Posted on 08/11/2004 1:28:05 PM PDT by wagglebee
It was a beautiful Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C. The sky was blue, the air was crisp, and millions of Americans were making their way to their jobs just as they did on any other day.
But this was no ordinary day. In fact, it was a day that would change not only my life but also the course of American history.
On this day, September 11, 2001, I rode with the top down in my friend's convertible along the highway toward the Pentagon. As I listened in disbelief to the radio reports of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, I was snapped back into reality by the roar of jet engines only a couple hundred feet above my head. Flight 77 then crashed in front of my eyes in a fiery explosion into the Pentagon.
I sat stunned in the car as we pulled to the side of the freeway. I looked around only to see more stunned looks – some eyes wide with shock, others streaming with tears.
Earlier, when President Bush received word of the second World Trade Center attack, he sat for seven minutes taking in what had just happened and fulfilling his obligation to the Florida students to whom he was reading. I sat in shock, and the president calmly sat and contemplated his next move. We now know, however, that had John Kerry been president, he would have acted – and he would have done so immediately.
Speaking at the Unity Conference, a quadrennial gathering of the four largest minority journalism associations, Sen. Kerry told the audience, "First of all, had I been reading to children, and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had business that he needed to attend to, and I would have attended to it."
Although plenty has been said regarding President Bush and his efforts in the war on terror, until Kerry's comment no political figure, neither Republican nor Democrat, has criticized President Bush's actions on that terrible day. Now, with either the benefit of divine hindsight or a complete lack of understanding of the fog of the day, Kerry claims he could have done things better. He would have "attended to business."
Just what would Kerry have done upon hearing the news? How could things have run more smoothly under President Kerry from the time he was whispered the information until the time he left the classroom? In those seven minutes could we have saved an additional life? Could we have gotten a jump start on attacking al-Qaida?
In Kerry's zeal for the White House, he has shown in one sentence that playing politics with the memory of 9/11 is not beyond his limits of decency. It is impossible to say what we would have or could have done during 9/11. It is only possible to say what each one of us did do as the events unfolded on that fateful day.
I sat stunned until the realization hit us that we needed to call loved ones to let them know what was happening. President Bush was charting a course of action while remaining calm in a classroom of children. Despite what Kerry says he would have done on 9/11, upon hearing the news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, Kerry told CNN's Larry King that he and fellow senators "watched the second plane come in to the building."
"And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think," Kerry continued to King.
Kerry said he was shaken out of his non-thinking state by seeing the "cloud of explosion at the Pentagon." Between the time of the second World Trade Center attack and the attack on the Pentagon, 40 minutes elapsed. That's 40 minutes of the Democrats' presidential nominee being unable to think.
Yet, despite the fact that as senator Kerry was unable to think for 40 minutes, the American public is supposed to believe that President Bush was wrong to continue reading for seven minutes and that as president, Kerry would have acted immediately.
This notion would be ridiculous if it weren't so tragic. No one – except Kerry, it seems – can honestly say how they would have acted had they been in a different role on September 11, 2001.
If you were a firefighter with a wife and children at home and you were standing at the doors of one of the World Trade Center towers, would you have rushed in?
If the situation arose, and as a fighter pilot you were ordered to kill innocent American civilians on a passenger airliner, could you have done it?
These are unknown questions and will always remain unknown. Tragedies such as 9/11 make heroes out of normal people and turn novice officeholders into leaders. Kerry, to his shame, claims a course of action that can never be known.
This campaign for president of the United States will surely have its share of attack ads, accusations and counter-accusations. As it unfolds, I can only hope that Sen. Kerry will remember 9/11 for what it was – a terrible day for America, a day that ended the lives of some and changed the lives of all.
In the meantime, if given the choice between a man who sat calmly for seven minutes in order to process unspeakable terrorist attacks and a man who sat for 40 minutes unable to think, I'll take the former any day of the week.
Good article. Thanks.
OMG - I just went through and read the thread. It brought everything back so clearly that I started to cry again. God Bless America, God Bless George W. Bush.
In those horrible first moments, no one knew where the next shoe was going to fall.
America listens to its President. But the President listens to his Secret Service.
That's how it works. Houseboy Kerry knows that; he's just being a sleazeball.
I was and remain very proud of the way the President reacted that awful day...and ever since.
BTW, I've often wondered what the Secret Service was doing during those seven minutes.
I thought he was in Cambodia that day. . .
Yes, He was in Daschles senate office and he admitted he couldn't think for 45 minutes. Bush was 38 minutes ahead of Kerry from the get go.
He took the "opportunist" page straight from Michael Moore. After what he said at UNITY and then hearing what he REALLY did on 9/11, he is even lower on my respectability list.
I saw Bill Maher and Michael Mooooore j*rking off on his show about those 7 minutes. I guess that makes Kerry 6x worse than Bush, huh?
My opinion is that Bush WAS IN SHOCK for a few mintues and was trying to gather his thoughts. NOBODY (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Kerry, Clinton, Gore, etc.) expected two planes to hit the WTC. I was in shock for days, like most people who felt like it couldn't have been real.
When you exploit ANYONE'S actions on 9/11, you are lower than scum. Hindsight is a copeout.
Let's not forget Michael Moore's response to the 9/11 - he was just mad that the terrorists attacked BLUE states (New York, Massachusetts, DC, California). He probably would have been ok with 3,000 deaths in the South.
I don't know what Bush was thinking in those 7 minutes, but I remember the next 10 days when Schumer, Byrd, Mrs. Bill Clinton were all wetting their pants about what to do - I saw Bush step up to challange with his speech on Sept. 20, 2001. Absolutely perfect!
Thank you. It is something we forget at our peril.
Excellent Point!
40 minutes.
Oh come now. He hasn't the attention span.
I'm not sure what you mean. You said he was stunned for 40 seconds but he says it was almost 40 minutes according to his Larry King interview.
What am I missing?
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