I remember… every second of it. I remember watching a news feed TV screen at work, scratching my head and speculating with the others standing around me as to what happened to cause the crash at the World Trade Center… and staring in shock as the second plane loomed into the picture to strike the second tower. My heart sunk, everyone suddenly knew it wasn’t an accident.
I remember folks scrabbling around packing up their personal computers, paperwork that would be useful and preparing to head out. The Navy Captain who was the deputy for the organization, passed the word for contractors to start getting out and getting home as fast as possible, so that we could get on line from there. Federal employees had to stay because OPM had no “liberal leave” policy for a terrorist attack I suppose.
I remember the phone call from a frantic colleague who was stuck on I395 south in Arlington. He’d just seen an airliner fly into the Pentagon, and he was in a blind panic.
I remember getting out of the office and heading south, passing fire trucks and ambulances head north to Arlington. I can still see the dark cloud forming a thin finger to the north…
I remember driving home on the Prince William Parkway, a cloudless sky usually filled with the sight of airliners and private planes, empty save a few thin twin contrail traces of fighterplanes arching about.
I remember listening to the radio in the car, for reports of traffic, accidents, and especially for news of a fourth missing airliner that hadn’t been accounted for yet. I also remember the sad feeling when some news cast mentioned that it had crashed in rural Pennsylvania and rescue crews were having difficulty getting to the site because of the remote location of the crash.
I also remember getting my kids from school. Setting up for remote work, and starting the search for friends who I knew worked at the Pentagon. I remember scouring lists of casualties, sad to find a high school classmate of my sister’s, a former coworker of hers (and mine on a few project bids). I remember the relief the morning of September 12, finally getting in contact with a friend who was nearly killed as his office in the Pentagon was destroyed under his feet. Word trickled in from family that a cousin who was in the World Trade Center, at work on the 4th floor of one of the towers, had made it out safely and was at home.
I remember…. I will never forget…
And I am saddened because too many citizens of this nation will forget. They will not only forget, but it will warp and distort. The media in its cravenness to serve its phony pacifism will resort to anything to change history, change the events, distort the reasons, and obfuscate the truth.
We are faced with an enemy that resorts to violence FIRST. He uses the threat of violence to cow his enemies, and the promise of negotiation to buy time. He looks at the reticence to fight as weakness and lack of resolve. He sees us as craven, gullible, corrupt, and ultimately impotent.
This nation sleeps again, and now September 11, 2001 is merely an excuse for “The One” (whose election is demonstration of our ignorance writ large) to push his socialist agenda on the nation.
We are sliding into an abyss from which we probably will not find the will to from which to secure an exit.
God Bless those who parished on September 11, 2001. May their souls rest in eternal peace. May God have mercy on the United States of America, and may He grant that enough of this nation’s citizens wake from their torpor and make this nation great once again.
The Mighty Fahvaag
