9/11: Thirteen years
If you’re the superstitious type, thirteen is an ominous number. But we don’t need superstition to feel bad about what’s been going on in the world lately.
For a few years not all that long ago, the threat of terrorism was able to recede in our minds, even though it never really receded in actuality. But now it’s come back to the forefront, in plenty of time for this solemn anniversary.
Bookworm writes that, for her, 9/11 represented “a bright line that breaks my world view into two entirely disparate segments.” Prior to that date she felt confident and safe in America, and afterwards that sense had dissipated, never to return. I’m older than Bookworm, and as a child who grew up in the 50s/60s, with its duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters, and the Cuban missile crisis making us feel that nuclear war was imminent, I never quite had that sense of safety to begin with.
I’ve described 9/11 as a watershed event, but for me it meant that an old feeling had suddenly come back, although the details were different. There was also something very personal about it, because most of the terrorists had started in New England, taken flights from Boston to Los Angeles that were routes I’d taken many times myself, and crashed into buildings in the city in which I’d grown up.
Time has passed since then, a lot of time. But everything that has happened politically in this country has been a reflection of that day, and could not have occurred without it. I don’t think this country and its people are the better for it, either.
Next time I visit New York I plan to go to the 9/11 museum. It’s sobering to think that the children who visit there will have no personal memory of 9/11. To remember the day at all, one would have to be at least a teenager. As time passes, personal memories will become more rare, and history will write page after new page that is now blank. Will we finally rise to the occasion, and be worthy of this battle for our lives and our civilization? From the start, it was clear that was the magnitude of the fight we face.
The passion and resolve evidenced in the immediate aftermath of 911 gave me hope that the citizenry had awakened as the country was by Pearl Harbor. But the majority shuddered at the bad dream, rolled over, and went back to cozy sleep.
Going to war (Vietnam) taught me to differentiate between the serious and the mundane. The supremacy of political correctness proves that lesson is yet to be learned by western societies.
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AMEN to everything you stated in this beautifully stated post, Neo. An Axis Shifter. The Biggest Event in my life. It was Huge and it was Personal. Still is. Will be as long as I breathe.
9/11 will forever be a bookmark event for those of us old enough to remember. Living in the anonymity of a small southern town I felt no direct and immediate threat. But I do remember an overriding sense of frustration. A sense that I ought be doing something to help but limited to prayer by circumstance. And there was the empathy for those families and friends waiting for a loved one who would never return.
9/11 marked the end of the 20th century the way WWI marked the end of the 19th. Everything somehow became different.
Every year I run late getting in to the office because I have to watch at least some of the memorials. And the replays of the strikes on Fox (I could be wrong, but as far as I know it’s the only network that still shows them each year).
God Bless America.
I have not been back since leaving the city in 2006. I was there that day, and it had a profound and lasting effect on me. Things changed for me in the weeks, months and years afterward. I moved away, far away. But, there is a problem, a big problem as we have come to realize that the biggest threat is amongst us.
Why are you afraid? Obama and the left are looking out for the people. Some of the people must die in the process of fundamentally transforming America but the end results will be worth the deaths of a few thousand or perhaps a million individuals. Rest assured that the left knows best.
The evil Judeo-Christian civilization developed by evil dead white men will soon be replaced by the civilization of wonderful brown men – complete with Sharia law and the beautiful Religion of Peace.
Granted that many of the practitioners of the religion of peace believe that they have a right to own slaves since the perfect man, Mohammad, was a slave raider himself. But that is just OK. Everyone knows that slavery to a Muslim is not so bad since Muslims are superior people and besides Muslim slaves deserve to be slaves. On the other hand, slavery to a white man is so unimaginably evil and horrible that generations later the descendants of slaves are still so irreparably harmed that they are not responsible for anything.
So fear not little people. Everything is OK in lefty land.
9/11 had nothing of a watershed event for me. That event was Clinton’s election in 1992.
How do you like them now, now that they’ve taken your taxes and made D.C., every municipality, and every university their personal playground of corruption and theft? Liars and criminals and homos and feminists and so on and so forth. Seeing that happen: that was revealing, but it was continuous so there was no watershed to those with a matrix for viewing.
I’m hoping today passes without incident. You can bet all security forces are on high alert, put there by Obama since he knows an attack will be the end of his influence and power. People will be outraged and that outrage would not be abated by another Obama speech.
“You can bet all security forces are on high alert, put there by Obama since he knows an attack will be the end of his influence and power.”
Waitforit is obviously not part of the 43% who support for Obama no matter what.
I remember my first words when my husband called me into our bedroom that morning to see the video of the plane being flown into the building…”We’re under attack!” Amazing to think that so many of our fellow citizens don’t fully comprehend that.
“You can bet all security forces are on high alert, put there by Obama since he knows an attack will be the end of his influence and power.”
Waitforit, Sunday I returned from a trip to Barcelona. Customs @ LAX was in full security mode. No one was going through there without extended measures. I was thankful that the threats are being taken seriously.
9/11 was definitely a “watershed event” for me personally. I had been living happily in the San Francisco Bay Area for four decades and felt that I had a good collection of friends. After 9/11 I quickly realized that almost all of them lacked outrage about the attack. It was as though it was an earthquake or tornado for which there was little remedy. Initially I tried to discuss my opposing views. But, I got frustrated immediately and disappointed later because the friendships deteriorated.
I found San Francisco Chronicle columnist Cinnamon Stillwell, who started a discussion group of former liberals who became hawkish after 9/11. Cinnamon introduced me to Neo-Neocon. It has been quite a comfort to discuss with more like-minded thinkers. Also, Neo’s discussion of “a mind is a difficult thing to change” shows how hard it is for one to change his social vision. BTW, “social vision” is Thomas Sowell’s term of a view of human nature that can include religion and political ideology.
My first watershed event was Pearl Harbor. I was eight. It changed and shaped my life. I grew up knowing that when I was old enough I would have to go in the service. I looked forward to that day. That day came toward the end of the Korean War. Ten years later I was in the fight in Vietnam. It was all of a piece – a continuum.
My next watershed event was while I was recruiting for the Navy at colleges in northern California. It was there that I first encountered the rage and hysteria of the anti-war, pro- Communism forces in this country. It shook me to the core and forced me to evaluate all that I had believed to be true.
The next watershed event was the fall of the Berlin Wall. The reality of the USSR falling apart after 44 years of Cold (oft times “hot”) War was unexpected and almost as surprising as the unexpected attack on Pearl Harbor. It gave me a sense of renewal. Communism had finally fallen apart. It was exposed as the rotten, unworkable ism that we had been fighting against for so long. The world seemed to be a safer place with a brighter future.
9/11 came out of the blue, much like Pearl Harbor. I knew of the jihadi attacks on our embassies in Africa, the Cole, the World Trade Center, the barracks in Saudi Arabia, and the problem with Saddam Hussein, but I never expected they could mount such a devastating attack on us here at home. I knew that dealing with terrorists was a difficult problem, but I had not anticipated the use of suicide pilots using airliners to wreak such destruction. The hijackings shook me to the core because I had lived so long with the normal airline hijacking procedure – cooperate and get the airplane on the ground. The assumption was that the hijackers wanted to use the airplane and passengers as a bargaining chip for their demands. It was a failure of the imagination to not understand they might try to turn the airplane into a weapon.
I’m old, but I still have a brain and a spirit. I hoped we could relax and enjoy the benefits of peace after the Cold War ended. It’s not to be. I’ll spend the rest of my days (because there is no way the Islamic jihadi problem is going to be quickly solved.) doing whatever I can to further the cause of freedom and free enterprise. It saddens me, but as I’ve studied history I’ve come to realize that peace is the exception to the rule. War is the norm.
This may seem very trivial but was the closest I got to knowing anything of the people who perished at ground zero. I had been watching the show Murder in Small Town X just before 9/11. The winner of the show was Angel Juarbe Jr who was a NYC firefighter. Just days after the show he was killed trying to rescue people. Living in a small city in California I still felt connected in a small way.
I don’t think in terms of “we” anymore. No more than do many other Americans whose, I think, layer of social-bonding sentiment has been long worn away by the behavior and attitudes and espoused values and aims of their supposed “fellows”.
In an article entitled Photo-Implies-Isis-Threat-To-Chicago http://wgntv.com/2014/08/21/photo-implies-isis-threat-to-chicago/ WGNtv sounded the alarm and then left the site open for comments.
Open and up for a very short while that is. It was taken down after commenter after commenter basically said, “Chicago? Obama’s home town? Democrat bastion? Might reap what the sons-of-b**ches sowed? Well so-effen-what?”
These were not the usual troll type remarks we are all familiar with. They were the shrugging and bitterly amused comments of those who had come to the realization that they on the one hand, and the Democrats-in-General on the other, no longer defend the same civilizational goals; and that the present life struggle is three-cornered, at least. The comments were the sentiments of those who well remembered Michael Moore’s complaint disguised as a question, asking why the terrorists of 9-11 had not struck some conservative locale instead of liberal New York.
Yeah, social solidarity … pffft
Harsh? Yes. Startling? Maybe. But a clear indication that a large number of Americans can no longer be sold a self-sacrificial social solidarity meme by a morally uninhibited and perpetually antagonistic sub-set of “The People”, who while living as ostensible fellow citizens, are in fact just as much the existential enemies of liberty as are the Islamist jihadists; albeit a nominally “domestic” enemy of freedom, which operates in a slower-motion and somewhat more sophisticated, legally subversive, but nonetheless ultimately totalitarian aiming manner.
I like visiting Chicago. Lots of upscale bistros and bars filled with lost of sexy 30-something women in clingy attire. Many fine and descent people have lived, and undoubtedly still do live there. But don’t ask me what my reaction would be if ISIS got its hands on the current mayor. I probably wouldn’t have one. I’m tired of that game.
Dear Neo,
The Cuban Missile Crisis scared you? Smart girl.
I was in Peshawar, Pakistan at that time. We were what you might call eavesdropping on the Russians.
The CMC occurred October 14-28, 1962. We caught a little more about it than the general public – military traffic. The mood was grim. It got even grimmer as we monitored three Russian EMP tests over Kazakhstan – K-3 on 10/22, K-4 on 10/28 and K-5 on 11/1.
http://www.futurescience.com/emp/test184.html
It was a lot closer than most were led to believe.
Roy
Obama clearly stated that Islam does not condone killing innocents. Problem is those people that got killed 9/11 per Islam was NOT innocent.
Hell Obama being born muslim and changing his religion makes him an apostate per Islam and is not innocent per Sharia law.
We all know the politicians are between a rock and a hard spot on Islam but one day they will have to face the truth.
Roy Lofquist:
I was in school that day (Missile Crisis), and I recall the entire school thinking we were right on the brink of nuclear weapons going off. We certainly didn’t have any inside info, but whatever “we were led to believe,” we all came to some very frightening conclusions about the risks.
We were just kids, of course, but it seemed to me the adults around us felt that way too. I remember the atmosphere of the day more than the details.
The museum is definitely worth visiting. My sister said it was overwhelming experience, esp. looking at all the personal effects displayed. We’ll never know all the stories, but there’s a book out called The Stories They Tell: Artifacts from the National September 11 Museum. I’ll tell one story (as I remember it), because it has a good ending and a touch of humor. There’s a pair of three inch high heels in the museum. They belonged to an executive on one of the higher floors. She led her employees down the stairs, walked with one who had asthma to a midtown emergency room, then made it across the bridge that evening to her sister’s apartment in Brooklyn– all while wearing those heels!
“The passion and resolve evidenced in the immediate aftermath of 911 gave me hope that the citizenry had awakened as the country was by Pearl Harbor. But the majority shuddered at the bad dream, rolled over, and went back to cozy sleep.” Philip Carlson
Normalcy bias.
“You can bet all security forces are on high alert, put there by Obama since he knows an attack will be the end of his influence and power.” waitforit
Perhaps. However, a large enough attack or a series of major attacks will provide a plausible excuse for Obama to declare martial law. Then he would have all the power and influence he could ask for, including the legal authority to suspend constitutional provisions.
“Customs @ LAX was in full security mode. No one was going through there without extended measures. I was thankful that the threats are being taken seriously.” Sharon W
Generals and security forces always fight the last war. ISIS is not going to try to highjack another airliner. They have captured at least 12 in their inventory now and they have LOTS of MANPADS. An unstoppable means of destroying an airliner upon take-off.
Then, there’s coordinated terrorist cells attacking shopping malls ala Mumbai with uploaded youtube videos of ISIS sawing the heads off of entire American families… how’s that for terror inducing?
That is what is headed our way. Not a matter of IF but of WHEN.
Put the pieces together people; an open southern border, a well funded and ideologically committed ISIS, who has both MANPADS and at least 12 commercial jet airliners. A fanatical Iran steadily advancing toward nuclear weapons capability and, Obama’s ignoring of these factors, indeed facilitation of these factors is accidental? Please.
“a large number of Americans can no longer be sold a self-sacrificial social solidarity meme by a morally uninhibited and perpetually antagonistic sub-set of “The People”, who while living as ostensible fellow citizens, are in fact just as much the existential enemies of liberty as are the Islamist jihadists; albeit a nominally “domestic” enemy of freedom, which operates in a slower-motion and somewhat more sophisticated, legally subversive, but nonetheless ultimately totalitarian aiming manner.” DNW
Count me among those no longer sold on a self-sacrificial social solidarity meme but with a very large caveat;
“According to a new Pew Research Center study, only 40 percent of consistently liberal Americans say they often feel proud to be Americans.”
That finding, along with “just 40% of Solid Liberals, say the phrase “honor and duty are my core values” and that, it “applies well to them” reveals that 40% of ‘solid liberals’ are the duped and indoctrinated low-info voters who actually support traditional classical liberal values… the other 60% of ‘solid liberals’ are Marxist/Progressives. It is that 60% who are TWANLOC.
“Obama clearly stated that Islam does not condone killing innocents.” jack
Technically, Obama was arguably correct, as Islamic doctrine posits that there are no ‘innocents’. For, to be innocent, one must be Muslim, otherwise regardless of age, you are an ‘infidel’ (not living in fidelity to Allah) and thus, spiritually ‘out of favor’.
That would obviously be “lots of” rather than “lost of … women”. just as it should have been, ” many fine and decent people” not “descent people”.
The “s” is close to the “c”. Allow me the excuse that it was a keyboard misstrike there as well.
I was working on the 18th floor of a 25 story building on 9/11/2001, a perspective which made it easier to identify with the loss of the WTC towers. We all spent some time watching TV that day. My immediate reaction, along with other co-workers, was that it was the work of “Allah.” A case of first reaction, best reaction. Doesn’t always work that way.
I cannot say that 9/11 changed my political perspective that much. While I had been a C.O. [I-O] during the Vietnam War, the genocide in Cambodia had put paid to my pacifist tendencies. I decided that as long as evil thugs roam this earth, none of us have clean hands.
Similarly, my time in Latin America had shown me that the “progressive” catechisms on Latin America did not accurately describe the on the ground realities I observed.
Well before 9/11, I had become a Post Liberal.
9-11-2001 was existentially big for me. I was already a longtime Neocon, but time, from then on, became pre 9-11 and post 9-11.
The CMC scared the wits out of me, too. I was in elementary school in a Maryland farm town not far outside D.C. (now it’s a flossy suburb). I was too young to understand the details, but I understood that the adults were scared, which was more than enough to scare me. As I understood it, there might be a war with the Russians about Cuba and there might be atom bombs, and if there were, D.C. (where my Dad worked) was a likely target. We had frequent atom-bomb drills in school, in which we hid under our desks or lined up in the hallways with our faces against the tile and our arms over our heads. We took home booklets handed out by the nuns about how to build fallout shelters. On a day that must have been right about the peak of it all, I was at home one day when the air raid sirens went off at the high school across the street. This had never happened before. My calm, optimistic, imperturbable mother burst into tears, started flinging canned goods into a pillowcase and ordered us all into the basement.
I am still picked on by my two slightly-younger brothers about what happened a day or two later: we were out playing in the field when a formation of loud fighter jets flew over, close together and low. This happened sometimes, but this time I thought it was the bombers at last. I pushed my brothers down in a ditch and lay on top of them. They were too little to know what had been going on, were outraged by what they thought was irrational aggression, and came up swinging. I was unable to persuade them that I was saving their lives, not attacking them — especially since no bombs fell, then or ever. They still aren’t convinced; I hear about it from time to time, and not with gratitude.
Not much older than I am, Neo, but a small number of years, plus different childhood locations, turn out to make a big difference in outlook. In San Francisco, by the time I reached some awareness of the wider world, we did “duck and cover” drills to prepare for earthquakes, not nuclear strikes. My formative years were overwhelmed by hippies, Watergate, and Carter-esque malaise, rather than the fear of imminent attack.
I was in New York on that day – and to me it still seems like just yesterday.
Now, I work near “ground zero” and on the PATH ride home today I saw two airline employees who clearly (by their remembrance ribbons pinned on their shirts) had just come from the memorial grounds and, perhaps, the anniversary service.
But, here’s the thing that got me – they both looked VERY young. Too young to be much older than their early or mid 20s, which means they were teens when it happened.
The same is true of many of the “tourists” that I see on a daily basis walking near ground zero – all so young to have much of a memory of the events that day.
I have many memories of that day and the weeks after – most of which I would like to forget. But, there is one which I would like to share:
This was a couple of weeks after 9/11. Ground zero was still smoldering. There were cops from all over the US helping to police the city as most of New York’s finest were busy on high alert
I was on a downtown subway that stopped in the Village at Christopher street; for those outside New York that is the very heart of the gay village. Two guys were asking other passengers for directions – to make a long story short these were two guys who looked like and talked like a couple of “good ol’ boys” from Georgia (and, yes, they were, in fact, from Georgia) and they were cops who were helping to police the Village. They decided, on their night off, to go visit some of the bars in the neighborhood that they were helping to police during the day. And, there is no way they didn’t know that there are almost no straight bars in that neighborhood.
Several other passengers thank them for their coming to New York and helping out. Again, for those outside New York that is something that would ordinarily never happen.
I am stereotyping, and perhaps, projecting a little here; but, the thought of two southern cops who are a couple of good ol’ boys visiting gay bars in New York sounds more like a TV sitcom plot than real life. That New Yorkers would welcome them instead of ridiculing them for their accents is also out of the norm.
We cannot go back to pre-9/11; but, I do wish we could, as a nation, go back to the unifying days of post-9/11.
This guy made it down from the 81st floor: hair-raising account.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/m4q6y96
Me, I saw it from my own roof, 20 blocks away. And the shock was still great enough to make me collapse when the second skyscraper imploded. Knees simply gave way.
All of you would find this book riveting reading (and make you damned proud of our aviation pros, both civilian and military): TOUCHING HISTORY, by pilot Lynn Spencer. You can get it through Neo’s Amazon link.
[Publishers Weekly Starred Review.] “While most Americans watched the 9/11 attacks on television, the guardians of the nation’s air-control and air-defense systems had the unenviable task of trying to halt them.
“Working from interviews and tape archives, Spencer’s minute-by-minute chronicle recreates their heroics in nerve-racking detail. In her telling, air-traffic controllers panicked as a seemingly routine–and quickly spotted–initial hijacking metastasized into a coordinated terror attack of unknown size and direction, and tried to divine which of thousands of planes on their radars had become guided missiles.
“Airline pilots dodged through suddenly chaotic skies while assuring suspicious control towers that they weren’t hijackers themselves. Meanwhile, Air National Guard fighter pilots, hobbled by bad communications and misdirection, scrambled to defend against a murky threat. Spencer’s sources insist there was a fighter in position to stop United 93, had its passengers not brought it down, by having the pilot ram the airliner with his F-16.
“Prepare for a quick takeoff with Lynn Spencer’s Touching History… the personal interviews and Cockpit Voice Recorder transcripts of conversations between pilots and controllers are riveting…. The transcripts provide the book with a sense of immediacy, as though the reader was in the cockpit or control tower, while the interviews offer important background and context.
“Spencer, a flight instructor, expertly elucidates the complexities and pitfalls of American aviation as it faced a staggering challenge.”
Beverly, I read that (perhaps based on a previous mention here from you?) and wholeheartedly second your recommendation.
I’ll second Beverly’s recommendation of “Touching History.” As a retired military and airline pilot I really appreciated the authenticity of the narrative. My heart was often racing as I envisioned myself being in the cockpit of one of the hi-jacked airliners or trying to find a place to land when the order went out to close the air traffic control system. It could have been much worse but for the professionalism and common sense of all involved.
J.J. and Beverly:
I had recommended the book by Spencer a few years ago, here. It’s a riveting book.