"I woke on Tuesday September 11th 2001 around 8:15 am. All was quiet. I made my coffee and sat on the porch enjoying what was promising to be a beautiful late summer day. I went back inside to hear that a plane...nothing at the time about it being a jetliner, had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. Based on what I heard I imagined a small private plane, and thought to myself what a lousy pilot. As I performed my morning constitutional I heard that another plane had crashed into the second tower. I froze. One plane was an accident...but two one right after the other was no coincidence. I went into the living room and turned on the TV. That was when I learned that these were no small private planes but commercial jets and both towers were on fire. I was stunned. In those early moments the film was raw, unedited and watched in horror as people leaped to their deaths to escape death by fire. Then word came in that the pentagon had been hit and that several other planes were missing. Weak with shock I took my dog for his walk and by the time I got back the first tower had collapsed then watched disbelieving as the second one fell. All commercial planes were ordered to land wherever they could and the news changed to a stunned looking president making his first tentative statements. Then the crash at Shanksville was reported. Like the rest of the nation; for the rest of the day I could not look away. Finally I had to drag myself to work. I was informed that (not surprisingly) we’d had next to no customers that day...and the evening proved no better. If I recall I shut down the kitchen at 7:30 and went home. For the next week all was on television was twenty-four hour news coverage from ground zero...even when there was nothing to report. It continued until I am sure all of us were numb. I know I was. In the streets and at the restaurant I worked at I heard the first inevitable blustering about war. A teacher I worked with said that we should nuke them since they hated us anyway. My blood ran cold. At one point that week a neighbor of mine asked why I wasn’t flying a flag. I agreed that I should and went out and bought an earth flag and flew her proudly. A few days later I was up at Towers and saw these three teenage boys harassing a Muslim woman and her two children. I walked up and told them that if they didn’t leave her along I was going to call the police. They cussed me and stormed off. I stayed there and made sure she got on her bus safely. She may have been Muslim but neither she, nor her children, nor 99.9% of the rest of the world’s Muslims were responsible for the attack and for the most part, they were just as mortified as we. The Friday after the attack was proclaimed a national day or mourning. I wore black that day but at one point a woman on the street demanded to know why I didn’t have a flag lapel pin. I told her that I did not wear my patriotism on my shirt sleeve. She called me unpatriotic and stormed off. Right after that I composed a small prayer: “Oh God, what have we done to this world and our souls? Show us your hand; let your love, your mercy rain down upon us. Please O Lord: I beg you, peace.” It was obvious by now that we were going to attack somebody in response. I understood this even though I did not like it. I understood that nothing happens in a vacuum and that many of the nation’s policies over the years had infuriated many people around the world and I was sure that this would change nothing. So knowing I was a lone voice, I wrote the to the paper that: “While I did not vote for Bush and do not support his politics or the policies that stem from them...I pray that he does the right thing. We must respond but for God’s sake bang the war drums slowly.” So we attacked Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. We did neither. We are still there propping up an incompetent, unloved and corrupt government while Osama Bin Laden remains at large, an almost mythic character. We seem incapable of learning the basic fact that people may not support Al Qaeda or the Taliban but will fight for them because its a job with pay...and more specifically because we invaded their country. This was true in Iraq and it is even more true in Afghanistan where no conquerer has succeeded there since Tamerlane in the 1500’s. The attacks of 9/11 solved nothing for the perpetrators and the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan have solved nothing for us. Just more blood spilled, just more death. There has to be a better way."
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 20:10:05 +0000
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