9/11: the twelfth anniversary
I’ll skip all the usual observations about how amazing it is that so much time has passed. But it is and it has.
And I’ll skip all the solemn pronouncements about how different things are and at the same time not. But they are/are not.
I will say that as time passes the facts become more believable because we have assimilated them, but the horror never fades if the events of the day are re-imagined, the evil of the perpetrators confronted, and the lives of the victims revisited.
It is a solemn day and always will be for those who were alive at the time. Let us remember, and teach our children and grandchildren.
[NOTE: I’ve recommended the book Touching History before, but I’ll remind readers that it’s an absolutely riveting account of what happened in the skies that day. Some of it will be a surprise to you.
And here is my own account of 9/11 and my reactions to the event.]
Unfortunately, since that time, I’ve learned of human atrocities a million times worst, committed by the Left, on a daily basis. Which people ignore, don’t want to talk about, or support tacitly.
That’s not to blame any one here about things they cannot change, but it is what it is.
Humans only a limit to the horror they can imagine. To break past that point, they must see personally what enemies of humanity have done. 9/11 was only one drop of the ocean. There are many more to see. Many more to learn about.
On days like this that inspire reflection two things always become prominent to me:
First, that we are truly surrounded by so many good people from so many disparate walks of life. Whether one hails from a family that has been here since before our Revolution, is a newly minted citizen or a newly arrived immigrant our country attracts good folk like nectar attracts bees.
The second item that reverberates is a deeply meaningful but inauspicious quote from the movie Starman. As an alien in human guise, Jeff Bridges says to his hostess: “You are an amazing species. You are at your best when things are at their worst.”
It would be nice for all of us, myself included, to remember that more often.
I have strong memories, too.
I was in downtown Oakland, California, right across the street from the 510 area code exchange. (It takes up a huge ‘office’ tower off 17th Street.)
The MSM was giving us BAD intelligence. The first blurbs described Flight 11 out of Boston as a “small twin engined plane.” (!) This bunkum was maintained right through the Flight 175.
Until that moment, the MSM was broadcasting that the first impact was some crazy accident. (!) Right here you can see that facts were being disregarded so as to build a calm narrative.
The whole notion that a wayward private jet hit the north tower by mistake is absurd on its face. The idea that the plane was a small craft is triply absurd. Yet, that’s what the nation was being told — with ‘authority.’
Because of the time zones, these reports were coming in around dawn.
After Flight 175, we — the rubes — speculated that the Golden Gate Bridge and major San Francisco landmarks would be struck. (Transamerica Building, in particular.)
Years later, I was to find out that just such attacks were part of Plan A. They were trimmed out by OBL, himself: too ambitious — considering the time zone delay.
The psychological impact was so severe that everyone stopped working and it was decided to quit and go home. The management figured that urban America was at the bullseye that morning.
Lest we forget: the air fleet was grounded for days and days… the national markets were shut down for days and days… and half the planet was running around under an atomic shadow screaming, “It’s NOT us!”
First estimates, mine, put the dead in the tens of thousands. I did not know that New Yorkers were that slow to get to work — that the towers were still, essentially empty.
(They could hold 30,000 in each tower — no problem.)
Having been to Windows on the World — and all the rest — I had to explain the situation to my fellow Californians. They didn’t have a clue. The MSM never wasted any time explaining the layout of the World Trade Center to those west of the Hudson.
Grounding the air freight industry really put a cramp on operations. Over night we were getting hung up because of parts shortages. Nothing could get fixed on time! America now has a jet dependent distribution system centered around Memphis.
Bush “blew it” in only one way: he didn’t seize the Golden Hour for political action. He was snowed by Norquist into stating that Islam is a “religion of peace.”
At the time Norquist had a Muslim lover — a PR hack — she was on media/ disinformation jihad. Later, she married her tool, something that could only be done with approval from her imam.
Folks, this is what we’re dealing with: total influence penetration. There are dozens of “Anna Chapmans” tooling the infidels, not just the Russians or Red Chinese.
Meme riders running the herd/ heard.
blert:
By the way, New Yorkers were extra-slow getting to work that day for two reasons. It was the first day of school, and a lot of parents took their kids to school. And it was primary day for the mayoral race.
But the WTC, although less crowded than one would expert, was hardly empty. It turns out that the death pattern was strictly determined by location. Nearly everyone below the points of impact survived. Nearly everyone above perished.
“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle of idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; BUT THAT SENTIMENT IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WHICH GAVE LIBERTY, NOT ALONE TO THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY, BUT, I HOPE, TO THE WORLD, FOR ALL FUTURE TIME. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men.”
Abraham Lincoln
Excerpt of Address in Independence Hall
Philadelphia, PA
February 22, 1861
after the Islamics flew jets into the Towers, I saw the Muslims dancing in the streets in their countries. I wanted to commandeer an F16 and fly over and bomb them. I am not a pilot and I have never been in an airplane but that is how I felt.
I have learned a lot since then. This is not a reliigion. Religion is supposed to make people behave better and act kindly. This is a terorist group. No one can coexist with them. Obama is their puppet I read that the Muslim Brotherhood built the gas ovens for Hitler. That was pracitce.
Zero tolerance for this terrorist “religion.” It should be banned and illegal in free countries.
My friend Sean, a theater/TV electrician who lived in Connecticut, was supposed to work that breakfast in the Windows on the World restaurant (which started at 8:00 am on the day). He woke up at 7:30, cursed, and said to his wife (mother of their 4 kids), “I’ll never make it in time.” She said, “Call your friend who lives in Brooklyn to cover for you.”
And he did.
That friend, and everyone else in Windows on the World, died in fire and smoke that morning.
God damn the moslems.
Here is a video, an eyewitness recording from their apartment window 500 yards away: no media commentary, just the thing itself: http://preview.tinyurl.com/pjqe7aj
I saw the same scene from the roof of my building. When the skyscrapers imploded, the streets and buildings of my neighborhood (Little Italy) shook as if in an earthquake. At the second collapse, my knees literally gave out and I collapsed, too, crying out for those poor people, the thousands who had been massacred before our eyes.
For days, friends of ours were missing; refugeed to various places of refuge. Some were among the dead.
Islam delenda est.
I was working on the 18th floor of a downtown high rise on 9/11. A fellow worker’s immediate reaction: “a gift from Allah.”
I went to the gym and began my workout by riding a recumbent bike. There was a TV there and it had pictures of a jet crashing into a skyscraper. I quit cycling and turned on the sound. It took less than a minute for me to reach the conclusion that we were at war and it was with the Islamists. I felt the same white hot anger that I felt back in the days after Vietnam. My fervent wish was that we actually go to war and mean it. For a short time it seemed we might. But soon the anti-American, anti-war voices began their chant. Bush tried to use military force in the hopes of changing the Muslim world. But the Lilliputians kept working to tie him down. They finally succeeded. We are back to treating Islamic terrorism as a criminal justice issue again, ala Clinton.
I’m too doggone old to do much except growl at my representatives like an angry pit bull. I tell them, and any who will listen, that we have the right to defend ourselves. We are not to blame for the Muslim world’s problems. We actually helped them find and produce their oil, which provides the money that fuels their terror. It is right for us to support Israel. It is the only free nation in the ME and they don’t attack their neighbors unless provoked. I morn for all those who have lost life and limb in this war. To spend all that blood and treasure without anything to show for it is just wrong.
Now we have a muddled policy that believes we can befriend the Muslims and that will change everything. Sorry, Islam is not about to make friends or reach out to any infidel nation. As kit says, this is not a religion. It is a fascist political system wrapped in the trapping of a religion that uses their idea of God (Allah) to justify conquest and murder. That is what we are up against. They preach it everyday in their mosques and yet we don’t believe them. I’m sorry, when someone tells me he wants to murder me, no matter how unimposing he may seem, I don’t take it lightly. Yet the progressives will not. It is to weep!
Neo,
Something from my undergraduate days you may appreciate. We founded Students United for Victory in Sept 2001 in reaction to 9/11. Our mission was to support the War on Terror on campus and as students. The group was renamed Students United for America the following year.
http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2005/10/victory-peace-statements-by-students.html
Eric, thanks for the link. I’ve always appreciated your comments and ideas. All those statements by your fellow students calling for victory really gave me a boost. We need people like you and your friends in places where policy is made. To know that there are young people who understand the issues and are willing to call for victory is just very encouraging to an old codger.
I was the first into work in a medium-rise office building in San Antonio, with a view of the approach pattern to the airport. I didn’t realize what had happened, until I was calling those who had appointments for the day to confirm, and the first client I called was in hysterics. My boss – he made it into work, and couldn’t quite grasp why no one wanted to make their appointments that day.
Down in the bank lobby on the ground floor, someone brought in a TV on a cart, and I think everyone at work that day on the ground floor spent most of their time watching it. The business that I worked for that day went belly-up, eighteen months later.
That building was built around the same time as the Towers, and the interior looked a good deal like it; glass and steel, and chrome, with polished stone floors. It housed a great many of the kinds of businesses that were in the WTC towers, too.
I will never forget how subdued everyone was. And how empty the sky was.
I got into blogging very shortly thereafter, having cut my teeth on cruising the various internet sites on that day. Slate, mostly, IIRC.
The three things I remember best of that day are first, the shock and horror, secondly by late morning, little new information was available and the absolute inability of TV news anchors to speak intelligently and extemporaneously when scriptless… and that night, my 16 yr old daughter turning to me and saying, “this is our generation’s pearl harbor”.
About the book, “Touching History.” It really resonated with me. I was a military pilot and an airline pilot. So many of the stories just resonated with all my life experiences.
To be a fighter pilot and know you may be ordered to shoot down an airliner. Made my palms sweaty to read it.
To be the Captain of an airliner approaching Honolulu after a five hour flight over the Pacific and told, “The airport is closed. State your intentions.” Pucker factor – big time.
To be flying an airliner over the Midwest and have to find an airport, any airport, where you can land.
I literally couldn’t put it down and was emotionally exhausted by the end. It left me with a really good feeling about all those pilots who did what had to be done. There could have been many accidents that day just due to the chaos in the air traffic control situation. What a story it is. And too few know it.
Thought you might be interested in this.
http://news.yahoo.com/9-11-image-help-photographer-200849160.html
I watched the real-time video Gabriel Malor linked at Ace’s blog, which was the NBC Today Show coverage (the loathsome Katie Couric, the preening Matt Lauer, and after 40 minutes, Tom Brokaw) of the attacks.
The video goes from the moment they break into an interview with someone to announce that there’s been “an explosion” at WTC North, to the collapse of that building nearly two hours later.
A few impressions:
–Jim Miklascewski (sp?) at the Pentagon reacted by first cowering in his office on the far side of the Pentagon from the explosion there, and his “reporting” consisted of grabbing one officer by the sleeve and asking him what he thought had happened. He stuck with this version (bomb at the heliport) for about 15 minutes until the NY crew prodded him, on-air, to get out and see what he could find out. Grade: D-
–Katie Couric spent a lot of airtime trying to sound knowledgeable, speculating witlessly like a dim liberal arts major about engineering (I’m an English major myself, but I know enough to ask an engineer). Neither she nor Lauer comprehended what they were seeing for a good couple of minutes: liberal denial lag. And, most bothersome for me, she showed No Sign of being moved and distressed, let alone angry, at the atrocities, even when the second tower collapsed. Cold, nasty woman. Grade: F-
–Matt Lauer was trying to stay as Serious and Important as Brokaw; he, too, accepted some theories that any New Yorker should have dismissed out of hand (commuter plane? Didn’t any of these bozos know how BIG the WTC was? and the size of that gash wasn’t any damned commuter plane wingspan. Didn’t even occur to them to do some simple arithmetic and figure out what class of aircraft we were dealing with). Grade: D-
–Tom Brokaw did okay, and seemed to grasp the gravity of the occasion.
Then I looked at some tape of the CNN coverage: Aaron Brown was the limpest, most clueless, floundering out of his depth jackass: he had No Idea how to react to any of this. There was no manly anger in him.
That’s the thing I missed from most of these talking heads, so clearly exposed as being vain and not terribly bright or well informed– any kind of righteous anger.
It was very different on the streets, I can tell you. We ALL knew that This Was War.
Here is the NBC coverage that Gabriel Malor linked and Beverly mentioned:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtZKEjr-Sfg
I’ve been watching some of it and I have to echo Beverly’s remarks. Katie Couric sounds not only clueless, but soulless. She’s no Herbert Morrison, that’s for sure.
To think that Sarah Palin was called an idiot after an interview with that woman. The mind reels.
To be honest, I’ve been growing tired of the weepy, maudlin, sentimental reminiscences of 9/11.
Western Civilization is at war with Islam–not “radical Islam”, Islam itself–but so far, only one side recognizes it and takes it seriously.
And now, the Unites States government has gone over to the other side.
In the series on your conversion you link to, one may encounter, at some distance, this:
..And thus we see again in Afghanistan. Screw the Afghani people. “Let them eat barbarism.”
The thing is, Afghanistan, in the 50s and 60s, was a model of progress — yes, it was probably mostly localized around Kandahar, but… but…. you’ve got to START SOMEWHERE:
Afghanistan in the 50s/60s
Education in Afghanistan, 1967
WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
How did a clearly forward moving, prosperous, and developing nation turn into an international BASKET CASE?
I can’t answer for the whole of it, but I’m willing to assert that one part of it was the cancerous, postmodernist (does postmodernism have any OTHER type?) meme of Cultural Relativism.
When you start saying that all cultures are equally valuable, when you say there is no reason to choose one over the other, you are denying something blatantly obvious: That’s like saying a pie made by a Cordon Bleu trained pastry chef is no different from that made by a 10 year old.
It’s beyond absurd.
And that’s what happened in Afghanistan — cultural relativists allowed people to state that what they had been gifted by the Brits and Europe was no better than what Islam had to offer.
Does any rational person actually believe that? Do they think they can offer an argument to defend it?
We need to stop mollycoddling the leftards and their crap. We need to go on the offensive and make it clear what the choices REALLY ARE — civilization — shown in those pictures — or BARBARISM.
Feel free to quote me, or this, or just to rip off any aspect of what I’m saying to transmit that point to others. With or without attribution.
Postmodern Liberalism is as much, if not more, of an enemy as Islam. Because Islam cannot conquer us without Postmodern Liberalism. It can only succeed in itself, in its own arena, with direct HELP from Postmodern Liberalism.
Even as Postmodern Liberalism is a cancer eating away at our own vitals.
>:-/
The West has been at war with Islam and the Left for generations. People just stuck their heads in the sand thinking it was otherwise. Shrugs.
It’s not possible to help people who want to die. Until they somehow gain the motivation to fight, not much anyone else can do about it.
Ymarsakar: No argument. But I don’t want them to drag me and mine down to Hell with them…
P.S., I thoroughly disagree that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but it’s pretty obvious that “the friend of my enemy is also my enemy.”
And PostModernist Liberals are the friends of my enemies.
. I really didn’t feel that 9/11 was life-altering — I guess I never felt that we were floating in some golden force field and immune to such stuff. I dunno, the 1973 period really scared me — gas lines and half the lights in the school halls turned off to save electricity and reading Animal Farm and the sense that things would never get better. This — very bad, a challenge, etc. But not the sort of thing that would change my life. Perhaps I’m just depressive.
Surellin,
There are threads that connect the 9/11 attack and the 1973 crisis.
Well, we just got to kill them all and let God and Allah sort it out between themselves.
Pretty simple. They can go to Hell, by themselves. Here’s a express ticket.
Problem will be, killing that many people without nukes is going to be difficult.
Y…
Just stop sending them food.
The epicenters of jihad can’t feed themselves.
It’s not even close.
Neither can Detroit and Chicago, from what I’ve researched.