Remembering September 11, 2001

Twenty-five years since the towers fell.

New York shrouded in a man-made mist after the terrorists attacks on September 11, 2001.

Like Pearl Harbor or Kennedy’s assassination, those who were old enough to understand at the time will never forget. I’ll never forget where I was, what I was doing, or who I was with. The sky that day was like an artist’s masterpiece. Everyone remembers the sky, the incredibly blue sky. Not a cloud anywhere. The temperature was perfect heralding an early Fall. It was the start of a perfect day with everyone heading off to the things that made life matter to them.  It was the rush hour of a new day in America. Then came 8:46 am, and in many ways, it was the last day of America.

No one knew what was happening. Fear was universal. The most poignant thing I remember, which is actually making me emotional as I write this, the look on the faces of those who were there. Late morning on September 11, 2001, after the towers fell, after the dust had settled, if you remember, nobody knew who was left behind, no one knew how many people had just died on live TV. Estimates were flying all over the wall-to-wall news coverage. Some speculated as many as 50,000 perished in real time, right before the eyes of the strongest nation in history powerless to do anything about it. News correspondents, obviously unaware previous to the events of the day, were acquainting average Americans with the name of a rural creek in Maryland, Antietam, America’s bloodiest day. The beaches of Normandy were referenced as a more contemporary measure of the human toll. And of course, Pearl Harbor with its rising columns of smoke seemed to be the closest comparison simply by the amount of physical destruction. But for me, it was the faces. The faces of those on the ground. I remember crying to the point of sobbing as I watched those firefighters standing there. Each of them had the “10,000-mile stare” as they stood there unable to process what had happened, what was happening. The Police officers, New York’s finest covered in that grayish white dust, they looked like ghosts.  Their shoulder mounted radio mics had gone quiet. Probably the most silence in New York since its founding. No horns, no sirens, just an eerie deafening quiet.

Numb and helpless to help. First Responders of the NYFD look on wondering who and how many are lost to the jihadists Islamic attack on New York.

I spent a total of 10 and a half years in the military. During that time, I met and made friends from all over this country. Many of my military buddies over the years were from New York and New Jersey.  We constantly made fun of each other’s accent.  I was always the hillbilly or redneck while their epithet was always the same, damn Yankee.  We enjoyed each other’s company and I missed them when duty called to another assignment. I miss them still. That connection came roaring back in a flood of emotions as I watched those people on the streets of New York on 9/11. They were no longer New Yorkers or “city slickers” or even Yankees. There truly was no “black, white, brown…” or whatever other socially descriptive term grievance politics assigns to people. They were all Americans that looked like children that had just learned of the loss of a parent. I wanted to be there. I just wanted to put my arms around one of those people, any of them, and say, “it’s alright, this too shall pass.”

In the days immediately following the attacks, I believe almost every able-bodied American would have charged the gates of hell with a pocketknife if we’d only been given the order to do so. The days after were filled with an unsettling lack of information. You could feel the world slowly making sure that the United States knew “they” were our friends. The image of Japan awakening a sleeping giant and how Imperial Japan ended was fresh on the minds of nations that had been less than friendly since the Second World War. Old allies offered whatever they could in way of support. Even Russia reached out immediately to condemn the attacks with Vladimir Putin calling George Bush, the first foreign leader to do so, offering to assist in any way he could.  For a moment in time, the world bowed their heads in deference as Americans re-embraced America.

On the evening of 9/11, after a brief address from the Speaker of the House, visibly shaken representatives unite in song with "God Bless America" from the Capitol steps.

I remember later that day after the attacks were over, 150 members of Congress, Republican standing by Democrat, Conservative standing by Liberals, after the remarks of Speaker of the House Denis Hastert, spontaneously broke into an impromptu rendition of “God Bless America”, something I would normally be highly suspicious of, but not that day.  It was real.  I remember watching young cadets at West Point holding an all-night vigil standing at Parade Rest, head down, weapon advanced, their minds filled with a thousand questions and a million uncertainties. I remember NFL player Pat Tillman walking away from millions of dollars to embrace an assignment for $1,443.60 a month, to be a soldier, a soldier who would never come home giving his life in Afghanistan. I remember Jay Leno openly breaking down on the Tonight Show as he struggled to process the images he’d seen as people jumped from the Twin Towers to certain death on the streets below them rather than to face the flames behind them. I remember Winona Judd heading to a blood bank to give blood encouraging everyone to follow her example. Even Madonna had the presence of mind to stand down from her hyperbolically charged rhetoric as she realized this wasn’t political theater, this was different, this was real.

In the wake of those mid-September days, I imagined what response would be fitting. How that, whether one believed in time and chance or Divine Sovereignty, the hour in which we lived had revealed two paths before us as a nation.  On the one path our Commander in Chief could close the country. Expel every person within who had no legal authority to be here regardless of where they were from. He could have ordered the Pacific Fleet to deploy, the Atlantic Fleet to deploy, mobilized the entire military including the call up of the National Guard and Reserves all while providing minimal explanation to the watching world. Then that path would see George Bush make a special televised announcement to the world in which he’d recount what had just happened. He would proclaim our resolve and then, in as stoic a manner as possible, announce any nation which enabled, supported, or has given safe harbor to any of the people and organizations responsible, has 72 hours to turn them over or face the consequences. “You’re either with us, or against us.”  That he did say and the country cheered him for saying it.  Close the address by announcing our fleets have been deployed and our troop transports are on the tarmac.  America was going to war.

The "day which will live in infamy", December 7, 1941, the attack by Imperial Japan on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Afterwards Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto observed, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Many expected a similar response to 9/11.

That was one imaginary path we could have taken.  The other was very different. In it the President also appears before the country with the world watching. There is also a ramping up of military assets.  Like the first path, information is sketchy and announcements cryptic.  The country’s blood is up. Patriotism is running high. The world is getting nervous. For the first time since December 7, 1941, it appears that the sleeping giant has indeed been awakened and its wrath will be terrible. Then President Bush makes his appearance and with firm resolve states the “evil doers” will be brought to justice. That the events of recent days will not go unpunished. Then, after shouts of “USA, USA, USA” die off, as the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives grows quiet, he leans into the microphone and tells a society ready for war… “go shopping”.  America was going to war, kind of.

Families of 9/11 victims at the reflecting pool at Ground Zero.

In case you missed it, path number two was the road we as a nation took. We did engage militarily, of that there is no doubt, but, as with every single conflict since WWII, the political class sending soldiers to war tied the hands of soldiers they sent. So, we broke a lot of stuff, hurt a lot of people, amassed a lot of debt, and added more grave plots at Arlington.  Not much changed and the country in some ways is arguably in more peril now than then.

What did, what does, it all mean?  I don’t know. For me, I see a great opportunity to bring this

country together was short-lived and largely squandered. As to what does it mean today, that I don’t know either. What I do know is in a few days it will be 25 years since the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor was carried out by Islamic Muslim radicals. In those 25 years this country, despite Darryl Worley’s best musical efforts, has indeed forgotten.  The city that had so much pain and suffering inflicted upon it on September 11, has now, through the efforts of far-Left socialists, voted into office Zohran Mamdani as the city’s 112^th mayor, Mamdani himself an Islamic Muslim openly contemptuous of America and sympathetic to known terrorists.  This has been such an emotional wound for the families of 9/11 victims that memorial organizers have a petition with over 98,000 signatures to keep the New York mayor, away from the annual memorial for the 2,977 people killed in the attacks carried out on September 11, 2001.

I myself will never forget what happened to this country on that day in September 25 years ago. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. You can’t go back and right past wrongs and you can’t change a future you do not know.  What I do know is the words of 18^th century philosopher Edmund Burke who said, “Society is indeed a contract, between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”  The living are entrusted with the memory of the dead that they may teach those who are born after who they are and from where they came.  Without this continuous thread, there is no society.  Those living now must be the bridge to the past so the future will have a home.  We need to remember what happened to our people on September 11, 2001.  Our understanding of the past should inform our future.  We should remember that date along with what happened and why it happened on December 7, 1941, and April 12, 1861, on April 19, 1775, and all relevant dates in between and before.  History is the record of who we are.  In just 25 short years since the attacks of 9/11, way too many remember much too little about that day. 

Our time on this earth is limited.  I would challenge each and every person reading this to take it upon themselves to begin to be your own steward of history.  Start with yours.  Search out your own family.  Learn from who you came.  Life is short and we have much to do if this country will endure far beyond the 250 years God has so graciously given us.  I think for each of us, any of which could have been in those towers or on one of those planes, we should try our best to live in gratitude for the life we have, in appreciation for the sacrifices others have made so we can live this life, and walk responsibly with the next generation in mind knowing we only walk so long.  God bless the survivors and families of all those who perished on September 11, 2001. - JLB

"Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." James 4:14