and never forgive”; each day delegates have called on September 11 as a reason to justify war.
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The Tombstone now takes centre stage in Union Square. This usually bohemian, bustling little patch of ground has now been turned into a shrine for all those who have died since 9/11. Surrounding the tombstone are 978 pairs of boots – a set for every soldier who has died in Iraq. Hundreds of kids’ shoes and women’s shoes and the shoes of men are there as well – each pair representing a dead Iraqi. The names of all those who have died during the invasion and occupation of Iraq are being read out as Jones tries to describe the pain and anger his family has felt – pain at losing his children’s uncle, Bill Kelly, and anger at the Bush administration for using their suffering, as they see it, as an excuse for war across the globe.
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