Posted on 03/11/2003 11:39:50 AM PST by Master Zinja
DISPATCHES FROM THE AMERICAN FRONT
March 11, 2003
Have You Forgotten?
By James Benton
It's eighteen months today, eighteen months since 9/11, and as the next battle in the War on Terrorism seems imminent, an important question needs to be asked of everyone, particularly of those who oppose any action against Iraq:
Have you forgotten? Do you remember what happened that day? Do you remember not just where you were but how you felt when you heard what was happening?
Have you forgotten watching the second plane plow into the World Trade Center? Did you think of the lives lost at that moment?
Have you forgotten the look on the President's face when he was told of the second attack? Did you see his face change in the next few seconds from shock to determination, the first indication to all of us that, no matter what, we would win this war?
Have you forgotten the people who made the terrible choice no one should have to make and flung themselves out of the World Trade Center?
Have you forgotten the heroes who perished in Pennsylvania, Washington and New York, many of whom could've chosen to live yet didn't hesitate to fight to the death against impossible odds?
Have you forgotten the sorrow and pride we all share whenever we remember the names and faces of that day? Todd Beamer. Rudy. FDNY. NYPD. Ground Zero. The Pentagon. United Flight 93. Names - heroes - forever hallowed in our minds and in our hearts.
Have you forgotten the sweetest-sounding Star Spangled Banner played that day not in the United States but in London, where the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace played our national anthem for the first time ever before hundreds of American and British citizens, where grown men wept at its conclusion, where the bond between America and Britain became as real again as it was decades before when together we faced and defeated evil?
Have you forgotten the flag shortages, the lines to donate blood, the flood of supplies for those in Manhattan at Ground Zero, our generation's Most Hallowed Ground?
Have you forgotten Afghanistan? Tora Bora? The Daisy Cutter? Have you forgotten past victories in this war in your rush to be afraid of future terror which we're fighting?
Have you forgotten? If you're reading this, chances are you haven't - but it seems so many others have.
Therefore, there is a mission for today, for those of us who haven't forgotten.
Find someone who has forgotten, and remind them.
Remind them that the war isn't about to start - it began 548 days ago, eighteen months ago today, and will continue against whoever opposes us and would strive to do us harm, with or without help from our allies, until WE say the war is over.
Remind them why our troops are elsewhere, why they are in harm's way in Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous other places we can only guess about, fighting in the shadows our enemies know so well and in the open where we are unmatched in the world.
Remind them that freedom is never free, even if they have the freedom to ignore you.
Remember 9/11.
It is the least we can do to honor those lost on that terrible day and since.
God Bless America.
That's so over.
Zinja
Next week my cousin who was in the 34th floor of the 2nd Tower hit is making her first plane flight(here to San Diego) since that terrible day. The trip had previously been scheduled for a year ago but she felt she would be unable to do it. I can't even bring the subject up around her. I don't know if that is because I am afraid of stirring up memories in her...or in me. It's still just too damn hard to discuss in a rational manner.
Never forget 9-11? I couldn't forget it if I tried to.
Turn your volume up and click here.
Have you forgotten!
Tony Parsons -- Daily Mirror -- September 11, 2002
One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting -- the mass murder of thousands, live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's Mountain of Skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps. An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate.
Surely there could be consensus: The victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil. But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.
There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country; too loud, too rich, too full of themselves, and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic. And it seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my stomach. America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood. A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own.
Have we forgotten so soon?
And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries, were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics.
Are we so quick to betray them?
What touched the heart about those who died in the Twin Towers and on the planes, was that we recognized them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands, wives, and children, some unborn. And these people brought it on themselves? Their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter? These days, you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan. The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.
The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11.
Remember, remember -
Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive.
Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers.
Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive.
Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum.
Remember, remember -
Remember, and realize that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.
So a few al-Qaeda tourists got locked without a trial in Camp X-ray? - Pass the Kleenex . . .
So some Afghan wedding reception was shot up after they merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full of American planes? - A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to confetti.
AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't, is a sign of strength. American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for.
How many in the Islamic world will have a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of 9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination? When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street.
America watched all of that - and didn't push the button.
We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world.
I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war.
Not a "war on terrorism."
A real war.
The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell," if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe.
The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth. The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived. But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.
I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But, I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh.
Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be - rich, free, strong, open, optimistic. Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system.
America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that. Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil?
Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning towers.
Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper.
Tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the New York Fire Department.
To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein. Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes Quality Street.
Save me the orange center, Oh Mighty One!
Remember, remember,
September 11 - One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America.
No, do more than remember.
Never forget.
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