I have got to say that it is such a tough thing to remember on the anniversary and even in passing on any other day.
We lost "distant" family (second and third cousins on both mom & dad's side) and even without meeting any of them, I know that I will always see them as heroes.
To this day, I still remember looking up between the two towers and feeling dwarfed beyond words. At that time, I had no idea that they were the two buildings from an early childhood vision of 9/11.
Prior to 9/11 I talked about the day of seeing what I saw in my mind and didn't realize that it was a "vision" until the morning of 9/11 and for a very long time I refused to speak of it for a good four years.
Now I realize that what I saw as a child was the very beginning of the visions that I have kept secret for so long and not just the fact that I "thought in pictures" as a child (which I did).
Under stress I do think in pictures and do get frustrated over the inability to communicate in any other language I know. But more than that, learning to deal with seeing things that can only be described as "modern day biblical" is hard for me, even now.
My heart goes out to all of the loved ones of the many that died that day. It also goes out to the many that were so lucky as to not be in either of the towers for whatever reason God chose to allow them to be spared.
I tried following this thread last night, and I just wasn't able to stay with it. I guess I'm just not up to thinking too much about that day. I will tell my story and make a few comments. I hope I don't go too far over the line in what I have to say.
I was at work at my employer's technical center in western Houston on that morning. The first news that I heard of the attack was an e-mail that our secretary sent talking about a horrible plane crash in New York City. She wrote the e-mail in a way that suggested that all of us would know what she was talking about. I didn't, but at first I ignored the whole thing. Within ten or fifteen minutes, I started to hear a different tone in people's voices as they talked in the hallways.
I went down to the secretary's office to ask what was happening. She was on the phone with her husband, and he was cursing a blue streak at the terrorists. She finished talking to him and told me what had happened. By that time, the buzz was starting to go all over the offices and labs. People went to conference rooms and turned on TVs to watch the news. I saw replays of the planes hitting the towers.
I went to my computer and got on Free Republic. I didn't sign in. My employer is pretty liberal, and I had never opened Free Republic from my computer at work. I didn't think it would be good for my career for the computer people to see Free Republic as a site that I had visited from work. I'm sure that the diversity types that run the company would say that Free Republic was insufficiently "inclusive." However, I started reading the reports here on Free Republic. Immediately, I was getting information that was better than what other people at the tech center were getting.
I tried to get back to work after a few minutes, and I did a little work. I would step into the hallway occasionally to see what the latest news was. I don't remember whether I heard about the Pentagon attack at work or after I returned home.
I don't remember when they told us to go home. I halfway remember it as ten or ten-thirty central time, but I could be wrong. I felt a bit of fear when they first said that we could go home. I wondered whether someone had told management that the tech center was a target and that we needed to leave. As it turned out, they just wanted to let people with families take care of family issues, but they didn't say that in the announcement.
They didn't say that leaving was optional, but they didn't emphasize a need to leave too much. A part of me thought that I would accomplish nothing at home and maybe should just stay and work. I didn't have kids that would need to be picked up at school or any of those kinds of obligations. I was also on the fire crew, and I wondered whether I should stay in case they needed the fire crew. If the tech center had been threatened, they might want us to man the engines and prepare for something. I walked down the hallway to try to find the crew leaders, but they weren't in their offices. I was still there about fifteen or twenty minutes after the dismissal announcement when I decided that I should just go home.
Of course, my timing was as bad as it always is. Probably two or three minutes after I walked out of my office, they made the announcement on the our fire crew radios for members still in the building to report to help with a few things. I wasn't supposed to carry my radio on a regular basis, so I didn't hear the announcement. As it turns out, they really just wanted people to walk around and make sure that everyone had left, but I was sorry not to help with anything the crew needed.
I stopped for gas on the way home, and there was no line. One other person said she expected gas to be six dollars a gallon by the end of the week. I went to a bicycle shop for some reason. I don't remember what I needed, but I figured that I might as well take the opportunity to get it. I think I arrived home before noon, but I don't remember.
I didn't have cable back then, but with the Fox Network running Fox News through those first few days, I followed some of the coverage on TV. I think that I took some time away from it all to ride my bike. Doing something as normal as taking a bike ride may have been strange on that day, but I realized that I was accomplishing nothing just watching the coverage. I figured that getting a little exercise would help me.
By that evening, I was struck by a couple of things. I was mostly struck by the fact that on the one plane where the passengers resisted, they defeated the terrorists. If someone had raised the possibility of this kind of attack happening before that time, most of us would say that Americans wouldn't sit still for anyone hijacking a plane with a little knife. We would have assumed that the passengers would risk some cuts to fight back and would overpower any individual or small group of individuals who tried something so crazy. What we learned that day is that Americans had been lulled to the point that we didn't fight back until it was too late.
In saying these things, I'm not blaming the people who were on those planes. I must have typed these words 100 times in the past five years. Those people did what our society taught them is the right way to handle a difficult situation, and it takes considerable courage to do what one believes is right under such difficult circumstances. They sat calmly, dialed 9-1-1, and waited for "proper authorities" to handle the situation. Unfortunately, this passive response is a death trip. On three planes, the people died waiting for proper authorities to figure out what to do. On the one plane where the people realized that what they'd been taught was wrong and that everyday individuals must respond with force against our enemies, they fought and denied that plane to the enemies. They died in that effort, but they won that fight.
I do blame our society for endorsing passivity and pacifism. The world is a dangerous place, and we must try to be prepared always to respond with deadly force against any enemy who attacks us. Attacks by Muslim jihadists are nothing new. Their attacks had been happening for over twenty years at that time. The average American should have had the attitude that any ragheaded bastard who threatens him would face fangs and horns and claws and not face some passive sheep who just dials a cell phone and waits. I'm not saying that I'd do better than anyone else would in this situation. I'm as conditioned by our society as anyone is, but I am saying that we need to change that conditioning.
Conservatives are fond of calling themselves "September 12 people" to signify an awareness of the terrorist threat. I thoroughly hate that designation. I want to be and want to be around "October 7 people." What is significant about October 7? That was the day in 2001 that we began the offensive against the jihadists in Afghanistan. While I realize that our armed forces and intelligence services began trying to destroy these jihadist enemies before that day, October 7 is the best day to designate as the beginning of our action against these enemies.
We said that we weren't going to let the terrorists reduce our freedoms, but we have. We have seen a degradation of our Fourth Amendment rights. In many ways, our lives are less convenient than they were back then, and we seem to accept that inconvenience. I think that acceptance is a mistake. I see no safety in security. Security measures won't stop them from making another deadly attack. Instead, we need to destroy them. We need to kill them and keep killing them until none are left or the remaining ones surrender.
Less than four years after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the humbled Japanese surrendered. The Muslim jihadists are no tougher than the Japanese were. If we hit them hard enough, we can humble them the same way. However, we have to have the right attitude. We have to believe that our smallest convenience is more important than the lives of all of the jihadists and all of their supporters and all of their sympathizers. We have to be willing to inflict some collateral damage to make them pay for hurting us. This attitude may seem backwards and primitive, but we enjoy the freedoms we have today because Americans who came before us took that attitude when they were threatened.
After September 11, 2001, our entire air transportation system was grounded for three or four days. People traveling on business sat in hotel rooms waiting for a chance to get home. People seem to forget how extraordinary the impact of those attacks was. We seem to forget the horror of people forced by fire to jump from skyscraper windows. We forget the impact of the loss of all of those people. More importantly, we forget that the enemy who attacked us is still alive. We've done great damage to Al Qaeda in killing or capturing their leaders. I applaud those efforts. However, I see no reason to stop hurting these enemies, their supporters, and their sympathizers wherever we see them. If the result is a world without the Muslim religion, then that world will be no worse off for that loss.
I guess I'm still very angry about the whole situation. I'm angry that these swine attacked us. I'm angry that anyone wouldn't see the value in attacking a Muslim government and humbling these people. I'm angry that people think that the way to deal with them is to implement security measures that inconvenience us rather than preserving our freedom and killing more of them. I guess I'm afraid of remembering too much about that day. I have no interest in sitting around hugging each other and pretending that things can be okay. I just want our enemies dead, but being reminded that they are still alive is stressful for me.
Bill
