What I Learned on September 11
Events rapidly morphed my blasé demeanor into a sense of personal urgency. I learned that my brother and one of my nephews were both in New York City that day. Each was within a mile of Ground Zero according the last plans my mother and sister had received. As the full range of attacks was revealed, even worse news loomed on the horizon. My father-in-law is a career military intelligence man who traveled weekly between an air base in upstate New York and the Pentagon. My wife was beyond the point of rational speech by the time I arrived home. It was only later we learned, after many phone calls had been thwarted by lack of service, that none of our loved ones had been lost. My wife’s father informed us that he had, only days earlier, been walking down a hallway in the Pentagon precisely where the aircraft struck. The brother and nephew took days to make it out of the city, but were physically intact. We had dodged all the bullets and the family heaved a sigh of relief, but it had been too close for comfort.
In retrospect, even the comfort we felt in finding our family members safe was a source of guilt. The magnitude of the disaster we all witnessed on our television screens, playing out like the cruelest of screenplays, was simply too great to incorporate. Our own joy for the security of our loved ones was a feeling I could wrap inside my mind. The losses facing thousands of others were something foreign — these things just don’t happen in the real world where I live. It was easier to lock those feelings away and let the CNN commentators do the mourning for me.
Everyone took their own lessons from that day, but it was with some sadness that I watched various people try to usurp our memories of the tragedy to their own purpose. A moment which initially unified the country in a way not seen in the modern era was eventually spun in every direction, resulting in divisions among our various American tribes. But for me, if there is any lasting education to be gained from the smoke, fire, and violence, it is a reinforced understanding of our basic shared humanity.
Tragedy is tragedy, regardless of the scale. When we drive by the scene of an accident it is never simply fodder for the six o’clock news; real people with very tangible lives are lost or in peril. Even if it doesn’t touch us directly, it still reaches out to our common condition as human beings and the bonds we all share.
A shrug of the shoulders is never the correct response. September 11, 2001, taught me exactly how small I had become and reminds me of how much larger my soul needs to be.
The entire country shank after 9/11. Our divisions became deeper, our arguments more furious, our attitudes more cynical, and our treatment of each other more petty and hostile. This, now, is how Americans react to a crisis: They go straight for each others’ throats.
I started this 9/11 hoping to observe the occasion with quiet reflection and respect. But when I look and listen and feel Americans hating each other so much because of their political and cultural differences, I can’t help thinking that we have, in fact, become a very small, very sad people.
Bravo man. It is good to realise what is truly important in life.
Pretty tough words and unfortunately hard to argue against. I can’t even talk to family member about politics. We need to remember that the people murdered on 9/11 where of all political stripes and from many places in the world. How can we fight against these Islamo fascist pigs when our knives are busy being stuck in each other’s backs? We can blame the politicians or the MSM but we are responsible for our own actions it is our choice to have our minds brainwashed by these people. Never forget and GOD Bless.
As a former Manhattanite, I was left shocked by 9/11. It was the very worst of times for me.
On 9/15/01, I turned on C-Span’s BOOK TV. And I was introduced to Victor Davis Hanson, the military historian/classicist/farmer many of us have grown to admire. That day, he spoke of his book CARNAGE AND CULTURE and offered encouragement to his Fresno neighbors that we would win this war, because the West, comprised of free peoples joining together ALWAYS WINS, not because we’re more moral, but because we can be lethal when aroused. As Admiral Yamamoto, famously said, “I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
I watched The March on Baghdad 18/7 and heard that the Russians were struck with “fear and awe” and decided to totally revamp their military training. That “fear and awe” dissipated because our soldiers are nice guys who give candy to children and help people rebuild their communities and that’s unimpressive to Putin-types and to Islamofascists who see that niceness as weakness. All they understand is ferocity, and only total defeat will persuade them to try something else other than Jihad for a few decades or so.
That’s another reason why Obama would be such a disaster at a time when we’re facing Islamofascism, Russia and perhaps China. Obama wants to spend on priorities other than military, no money for new weapons, etc.
A well-armed America will be the only safe America.
Sandra M
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. Benjamin Franklin 1759.
P.S. Hitler never invaded Switzerland, because ever Swiss man had a rifle at the ready.
For gun control: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot.
Against gun control: Jefferson, Ghandi.
We are at war and will be for the forseeable future.
I tried to have a day of reflection.
However, two idiots tried to put a sign over Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, “9/11 was an inside job”. Hope after my wife called the police they got to spend a little time in the Cook County Jail shower room.
We must never forget. We must always remember what extremely radical people are capable of, whether it’s Hitler, Bin Laden, Pol Pot.
At least I think the Bin Laden is dead. (Tora Bora)
Jeff,
That’s a shame; unfortunately some people’s decency is connected to their IQ.
“We must never forget. We must always remember what extremely radical people are capable of, whether it’s Hitler, Bin Laden, Pol Pot.”
Amen
Thank you, Jazz, for your candor. If I might make a point: 9/11 was not, as so many try to have it, a “tragedy”. It was an ATTACK! Just like Pearl Harbor was an attack. It was not some bolt from the blue due to natural causes, it was the culmination of increasingly pointed attacks on us and the West that went unchallenged. It is not “political” or “partisan” to point that out, but it is political and partisan for Keith Olberman and his enablers to try to keep us from seeing the images of 9/11. With this election I think many of us are finished with paying any attention to the Olberman’s of this country. No one ranted about showing pictures of Pearl Harbor during WWII.
My reception of the news was accompanied by the smallest of shrugs.
Ditto. Mine was an e-mail from a friend at Arthur Andersen. I was in the middle of an office meeting, and ignored it. Then, my friend sent another. I ignored it. Then, my friend sent another. This time, I grudgingly listened, adjourned the meeting, and said, “We need to go to the breakroom.”
Today, we are back again as complacent as I was then.
“Jazz” wrote, “…how small I had become and reminds me of how much larger my soul needs to be.”
Fair enough. Very personally written. And good stuff. I respect that.
BUT…I would AGREE also by using the OPPOSITE word (no, not being contrarian or cosmic…heh), to whit – it reminded me how “large” the importance of I is only in the United States of America.
I am a first generation American. My parents were war refugees. NO, I’m not young, cool and politically correct, “Jeff,” I’m not (for example) Vietnamese…my parents sought “refuge” from World War II (even though, according to most U.S. Leftists of today, THEY, like I, being “white,” *must* be/have been “privileged”[sic]…ha!).
What I wish to emphasize here is that I always used to feel like I had “one foot on each continent.” Not an unusual sentiment.
THEN I moved “over there”…about 2 weeks before September 11, 2001 [albeit good reasons...AMORE..."when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that's..." and all that...] for 6 years.
Been back in the U.S. for about 1 year.
NOWHERE ELSE HAVE I EVER SENSED THE “RELEASE”, THE FREEDOM SO TO SAY – and I say this sincerely, without exaggeration or la-la-nationalism – THAT IS FOUND IN THESE UNITED STATES.
For that, we can all be grateful…as well as to all those who PROTECT that FREEDOM.
“FREEDOM” IS..N-O-T..”just another word,” except perhaps for losers who have “nothing left to lose.”
i am still and forever will be pissed off at the islamics who attacked my country.
i WILL NEVER FORGET THAT DAY.
i know we are supposed to forgive…but this one…i dont know how i can.
everytime i see the video of the attack it enrages me more and more.
i was in new york on the 4th of sept. 2001 i had just arrived on the QE2
my first time in the city ever.
i met a british fella on the ship and walked him to his hotel man what a long walk that was.
he had never been to new york either. i felt it my duty to help the guy get to where he was going.
i remember a fella in a wheel chair asking for money.
i stopped gave him a dollar and we talked a bit.
i then bought a cell phone. found the bus station and went west.
i was in wyoming when the attack occured.
i immediately went to work, i reviewed my passenger manifest list from the QE2.
i found one person on the list from algeria. i thought it strange, so i faxed it to the fbi.
from that day forward i have been suspicious of anything islamic.
i have been glued to the news since that day.
my heart and my prayers go to all who lost their loved ones on that day.
i love you
TO: Jazz Shaw, et al.
RE: Where Were YOU?
I was in my office attending to management of a database system that supported the western third of the US, less California and Nevada.
I’d been in and deep in my programming ‘cups’ since around 0500 hours Mountain Time.
Around 0800 hrs my co-worker came in and said someone had flown two planes into the World Trade Center towers.
Without batting an eye I said, “Sounds like an ‘Act of War’ to me.”
Thinks like this don’t seem to bother you after 20+ years in the infantry. At least not as much as they seem to bother other people. Or at least, if you’re bothered, it’s in a different fashion.
And the cold fury still burns as hot in me today as it did 30 minutes after I’d fully grasped what had happened back then.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say give them all they want. -- William Tecumseh Sherman]
P.S. And THEN SOME….
….,i.e., some ‘insurance rounds’, if you will. Or even if you won’t……
Jeff – there is nothing wrong with your soul. It sounds like you are a true American producer: worthy of veneration and not worthy of the guilt that so-called intellectuals like Ward Churchill and so-called leaders like Bill Clinton have been so desperately trying to lay upon us with variants of “it’s America’s fault.”
We were once united around an idea – sovereign individual rights and a government limited by its constitution (almost) solely to protecting those rights. Today, with that idea no longer taught, practiced, or even recognized in the mainstream, we are becoming like every other nation – balkanized warring factions.
Sandra is half-right: a well-armed America will be a safe America – but only when our leaders recognize our right to exist for our own sake as innocent producers like Jeff – and our right to defend ourselves against those who, like Khomeini of Iran in 1976, declare “death to America.”
Until then, all of our bombs and troops are of no use. Our leaders must regain the morality necessary to drop those bombs and defend our right to live as producers – instead of air-dropping food and sacrificing our boys to nation building. Our leaders could start by reclaiming the oil wells which Americans built and paid for that were stolen by the Arabs….
Until then, we’re just a paper tiger – incapable of accomplishing even the most elementary action necessary for our continued existence: destroying our enemies’ will to fight.
Worked at Ground Zero for weeks, my greatest moment, buired in unsurmounting grief, Friends that will never be forgotten, I miss you.
THE ONLY ONE THING
you should learn: untill we put communists in kremlin and beijing to justice and hang them:
9-11 has a 100% chance of repeating on the scale of
30000 *thirty thousand* and MORE times victims compared to 2001
WAKE UP or chances are in the next 18 monthes USA will have 100 million people less
9-11 did not happen as a result of love and respect between people groups. Yet, since the beginning of time, people groups have had “moments” of hatred and “seasons” of great strife. History unfortunately shows us that death and destruction has been with us for century upon century. Can we truly expect real lasting “peace on earth”? If so, is it to be birthed by people groups who teach and preach superiority as a race or religion, such that all others are to be extinguished or made slaves to their beliefs and world views? By people groups who think nothing of cutting out tongues, raping, mass killings, marketplace bombs, be-headings, burying four young girls alive because they desired to have some say in who they marry? Peace on earth, it would seem, has a better chance of finding its way to the forefront within a world view of “loving your neighbor as yourself”…”doing unto others as you would have them do unto you”…recognition that there are no persons favored over others in the eyes of God. I am proud to be a citizen of this great country, as imperfect as some like to point that it is. Our rights are married to the truths found within a Judeo-Christian belief system and world view. In God We Trust….or used to trust. At 9-11 we met to pray, ignoring “differences”. The further we move away from this base…the more we will find ourselves “legislating” morality and freedom. God Bless America!
jdt
“September 11, 2001, taught me exactly how small I had become and reminds me of how much larger my soul needs to be.”
To all readers in the USA: Remember this statement as you examine the presidential candidates.
I’ll spare the details of where I was, but when I heard of the first plane, my reaction was “If there’s a second one, it was no accident.” And I waited for the second one. And it hit.
Maybe that’s why I’m a conservative: I believe in human evil, and I test theories.
gus3: We can’t do anything about our candidates’ souls. We need to work on our own souls. Assuming we still have them…
Street can defeat primitive terror!
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All acts of barbaric terror must be replied with a multiple of cleansing mass demonstrations, in all major cities of the world, marching to the Unknown Victim of Terror Monument. UVT!!!!!!!!!
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The voice of decency must be louder the Tehran, Kaba, Kremling inspired cheap barbarism.
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You, the author of this piece, are the same person who thinks Sarah Palin is not the right person to be President someday. You have returned to your complacent cynical self rather than seeing that Sarah embodies honest simple folks’ need for a truthful leader to stand against the vicious wolves of the world. Instead this country has elected a Communist con man and is going the way of all the totalitarian examples because it now believes all the lies that are being told about it. When I say it, I mean the confused, chaotic useful idiots that the left cultivates with its lies and spins. The mainstream media is a tool of the Left. We stand with this election on on the cusp of history. The Left has done its work over the last 40 years. Our ruination is not far off. I don’t think we will make it through the next four years intact.
My sense is that we have learned nothing from this event, and that three thousand people died for nothing. It will take the loss of an entire American city to wake the country up to the threats of Islamic totalitarianism. Within days of this event, the Left was endeavoring to throw up political opposition to our military response.