May 9, 2024

Laura Jedeed

Freelance Journalist

“Never Forget” is Breaking America

I did two tours in Afghanistan after 9/11. The country I went to war for no longer exists

Art by @plannedalism (IG). Photo by Laura Jedeed

The full version of this article appears in Rolling Stone

I fell in love with a shambling corpse, the day the towers fell.

I was fourteen years old, in small-town Colorado. We clustered around a television that showed, again and again, a commercial jet flying into the World Trade Center. The broadcast footage, a mere 45 minutes old, was already a relic of the long-distant past. Moments earlier, the world had watched the second tower fall. Thousands were dead. The myth of America Invicta lay bludgeoned to death on live TV.

As I watched the old world end on national television, my initial feelings of vulnerability and helplessness gave way to bloodletting rage like nothing I have felt before or since…

Read More at Rolling Stone