Like a garment of many colors, the memory of September 11 changes hue with each different glance. And it will continue to do so because what we are looking at is not an event, which happened once, but at ourselves, which changes with the passing years. Memory includes us; it is the record of the various phases its participants went through; their hopes and disappointments, their fears and relief; it is a narrative of all the changes undergone since that day. Great events define history not only through their direct effects but in the manner they change the way people think. Osama bin Laden was the anti-Columbus, the shriveler of the world and vanquisher of new beginnings; the dark prophet who showed the oceans an illusion; who proved that there was no escape from ancient hatreds; the celebrant of those faceless idols who will not allow themselves to be forgotten.
The shadow of September 11 will mar man’s dreams until the day when we regain our boldness and set foot on other worlds; when humanity can once again distance the old evils, if only for a moment, carrying only such malignancies as are left dormant in their hearts. In all likelihood it will only be for a moment, because man pursues man with the hunger of a demon. Half the human race seeks something to love and the remainder seeks them as something to rule. The men who rushed up the stairs were our better angels; and their day is done. Not so us. We have miles to go before we sleep.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
We have miles to go before we sleep.
“Let’s roll.”
Juliana Valentine McCourt was a 4-year-old en route to Disneyland
Juliana McCourt was traveling with her mom, Ruth McCourt. Mrs. McCourt’s own brother, Ronnie Clifford, was working at the WTC but escaped just as the plane carrying his sister and niece struck the South Tower.
Juliana McCourt was born on May 4, 1997. She attended dance school, which still honors her to this day. She had no siblings. Juliana adored her fluffy white terrier, Phoebe. She was described as smart, sensitive, beautiful, nurturing like her mom. She never had a first day of Kindergarten. She never made it to Disneyland. The only consolation is that she was comforted by her loving mother during those last awful moments.
Friends of Project 2,996
Project 2996: Remembering Vicki C. Yancey
Blocking The Path To 9-11
Be sure to watch the Obama clip beneath the Trailer, in which the President demonstrates his ignorance about 93 Trade Towers, 9-11, and the story of KSM.
…naturally, he was not called on it.
911 – Atlas Shrugs has video MSM will never show
The Space Shuttle launch I remember the most is the first one that occurred after the attacks of 9/11/01. It seemed so appropriate that our enemies huddled in caves to escape our wrath while we still reached outwards and upwards.
The local paper for once got something right. The headline after that launch was “Let Freedom Roar!”
For roar it must. The Islamic Fascists will never reach the stars for the simple fact that they have time and again proven their ability to cross thread a bowling ball. But neither will free men reach those heights meekly.
There are those who worship Life and those who worship Death. In the end we all die but some of us know that by celebrating life we honor the Creator, whose works are eternal. Those who champion the dark leave no legacy, their destination and their memories are only a void. Today in NY the angels cry and all is washed clean.
From “Mere Christianity” by Lewis:
“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself . . . .
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended — civilisations are built up — excellent institution devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans.”
#2 RWE it’s less about capabilities and more about dreams and identity. The spirit and confidence that settled the New World will populate the stars. Hope, vision and expectations take us all to our ultimate destinations
Besides the obvious stuff, I have one memory of 9/11 that gave me my first glimpse of the rest of the world, even before seeing the Palestinians celebrating.
Where I was working, and seeing it all on TV, there was an engineer from Madras, an Indian Christian in fact, who’d been here then about 14-15 years and whose children were all born here.
Later that morning we were standing together and I made some comment to the effect that I just couldn’t believe such a thing.
His immediate reply? “The United States should do more to help other people.” This was spoken a sort of matter-of-fact, what-did-you-expect? sort of way.
I couldn’t reply I was so astonished. Since then, of course, I’ve thought of a million replies. I still don’t understand what he said and I’ll bet he doesn’t, either–it was just a spontaneous comment that revealed probably more than he expected, whatever it was.
But whatever the explanation, coming from a man such as him told me a lot about other people who are a lot less like him. The scales fell off my eyes that day. And I didn’t speak to him anymore.
LIFEOFTHEMIND: Well said.
Here in NM the TEA Party folks are having a memorial candle light vigil tonight. The other parties couldn’t care less.
That morning I was slated to go to a breakfast at Windows of the World–a former employee of mine was getting married and moving back to the country of his birth. He at the last minute canceled. We could have still have been up there when the first plane came. I was late getting to work–it was such a gorgeous morning that I took my dog for an extra long walk–and drove by the WTC about 10 minutes before the first plane crashed. I was on the West Side highway in the 20′s when it hit. At the time i lived not too far from one of fire houses that lost most of their men. Also knew some people that worked in the towers.
I will remember every second of that week iso long as I live–it is etched in my brain, every second of it.
One thing that I always think about: What an absolutely beautiful early fall day it was, the kind you only get in Sept. in NYC. There was not a cloud in the sky.
#6 Gordon- that is a lot of liberal Christians belief about evil- the victim caused it by not being nice enough to the victimizer.
Anti-Americanism is a close cousin to antisemitism. It seems to me to be a combination of projected self-loathing — we do, indeed, make the rest of the world feel inadequate — along with a reality based aversion to our obvious imperfections.
But the Indian’s reaction just demonstrates how pernicious the Marxist paradigm has been: Our success is perched on the backs of the poor and disadvantaged everywhere. I have to think that we’ve done enough right, a lot of it about trying to make the world a better place, that we will struggle our way to the next level at some point or another.
Probably the main thing I took away from 9/11 was how I had underestimated the character of America.
T/10: Don’t know that I’d call him ‘liberal Christian’ because we had talked a bit about the Christian Church in India. Founded by the apostle Thomas, it is the oldest Christian church outside the Holy Land and environs and equal in age to them, being founded during the lifetime of one who knew Jesus. Remembering that Thomas considered himself, and worshipped as, a Jew, that church is very ancient and unlike anything elsewhere. He told me it is fairly similar to the Orthodox Church but had many practices and customs from Judaism.
But here, he found American churches unsuitable mostly–too liberal–and eventually joined a fundamentalist Baptist congregation.
It was clearly a gut remark by him at a very troubling time for all of us and can’t really be analyzed objectively–I suspect he’s also wondered why he said that, almost blurted it out. But I couldn’t bear to bring it up with him, though he was a decent guy, and avoided him after that for fear of getting very angry.
I was working in the World Financial Center that morning, across West Street from the WTC. We didn’t see the first plane. But as we watched the North Tower burn the second plane impacted the South Tower directly in front of us. Everyone ran for the elevators at that point, which weren’t working. Building security wrangled us to the fire stairs for the trip down. Lots of people. Slow going. Worst part was everyone thought the planes would keep coming.
No, that’s not right. Watching the North Tower burn was the worst part. By far.
Like a garment of many colors, the memory of September 11 changes hue with each different glance.
I must be dumb, it seems one searing, static image to me.
I have not encountered anything but sympathy overseas concerning 911, but then I have decidedly non-leftist network.
I was in Washington D.C., four blocks from the White House, at the time. It was a glorious morning here too. We didn’t know for sure if the WH was an intended target, but it was assumed so, since the Pentagon had also been hit (I had driven in that morning — unusual for me — so I didn’t take Metro from the Pentagon that day. My day would have unfolded differently then). I was doing contract work at the National Education Association, and they had an enormous — and I do mean enormous, as in wall-to-wall-to-ceiling — screen in the auditorium showing the whole thing. The most indelible thing in my mind were the people in the upper floors of one of the towers, leaning out of windows (I didn’t know they could open, but there you have it). They were looking out, but not yet panicked — perhaps assuming that rescue could come. Those people were all gone an hour later at most.
We are no longer “allowed” to see those clips and pictures of people jumping from the towers. After all, we live in “sensitive” times. And the NEA? They showed their mendacity in treating 9/11 in a very different way than most Americans did, despite the fact that their employees got to see the horror unfolding larger-than-life.
Near the Pentagon, people had seen the plane heading in, and called 911 after the crash. What is remarkable is that they were able to describe the plane, including its carrier (by the tail logo). I remember that in particular because some time later a Frenchman wrote a well-selling book claiming it was an American cruise missile that hit the Pentagon, and that there was no plane.
Stormbringer relays a good first hand account(from a well trained individual) of that day here in Twin Towers 9-11: First hand Account. Scroll down in order to read the three part series in order.
Good comments, W; good comments,Clubbers. Words are inadequate to the moment, but on this anniversary of the WTC/Pentagon attack, one can only remark on how much America has changed politically and socially in 8 years. Now we are apologizing to the folks who continue to hate us and who spawned the hijackers. We’re a sorry imitation of our own founding fathers. F
After the first attack in ’93 people in the upper floors of the World Trade Towers were instructed not to evacuate down. That if needed they would be taken off the roofs. Some lives were lost because of that.
That was Primary Day. I was working at a polling site in Queens when the cop came in and announced they had hit the trade center and the election was canceled. Never before in American history, not even for the Civil War, did we stop an election. I got to the Red Cross HQ, I had been a volunteer already for a couple of years, around noon. John McGhee, a mountain of a man and the youth cohort leader who has since died, was organizing 10,000 volunteers in the auditorium of the old HQ which was behind Lincoln Center. I grabbed a van of supplies and raced down the West Side Highway past the thousands lining it. We pulled up in front of the hospital on Greenwich about two blocks North of The Box. All the doctors and nurses were standing outside and waiting. You could feel the heat from two blocks away and the air was thick with dust and the smell, well that is what I will never forget. That and the nurse standing there crying as the realization came that no one was coming out. I worked there, in front of the school next to it actually, for two weeks 12-16 hours a day straight.
For the second day I worked liaison at the reconstituted OEM in the Police Academy. I would call our HQ to confirm that we could provide blankets as needed and every now and then someone from the Medical Examiners office would come to the door and yell out “Do we have body bags?” As a side note, two weeks before there had been a multi agency meeting at the OEM HQ on the 23rd floor in 7 World Trade on hurricane preparedness. They had boasted at length about the state of the art facility. I was the stinker who raised a hand and asked if it was safe in the event of an attack. They replied with outraged assurance that the sides were especially armored and could withstand any attack or natural disaster. My response was to say, “Yes but what about the floor below?” They did not invite me back. A couple of days after 9-11 the National team from the Red Cross showed up to take charge and I escorted them around lower Manhattan and we did the damage assessment. We examined the place pretty thoroughly and concluded that it was damaged. The police were told to stop anybody from doing anything but I know how security works. The cop standing on the South East corner of Broadway and Wall wouldn’t let us by but I saw the Lieutenant standing on the North West corner, so I asked to speak to him. Well the Lieutenant saw us go past the first cop so he wasn’t going to stop us. I just said hello and we passed by. At one point in the midst of the devastation we found the Wall Street Hotel open and immaculate with the manager looking every inch a retired British Colonel as they cared for the rescue workers. Then I spent a month working at the main respite center on the Hudson River piers near the Intrepid. My most searing memory from there, beyond the wall of card and letters from across America and the missing persons photos, was the back room that was the Teddy Bear warehouse. It was like an animal shelter. We had thousands of bears that had been sent in and the one iron rule was that if you took a bear you were out. Later people who were milking the system came in, claimed to be victims to get benefits and took bears that they sold on the street. I wonder what happened to all those teddy bears needing homes. I sat with a pregnant widow, firefighters wives are all so young and lovely, as a firefighter explained to her that her children would always have 5,000 uncles.
Down on Greenwich street we had paper painter’s masks that we tried to convince the rescue workers to wear. Their were something like 16 different law enforcement agencies present at one point, including the Nassau County animal rescue, who carried guns. The National Guard stopped everybody but families sent their daughters down with trays of food and with a smile they got in. Some lunatics had gotten a hold of Red Cross gear and set up there own respite sites that it took days to sort out were not authorized. I went to the bathroom just when Robert Deniro came by with hamburgers from his restaurant up the block. The people from National restricted disbursement of the access badges we needed because they wanted to get them as souvenirs. On the piers I learned that the security dogs had a higher level of clearance on their ID badges then their handlers did. I guess the theory was that the dogs wouldn’t talk. Down at The Box many of the rescue dogs got cut digging. Tails were cut off, exhausted dogs and handlers would rest with us. Later they died from what they had inhaled.
The men who rushed up the stairs were our better angels; and their day is done. Not so us. We have miles to go before we sleep.
There were 2,996 more angels on that day. Here is a link to Project 2996 for 2009. These are tributes to those who were murdered at the hands of Islamofacism. Many beautiful, moving, heartfelt tributes have been written. Spend some time there, let the people who did these wonderful tributes know how you feel about them by leaving a comment.
http://project2996.wordpress.com/
My tribute was for Sushil Solanki #305 on the list of participants. Here is a direct link to the tribute on my blog, case any of you are interested.
http://callofthepatriot.blogspot.com/2009/09/sushil-solanki-one-of-2996-innocent.html
Here where I live, on my block I am the only one who has put out the Flag. Our local paper had virtually nothing about 9/11 or even a decent rememberance. I saw very few flags out as I drove around this morning.
Anyone else have comments about where you are?
We do not need to apologize to Islam, nor should our president have ever done so. He is an insult to those who perished on 9/11 and to every person in the military who has fallen in the war on Islamofacism and Terror. I call it what it really is.
“The men who rushed up the stairs were our better angels; and their day is done.” Sir, I disagree. They remain while those whose true god is death and destruction will succeed ultimately in destroying themselves, their own and their so-called god – with some help from those better angels.
“She shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever…”
It does not matter where those planes struck that day. A building full of bankers, the Pentagon, or an empty field in Pennsylvania. It does not matter.
What matters is that those nineteen men did what they did. It was ruthless, it was cold-blooded. But it wasn’t mass murder. Wasn’t a ‘tragedy.’ Wasn’t a ‘man-made disaster.’ It was an act of war.
Barbarians beyond the rule of law declared war on us. On you, on me, on everything we hold dear. Arts. Science. Free expression. Books. Music. Movies. Plays. Freedom to choose. Freedom to think. Freedom to be.
These Barbarians beyond the rule of conscience hold no value for human life — no value for anything save their hatreds and twisted ideology that demands dragging the entire world back to the brutalities of their wretched 12th Century. Women are nothing but non-sentient, movable objects to be caged, enslaved, and traded like livestock. Jews and gays are nothing but inhuman creatures to be killed on sight for no other reason than they exist.
The Enlightenment. The Renaissance. The Emancipation Proclamation. Equality of the sexes. Martin Luther King’s march on Washington. ‘For all we have and are,’ as Kipling wrote. ‘The ages’ slow-bought gain/They shriveled in a night.” These, these were the true targets those planes were aimed at.
And there are more men with box cutters in the world watching, waiting. And more planes.
Those who truly love the ages’ slow-bought gains, who truly love civilization, are on one side. The barbarians are on the other. There is precious little middle ground between.
Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old:
“No law except the sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled,”
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.
Those are those who claim it is not so. There are those who feel themselves far, far above such simple-minded sentiments as “them or us.” They are the ones who claim to most love civilization but who do nothing to fight for it, who do everything to hinder those who do fight, and who seek regardless the costs their precious common cause with those barbarians.
Their actions, not their honeyed words, prove beyond doubt that it is not civilization they love above all; it is their overweening pride, their hubris, their fecklessness, their self-righteous smugness — themselves in all their self-inspected grandeur — that they love first, most, and foremost. And civilization — true civilization? They love it not at all.
They are not men in any sense of the word, but braying animals penned in a chute, thinking themselves safe in their clumped herds, unwittingly awaiting a coming slaughterhouse from those who slip in among them with box cutters in their bloodied hands.
Many thanks to BC commenters for their thoughtful and insprirational words.
9-11 should arrive each year like Hamlet’s ghost: “Do not forget . . . .This visitation / Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.” I’d say our national purpose is getting pretty blunt with Hamlet Jr. in the White House.
And no thanks to President Obama, who has helped to re-direct observance of 9-11 towards a “National Day of Service.”
Below is information (from its website) about the sponsor, along with identification of the usual suspects behind planning. You will note that most of the cooperating organizations get their funding and boots on the ground via federal funding for service projects. These funds increased dramatically in this year’s federal budget. This means that the President has an ever-increasing number of $10/hr junior interns working on community service . . . such as the “National Day of Service.” Those of you who have worked for not-for-profits will recognize the strategy of using willing mainstream organizations to further a radical agenda, with government funding of course.
Here the info:
“The September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance was founded and is led by MyGoodDeed Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit organization established soon after the terrorist attacks on America.
“MyGoodDeed was created with the support of 22 different 9/11 organizations, including leading family member support groups. The organization led the successful seven year campaign to secure federal legislation, in 2009, that officially recognizes September 11 as an annually observed National Day of Service and Remembrance. Principal leaders of MyGoodDeed are David Paine, president and founder, and Jay Winuk, vice president and co-founder. Jay is also a 9/11 family member. His brother Glenn Winuk, an attorney and trained EMT, died in the line of duty during the collapse of the World Trade Center south tower.
“Participating along with MyGoodDeed Inc. as 9/11 Day of Service National Program Leaders include these prominent and innovative organizations:
AARP
America’s Promise Alliance
Be the Change Inc
CauseCast.com
City Year
Corporation for National and Community Service
DoSomething.org
National September 11 Memorial & Museum
Points of Light Institute/HandsOn Network
ServiceNation
StudentPIRGs
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center
Youth Service America
I remember asking my Father-in-law (who fought with the 10th Mountain Division in Italy in WW II) if the 9/11 attacks were bigger than Pearl Harbor. “Much scarier” was his answer. Mourning our slain is appropriate today, but I prefer to honor the heroes of that day and since. My flag (also the only one up on my block)is flying at full staff, with a POW/MIA flag on one end of the yardarm and a NH state flag on the other.My flags shall not bow to terror. They will fly all night without illumination (I know it’s a violation of the Flag Code) to symbolize what I think was the longest night in American history. Everybody was waiting for the other shoe to fall that night, expecting the worst. I will take my flags down at sunset on 9/12/09…probably reminding only myself of the bravery shown that day. Remember the Madrid train bombing just three days before the elections? I was angry and disappointed at the Spanish electorate for allowing that outrage to affect the choice of their government. It turns out that the only difference between Spain and the US is a question of timing. It took us 7 years, but the people have chosen an appeaser to “lead” them, and whether you prefer Barack Chamberlain or Neville Obama, more of our blood will be spilled at home.
Remembering one particular hero of whom most people know nothing, look up “Rick Rescorla” on Wiki sometime. Why that man has not yet simultaneously been awarded (posthumously) the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal is beyond my comprehension. With his three assistants, he personally saved thousands of lives that black day. I am a (very amateur) singer of Celtic songs, and I am learning “Men of Harlech” in his honor. It is one of the songs he sang in the stairways of the WTC as he shepherded the evacuation. Here’s to you, Rick, we’ll honor all our sheepdogs in your name! Long may they stand between the sheep and the wolves that would devour us all!
Note that the One gave a speech on 9/09. Is going to be on 60 Minutes on 9/13. And then is giving another speech on 9/14. And in all speechmaking there has been not one reference to the events of 9/11. Note that there was no speech by Barack Hussein Obama on the first 9/11 anniversary of his Presidency to lay out his vision of how America should meet the challenge of Islamic fascism in the years ahead. The silence is deafening.
Men of Harlech/Zulu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrZbUS0MaY4
LotM: Bet we crossed paths that week.
fonman @ 25
Men of Harlech/Zulu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrZbUS0MaY4
Tarnsman @26
There’s a reason for the silence of the Lamb. A secretly recorded meeting with Rahm Emmanuel on the subject of a 9/11 speech has been leaked to the Belmont Club. Following is a verbatim transcript.
El President, the smooth man said
I have the proclamation
The one in which the honored dead
Again remind the nation
Of that sad, sad September day
Of Muslims’ fierce attack
And how we all joined hands to pray
That they would not be back
Dear Rahm I know not what you mean
El Presidente sighed
For nothing happened at that scene
And no one really died
‘Twas all a ploy by that mad Bush
To get the people cowed
And bomb the folks of Hindu Kush
To make himself feel proud
But I will never fall for such
A dismal, dirty lie
And I have always said as much
And will till day I die
Now back to work we’ve things to do
The country’s in our hands
We’ve time to turn into Peru
Just like those other lands
Our mission’s clear dear brother Rahm
Tomorrow is the twelfth
Iran is closing on the bomb
And we must drink their health
Ah no dear Rahm, I make no speech
To honor our war dead
For doesn’t Holy Koran teach
That some things be unsaid?
Why did helicopters not try rescues?
“He remembered after 9/11 those who rose up to fight terrorism. Even as a child he was moved by them. There are always in history so many such people, he said. It is always the great reason for hope.”
The Children of 9/11 Grow Up
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405092337409478.html
maineman: “..projected self-loathing — we do, indeed, make the rest of the world feel inadequate..”
That sums it up quite nicely. 9/11 is best understood as an act of envy-driven hatred.
I’ts occasionally occured to me that the “Rest-of-the-World” sees America as a beautiful young woman. So beatuful that they would stab her in the back out of jealousy, but for the chance to keep suckling at her breast.
heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn: Love that movie!
Another thought: even to this day the Left seems think the overriding emotion evoked by 9/11 was fear. It seems never to have occured to them that anger, indeed rage was the most common reaction.
Hence their continued squeamishness about the images of that day. The Leftist mindset simply has no proper outlet for rage, except to direct it, guilt-ridden, at one’s own culture.
One of the small but horrible memories I have of the day of the attacks was seeing that within two hours of the first event, the major networks covering the news had already prepared graphics and music and a kind of “Ken Burns” prettification of the event, filtering it, and editing the raw footage, rather than just letting us see what was happening and judge for our selves.
The lying egg-sucking bastards running the networks immediately made the decision that the United States public were not sufficiently mature to view and absorb the event that would reverberate through centuries, without their wise intervention and selective paring of the bad stuff to keep us from letting our emotions get the better of our judgment.
Can’t let the prols see Americans driven by the flames to leap to their deaths. Might make them go do some hate crime against an innocent person sharing the ethnic heritage of whoever perpetrated this…
Can’t show the Palestinian communities cheering and firing their AK-47s to celebrate the deaths of thousands of people in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon… Might result in reprisals against our newsgathering crews. (Fox showed the Palestinians celebrating, and followed up. Did the other networks???)
I particularly remember gathering with several hundred folks a few days later in the center of a small town near where I lived. We sang a few patriotic songs and prayed, then someone spotted a passenger jet flying overhead, and a cheer went up.
How many times have you heard some stupid puke say “We shouldn’t be attacking Muslims; every time we hurt a Muslim it just makes more terrorists!” ????
I wonder if the idiots who pose that question ever pause to consider how many Americans are moved to a diamond-hard resolve by attacks done by Muslim fanatics…
Mongoose,
It’s a small town.
10. Thrasymachus:
“#6 Gordon- that is a lot of liberal Christians belief about evil- the victim caused it by not being nice enough to the victimizer.”
How any “Christian” could believe that is beyond me. A perversion of how one treats “the least of these” perhaps? It appears he simply couldn’t break from the child’s milk version of Karma.
Something else C. S. Lewis said, very simply, but very loudly: “For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world – that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God “made up out of His head” as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.”
I may not be a pleasing Christian to God, but I am not one to put on an animal’s skin just so I can be devoured in the Coliseum. I will fight, and if I am not pleasing to my Lord when I get to the Pearly Gates…I will depend greatly on Mercy.
In the meantime, I’m still one pissed-off cowboy at how fast many Americans have put this little embarrassment of 9/11 “behind them.”
I remember 9/11 every day of my life and my friend, Captain Larry D. Getzfred who died in the Pentagon attack at the Navy Communications Center.
I put the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on my car the day the U. S. Navy hoisted it up on it’s men of war, and even if it gets too “beligerant” for my beloved Navy, it will still fly on my SUV…yeah, SUV, until the day I die.
This, by James Lileks, was very moving. To grief, and to anger:
http://lileks.com/bleat/?p=3672
Never forget. Never forgive. Pay them back a thousand for one.
On Fox News Channels last night I saw a couple personal remembrances I found quite moving.
One was a cameraman who was there, filming after the first airliner hit the WTC. People started jumping from the building and he said that after the first couple he put the camera down and could not film any more. He was too overcome by emotion. So as bad as it was based on what we did see on TV, in reality it was far worse. The cameramen did not even film it all.
Also, there was a man describing how he was buried under debris after the plane hit and crawled along until he got to a wall, knocked a hole through the drywall, and another man pulled him through the wall. The two of them went down the stair well together and at a lower floor they found a security guard standing guard over a man who had a broken back. “Tell my wife and children I love them.” begged the injured man. The security guard said “I am not leaving him.” They made it on down the stairwell. That security guard and injured man died there together.
There were so many heroes that day, some saved a whole building in DC, others did smaller things, saving one man, or simply ensuring that another would not die alone. All were enormous in spirit. The least of them did more than most of us ever will.
9/11/01 was a huge loss for so many the Islamic fascists; it showed how corrupt, small, and evil their spirit is. By the same token, it showed the spirit of our common men to be strong and glorious. And perhaps that is why the Left almost to a man disparages what occurred; that day showed the “little guys” they supposedly try to support to be in reality bigger than they can conceive.