9/11 – The Anniversary Open Thread
[posted by Justin Levine]
An open thread for those who wish to remember…
If I had to articulate some thoughts and desires on this day, I guess I would have to say that I hope that we continue to remember this anniversary date as though it were Sept. 11, 2002, instead of Sept. 11, 2006. Of course the real idea is try to remember as though it were Sept. 11, 2001, but I’m not sure that the human psyche really allows for that in a true sense.
Beyond that, I still believe the best way to honor the dead in the long run is to win the war on terror. I realize that even that simple declaration can be controversial since many people disagree about the nature of this war, its scope and the enemy. But I feel that if we allow these disagreements to paralyze us into inaction, that will be a tragedy of even greater proportions.
Your thoughts welcome…
UPDATE FROM PATTERICO: I encourage everyone to tell their story of where they were when the attacks happened, how they found out, and what they were thinking about and experiencing.
Also, the media tells us that the attacks haven’t significantly affected our lives. I don’t agree. Do you?
I most remember being angry at all the forces in our society that had turned us into sheep. “If somebody hijacks a plane, just be calm and everything will be okay.” Well, that was a lie. And the hijackers counted on that lie to carry out their plans. I also remember feeling a mixture of sadness and joy when it became clear that those on Flight 93 had broken out of that mindset and, in so doing, had also given their lives. We truly are on the front lines–all of us.
Joe Miller (99b69d) — 9/11/2006 @ 12:04 pmIt is truly a shame we cannot turn the clock back and rethink our government’s reaction to 9/11/01.
Perhaps we wouldn’t have so quickly and thoroughly squandered the good will and empathic feelings engendered by our tragedy and the selflessness of our first responders.
Yesterday’s interview of VP Cheney was truly scary. While begrudgingly admitting that Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Queda, he still insists that we are protecting ourselves by “bringing the war to them.” Realize what this means — that the war in Iraq can NEVER end, or at the very least must be immediately replaced by another war “over there,” or “we will be fighting them on our own soil.”
It is now five years later. We are not known for the heroism of our firefighters but for the brutality of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. We have not cultivated allies but engendered hatred. We have pissed thousands of young American lives and billions of dollars down the cesspool of Iraq only to have bred millions more terrorists and created a likely radical Muslim regime after we finally withdraw from the sectarian infighting.
It is time for us to reflect and vow to be much smarter and further-thinking.
nosh (d8da01) — 9/11/2006 @ 12:14 pm“We are not known…”
Depends on who’s doing the talking. If you want to cede to your enemies the right to define you, then you’re right.
steve miller (0fb51f) — 9/11/2006 @ 12:25 pmI first learned of the attacks while on break from high school (if you did enough community service, you could leave campus during study hall). I was playing King of Fighters ’98 (best video game of all time, btw) and I switched on the news for some background noise. I saw what was going on, so I called my mom (who was a local Amish flea market-type place) and informed her. Afterwards, I went back to school, where the rest of the day was spent watching the news in class.
Interstingly, other classmates reported that some teachers wouldn’t turn on the news; instead they forbade it’s discussion and went back to the normal lesson.
It changed my politics; I was a bit more isolantionist then am I now. I wouldn’t say that my personal life was profoundly changed.. I didn’t go join the army or anything.
Andrew (c37ea2) — 9/11/2006 @ 12:55 pmYesterday’s interview of VP Cheney was truly scary
Embarrassing.
While begrudgingly admitting that Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Queda,
He never said any such thing as that would be false.
he still insists that we are protecting ourselves by “bringing the war to them.”
We are. And those troops you people claim to “support” believe that too.
Realize what this means — that the war in Iraq can NEVER end, or at the very least must be immediately replaced by another war “over there,” or “we will be fighting them on our own soil.”
Or we can win or the other side will quit, captain strawman.
We are not known for the heroism of our firefighters but for the brutality of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo
Actually, this idea is in your head. But you’re an America hater, so who is surprised.
Oh, read this:
The Ace (8154cd) — 9/11/2006 @ 12:58 pmWe have not cultivated allies but engendered hatred.
More rubbish you can’t possibly quantify.
We have pissed thousands of young American lives and billions of dollars down the cesspool of Iraq only to have bred millions more terrorists and created a likely radical Muslim regime after we finally withdraw from the sectarian infighting.
Nice to see you, ignorant person, claim their lives were “pissed” away.
Their families and friends don’t agree with you.
“Millions more terrorists”
You are a sad joke.
The Ace (8154cd) — 9/11/2006 @ 1:00 pmAT NOSH:
I agree with some of what you said (as a conservative against the Iraq war).. However, I have to disagree with you about us being known for brutality at Gitmo. I think that most rational people are aware of the fact that lying is part of the terrorist arsenal, and the terrorists being held in Gitmo are making good use of it. The evidence towards us treating those prisoners with kindness seems to far outweigh evidence to the contrary.
Andrew (c37ea2) — 9/11/2006 @ 1:00 pmAs to the open part of the post:
One thing you just can’t forget about that day is it was so gorgeous. I was stuck on the GW parkway trying to get to work and in a weird bit of irony watched the planes taking off from national through my open moonroof…
By the time I got to my office both planes had hit the towers and nobody really knew what to do.
Then the Pentagon was hit and everyone basically paniced as news reports said the State Dept was bombed.
I could not return home to where I was living as it was about 3/4 of a mile from the Pentagon and all the roads were closed.
So I spent the next 2 and a half hours in the car trying to go to my girlfriend’s house who lived quite a distance from DC. Unable to make a phone call and hearing reports of more hijacked planes the whole time.
Horrible.
The Ace (8154cd) — 9/11/2006 @ 1:17 pmI was home and watched everything live on Fox News. It took my breath away, that we were actually being attacked again on US soil, just like Pearl Harbor. No, I was not alive when Pearl Harbor was attacked, but I know people who were. Another attack on the homeland was something no one expected to see. Will there be a third attack? I don’t know, but I pray the answer is no.
I believe the next attacks will be slow and subtle, from within. The PC/multicultural/let anybody and everybody into the country without checks and balances …. they will cause our undoing if not stopped. I pray I’m wrong.
Debbie (b8d646) — 9/11/2006 @ 1:27 pmMy wife (then fiancee) and her father were underneath the WTC on the subway when the first plane hit. People came screaming onto the subway about bombs or something like that.
She got to work in the Village just in time to see the second plane hit.
I wound up going into Manhattan from our place in Brooklyn to make sure she was okay. Not the smartest thing to do, but the phones were down and I didn’t know what else to do.
I agree that eliminating terrorism is the end goal, but I think this administration’s approach, ex post Thanksgiving 2001, has been utterly disastrous and counterproductive.
Geek, Esq. (ea8168) — 9/11/2006 @ 1:46 pmAce:
Regarding the weather, that’s perhaps a cruel twist. It was a perfect day outside–a dazzling blue sky only interrupted by those awful, terrible columns of smoke, ash, and dust.
Geek, Esq. (ea8168) — 9/11/2006 @ 1:47 pmShortly after the second tower was hit, but before it collapsed, I was woken by a call from my wife, who was now trapped on the East Coast (we lived on the West Coast at the time). If it hadn’t been for my pit bull I would have gone insane.
Xrlq (1f259f) — 9/11/2006 @ 1:48 pmI, like many people, was sitting at my desk at work. Some friends and I were scheduled to leave for an extended vacation to Ireland and Scotland on September 13th. A coworker casually mentioned to me that a plane hit the WTC, which I assumed to be a curious accident, probably a Cessna or other small plane. When we learned there was a second plane, we knew something more sinister was at work.
Of course I was part angry, part scared. I’m still ashamed that a piece of me was angry because I knew our trip was over. It seems so trivial now, five years on.
I, too, remember it was a beautiful day in Chicago, rather warm for late summer. When we were finally alerted to evacuate our building it was clear that no form of public transportation would be possible as the entire downtown working population was leaving at the same time. As far as we knew, there were still planes in the air and any number of additional targets were possible.
So two or my friends and I walked home from downtown to the north side of the city, lugging our laptops. We spent the balance of the day monitoring the news channels. That evening we spent time at a local watering hole. It was the first and only time I’ve been in a bar with no music playing, just televisions tuned to CNN and every patron watching with rapt attention.
the wolf (cbd49a) — 9/11/2006 @ 2:01 pmWe will never win the war on terror as long as we continue to call it a “war on terror”. Terror has a face and a name, and definitely an ideology. When we truly confront this, and we haven’t yet, then perhaps we have a chance to defeat it. But, we must accept the fact that terror and terrorism are only descriptions of the enemy, not who they are, and we know who they are, and what they believe
J Winters (860860) — 9/11/2006 @ 2:57 pmI think that in reading the personal stories of those killed on 9/11, we really get the sense of the enormity of the loss.
The victims lost their lives; their ability to be happy, their ability to be satisfied, their very existence. The waves of sorrow that hit those known to them were felt by almost every American that day.
And the losses continue; the effect of those 3,000 people on people they would have met will never be felt. The children partly raised grow up without a parent; the children never born do not exist.
So there is no question as to the enormity of loss in raw amount; America lost those people, and lost a sense of security.
But as a *relative* loss to the entirety of America, it was not a lethal wound, nor even, in the grand scheme of things, a very serious one. Rudy Giulianni and New Yorkers attacked the problem of cleaning up the rubble and cleaning up the psyches of New Yorkers. America stood united in support of Americans hurt and killed.
And the survivors persevered. Not in the manner in which their attackers persevere – huddled in some mountain refuge, consumed by hatred of other ethnicities, other religions, even other genders.
No, Americans stayed bonded together regardless of political, ethnic, or religious affiliation. What to do, exactly, was and is a subject of legitimate dispute; that the America we were living in was worth protecting and upholding was not.
And even on 9/11/01, many people at work stayed at work, and then they went home and loved their families, and helped their communities, as they had on September 10, 2001 and as they would do – with heavy hearts – on September 12, 2001.
And today, on September 11, 2006, it is the same; Americans know that the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of liberty, the pursuit of justice are noble causes, worth living for.
And we continue to live in our free, just, happy society, a conglomeration of differing viewpoints, differing beliefs, differing goals, but a single unified understanding that a country which allows such things is truly free, and the members of that country deserve to continue on this path.
The terrorists killed Americans on September 11, 2001. But they *cannot* break us, and cannot even bend us all that much. An experiment guided by some British expatriates all those years ago has worked too well to be defeated by a small group of well-armed evildoers.
–JRM
JRM (de6363) — 9/11/2006 @ 3:18 pmMy memories of the day are posted here.
Justin: Also, the media tells us that the attacks haven’t significantly affected our lives. I don’t agree. Do you?
Honestly, I think the media may be partially right about 9/11 not affecting us all that greatly. For starters, half our population seems still to be partisan politicking as though nothing had happened (excepting, maybe, that it has become more rabid). For another thing, our economy is robust, our interstate and international commerce is solid, perhaps slightly improved over six years ago. Even air travel has been only faintly slowed, for security reasons.
Daily life out here in the heartland is much as it was in the 1990s, ’80s, ’70s…
OTOH, most of us do have badly burnt fingertips of the spirit. It alters the way we react emotionally to events and issues.
Day-to-day living seems unchanged for most of us. Day-to-day thinking has undergone a massive transformation.
leucanthemum b (9599e1) — 9/11/2006 @ 3:37 pmThat morning I was sleeping in. I had the day off because I was teaching a Saturday class. My wife woke me up and brought me out to look at the television. After watching for a few minutes the second plane hit. That made it pretty obvious that it was a terrorist attack. We went to the corner station and filled up the gasoline tank and both of our extra gas cans. Then we drove to the market and bought a store of food that would last a long time, including canned beef stew, spam, powdered milk, rice and beans. We called our children’s high school and asked what we could do. The principal asked if we wanted to pick up our kids. We said no, they are as safe at school as anyplace else, we didn’t know at the time exactly what was being targeted and we live one mile from Disneyland. He asked us to come to the school and have lunch with the children. He said what they needed is calm adults more than anything else. We packed up some snacks had a great lunchtime with the kids and their friends. Everyone was smiling and happy, asking for their favorite treat and talking about anything but the obvious. After lunch when the bell rang they started to get quiet. They thanked us over and over for being there for them. We hugged our kids and more than a few of their friends, we were left alone on the quad wondering about our future and the future of those wonderful teenagers.
tyree (ca138c) — 9/11/2006 @ 3:38 pmOops — it appears Patterico posted the question. Sorry for my error.
leucanthemum b (9599e1) — 9/11/2006 @ 3:40 pmI remember being awoken that morning around 7:00 A.M. by a phone call from my apartment manager. I was angry that someone would call so early in the morning (I live on the west coast), since I like to sleep in. I recognized his voice and my first thought was why is he calling me? Then what he said floored me, “The South Tower of the World Trade Center just collapsed!”
“What? Are you serious?”, I replied.
“Deadly serious, terrorists have flown airplanes into both buildings and now one of them have collapsed. Go turn on your TV.”
“Oh my god. It’s like they nuked us. They tried this before in 1993 and I remember them saying back then 50,000 people are in those buildings! Has there been any words on casualties yet?”
“No not yet. I going to go back to watch my TV, but I wanted to tell you what was going on.”
“Okay thanks. Oh my god I can’t believe it, bye.”
As I stayed home an watched the grisly details unfold and replayed that day on TV, that 50,000 number was upper most in my mind, and the notion that the U.S. had taken the equivalent of being hit with a nuclear weapon. It wasn’t until almost a week later that official estimates of casualties settled close to the numbers we know of today. I don’t think enough people appreciate that as bad as 9-11 was, we were ‘lucky’ and the toll could have been so very very much worse.
Thanks to the evacuation of the buildings and the time it took for them to collapse many people were saved. If both buildings had collapsed quickly and at peak occupancy levels tens of thousands of people could have been killed. The most popular figure used throughout the years for the number of people killed at Hiroshima was 50,000, weirdly matching the occupancy of the WTC, hence my feeling that America had been nuked.
Brad (dad693) — 9/11/2006 @ 3:44 pmI had hopped a subway from the WTC to midtown at about 8 that morning. We heard a small plane had hit the Trade center so I joked with my boss that I had to go fix some phone lines (I’m a Telecom tech) down at the WTC…we all had a good laugh not realizing that tragedy to come.
After the second plane hit, the federal building I was working in was evacuated and we sat on 33rd street and watched the fighter jets zoom by and the smoke filling the sky.
My friend and I decided to walk back to Brooklyn (home at the time) because all transportation was shut down. We were scared because there were false reports of rioting and looting going on.
After making it across the Manhattan Bridge, we were in the middle of the Muslim community of Brooklyn. You could feel the tension between those trying to get home and the Muslims…by then we all knew it was terrorism, it was a very tense, scary moment.
Finally I made it home and spent the rest of the day in a bar with my friends watching Fox News and trying to deal with the schock of event….What a day
Stacy (159ee7) — 9/11/2006 @ 4:05 pmI was awoken by a phone call from a friend that morning telling me about the “attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon”. I thought she was joking until I turned on the radio and logged on to the Internet. I then immediately b-lined it to KFI which was providing live coverage. David Hall, the program director at the time glanced away from the TV long enough to see me out of the corner of his eye and said “Glad you’re here. Grab a desk and help us out.”
The information was still coming in faster than people could really process. We had to start filtering through the information-inferno to give our hosts the most up to date and relevent information that the public needed. Rumaging through my phone lists…Did I know anyone in NY?…Was their phone on?…Could they give us any updates?…
Things were too frantic and crazy that day to really process the magnitude of the event itself. Within an hour of entering the building, the word had come down – Rush Limbaugh’s broadcasting station had been knocked out by the attacks. KFI (and Bill Handel) had been tapped to broadcast to Limbaugh’s national audience to provide the latest news coverage and commentary.
As the day wore on…it just got more surreal –
“We’re obviously pre-empting Dr. Laura right?… There’s some obscure website claiming to heard from cel phone calls that some of the hijackers had cut the throats of the flight crew with some sort of knife. Can we confirm that? Is anyone else reporting that yet? Well, print this out and give it to the host. He can emphasize that its an unconfirmed rumor at point if he decides to mention it….Barbara Olsen?? I met her once! She was on the plane? Are you sure? She’s dead??? …Are those people jumping off the building???? Holy shit…”
28-hours later. I finally manged to leave work to get some sleep – but I still felt wired. I still could not fully process what had just happened. I’m not sure any of us have to this very day.
Justin Levine (20f2b5) — 9/11/2006 @ 4:30 pmOddly, I posted just this over at Interocitor.
Kevin Murphy (0b2493) — 9/11/2006 @ 5:14 pmFolks, I think we should try to avoid the partisan squabbling today.
Patterico (de0616) — 9/11/2006 @ 5:26 pmWhere I was On 9/11…
I’ve resisted posting this story for several years now, since it seemed that where I was and what I was doing on September 11, 2001 is really immaterial in light of the terror and tragedy of that day. There was……
The Interocitor (ca7e8c) — 9/11/2006 @ 5:28 pmI had been in St. Louis for work. I was supposed to fly home that afternoon, and — naively — I had thought I would still be able to fly home, because I was in the Midwest. After all the airports were ordered closed, I remember trying to get a rental car so I could drive home. Failing at that task, I had to check back into my hotel room, and I spent the entire day flipping through channels — I was shocked (though I don’t know why) to see that virtually EVERY channel (even channels like MTV and VH1) was carrying coverage of the attacks. Businesses and shopping centers closed early, so there was nothing to do but watch TV. Gas lines started to form at gas stations, out of fears that gas prices would balloon to $3-4/gallon. Luckily, I had been using a rental car for work, so I was able to get home the next day (without having to pay $3-4/gallon). Very surreal, that week. I hope it never happens again, but I know that’s a bit unrealistic — especially with so many 9/10 libs in our midst.
Fly in Ointment (a564a2) — 9/11/2006 @ 5:46 pmI live on the West Coast and was on my way to services. My radio was tuned to the Tony Bruno Show which was then on FOX Radio and the sidekick was announcing that all flights had been cancelled and all planes landed as quickly as possible via decree of the FAA. For some reason, I thought it was a joke of some sort and since the next thing was a commercial I switched to the local sports radio station which has already changed to ABC Radio.
I was beyond stunned by the news of a plane attacking the WTC (I had lived in NYC over 10 years) and I just knew it was a terrorist attack, though whether McKvie or Islamic type I didn’t hazard a guess.
Services has just started when I got inside and I was somewhat upset. About 25 people were there, about a third knew about the plane crash. I had to insist 3 seperate times to the leader that special prayers for the government needed to be said. Finally he agreed and made the announcement about the attack and we did so (later that night there was a community prayer vigil).
I then went to work, where there was work to be done. I kept abreast of the news by refreshing Yahoo News every fifteen minutes. I was the only at work who had any attachment at all to NYC and so I was somewhat on an island. I really didn’t feel like working, but we were on the West Coast in an area not close to anything that would have been a target and no one else even thought of leaving, so I kept at it.
I remember writing at an email to everyone in the office that was basically a eulogy for the WTC but do not remember anything else about the rest of that day.
Has it changed me? Definitely. Perhaps not so much the attack itself as the reactions of other people and groups. It spelled out to me who was friend and who was foe, who living in the USA was pro-American and who was anti-American, who had a clue and who was beyond hopeless. Mainly it made realize we live in a world of terror that was allowed to grow right under our nose, something all parties in the USA allowed to happen.
seePea (76dc26) — 9/11/2006 @ 5:56 pmI live on the West Coast, so I awoke to KFI radio Bill Handel talking about a crisis in NYC and then the images on the early-morning TV shows. It was about 6 a.m. California time. As it became clear that it was a coordinated terror attack and the towers collapsed I called into work downtown and was told to sit tight. I was channel-surfing through the morning network shows and the cable news channels, who had the video feeds of the smoking towers, as KFI Bill Handel was on my clock-radio giving a less informed but more everyman play by play concluding that we had been attacked and were in a new kind of war. In retrospect, amazing that the first and then the second tower collapsed in the first hour and then second after the impacts, with the Pentagon stories in the background but emphasizing that the destruction was no accident.
nosh (d8da01) — 9/11/2006 @ 6:02 pmI did,nt hear of it till someone told me becuase i dont even watch the news anymore since its too damn one sided but i do remember it rained that very day where i live here in northern california
krazy kagu (0a3548) — 9/11/2006 @ 6:13 pmI was working in Denver, and I saw the news about the first plane as I was getting ready to leave for work that morning. Didn’t know it was terrorists yet.
My office was about 15 minutes away, at the top of one of the tallest builings in Denver. I usually parked about 5 blocks away, and walked the rest of the way to avoid paying expensive parking fees.
As I waked those 5 blocks, I was lost in my morning thoughts, not paying attention to much. I wasn’t even thinking about the WTC accident, which, last I’d seen it, had been thought to be a small plane. Then my brain registered that something wasn’t quite right.
I was walking TOWARD downtown. Normally, everyone else was walking in the same direction, but today, for some odd reason, everyone was walking AWAY from downtown. I was the only person walking into downtown, against the tide.
As it turned out, pretty much everyone working in the high-rises was evacuated that day. Paranoia was very high — for all anyone knew, a plane could hit our building next.
I was turned away at the door of my building by a security guard who told me I was “non-essential.” Great. I walked back to my car, and drove home listening to the news on the radio. Was so dazed I actually blew through a four-way stop sign right in front of a police car. Only time I’ve ever been ticketed for ignoring a stop sign.
Working at a desk in front of a window on the 50th floor, perched high above Denver, overlooking Coors Field, had been a perk of the job until that day. After that, there was a lot of dread looking out at the open sky. For the next few days (I don’t remember how long the airlines were grounded now) the skies were clear; later, when the planes started taking off and landing at DIA again, it was nerve-wracking sometimes to see how close they would pass our building.
Phil (4a2c26) — 9/11/2006 @ 6:14 pmIt was a day like most weekdays for me. I took my kids to daycare and was chatting with the woman who watched my kids (we had been friends for over 5 yrs at that point). Another woman came in to drop off her kid & she overheard us talking about inconsequential things. She looked at us with that blank expression that became so familiar that day and said, “You guys really don’t know, do you?”
We looked at each other, then both turned to her shaking our heads. That’s when we discovered that airplanes had been flown into both towers of the World Trade Center. I don’t think I had any reaction at that point because it just seemed beyond comprehension. I took the kids with me (didn’t want them out of my sight) and went to my in-laws where my mother-in-law was glued to the TV. The 1st tower had fallen already, but I got there in time to see the 2d tower fall. My first thought was, “Now I understand how my parents felt about Pearl Harbor.” For years, I had rolled my eyes when my parents consistently voted for more and more defense spending because, for their generation, you couldn’t be too safe. But as a baby boomer, I hadn’t ever had to deal with any of that, and with the Soviet Union gone, I thought we were in for peace forever. That day, however, I realized how wrong I (and most Americans) had been.
sharon (dfeb10) — 9/11/2006 @ 6:34 pmI was at my desk at the Broomfield offices of Sun Microsystems when a coworker came by and asked if I would assist him in one of the data centers in a different campus building.
As we walked towards the data center, a large group of people were gathered by a tv in a meeting space next to the hall. The image was the first tower burning. I overheard someone saying that a commuter jet had hit the tower. As I passed, I glanced up and saw the second plane fly right into the aecond tower. Everyone instantly knew this was a terrorist attack.
Later, walking back to my office, the crowd had grown and many were crying. I asked what had happened and I was told that the towers had fallen. I was shocked. Did they tip over? I asked. No, they had collapsed straight down.
Shortly thereafter, we received word that everyone in the Sun offices in the North Tower had gotten out safely. One brave soul had even returned to the offices to turn off the computer systems, but forgot to take the backup tapes.
B Bolton (bf0c49) — 9/11/2006 @ 7:11 pmCrossposted from my livejournal:
I was a senior in college when it happened. I got up that morning, showered and dressed, and headed out the door of my little room on the second floor of the Wesley House a little after 10:00, late as usual for my work-study job tutoring at the music library. One of my housemates was sitting on the couch in the upstairs living area, her face looking ashen and her eyes focused on the T.V. I started to rush past, because I was late, and of course it’s rude to linger too long between a person and the T.V. screen they are watching, and she stopped me, saying, “You won’t believe this. Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center.” I’m thinking, “The World what what?” She told me that one of the buildings had actually collapsed because of the damage. I remember saying something like, “Oh that’s awful,” without really thinking much about it. I was late for work, after all.
As I walked toward the School of Music, I had time to ponder the news a little more carefully. I didn’t get very many details from that conversation, and so I was thinking that the “two planes” were like, you know, little planes. I was actually thinking they were like fighter planes–like Top Gun or something–like, you know, there had been some wierd navigational error in some sort of military exercise. But as I walked along it suddenly occured to me that this made no sense at all. Two planes crashed into two buildings?! That couldn’t be an accident! I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, clutching my chest. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe the level of evil and despair that a person would have to have to do something like that–to deliberately take their life and countless others in one blow. And worse still, it was not only one person who had done this–there were at least two planes, so there had to be at least two people, if not more. How could such a thing happen? Those were my thoughts as I made my way to work that morning, no longer caring at all that I was late.
The rest of my day was much the same as many of yours: checking news websites and finding them crashed due to ridiculous amounts of traffic, normal activities–in my case, classes–suspended due to the tragedy, people gluing themselves to the TV, etc. The footage was on almost constantly on the Wesley House downstairs TV. Since the house I lived in was a campus ministry, our downstairs living room (the residents had a private one upstairs, which was where I first heard the news from my housemate that morning) became a place for people to gather, watch the footage, discuss, and commiserate. I coudn’t handle too much of it, though, so I avoided that area somewhat. And there was a memorial service held in Stetson’s beautiful Elizabeth Hall chapel, but I think it might have been the following day.
Anyway…most of those things, as I said, are like what many of you remember, and my memories of them have become rather fuzzy. But that moment of realization under the shade of the trees lining the sidewalk on my way to work that morning stands out in my mind. It was, for me, a moment of innocence lost.
hymnia (dca723) — 9/11/2006 @ 7:17 pm(Continued from 31)
Sitting at my desk, heart pounding, emotions high. I realized that this is exactly what my parents had experienced with Pearl Harbor.
Has our world view changed? You bet. I was of the persuasion that Live and Let Live was the best policy. No longer.
“What should we do?” asked one of my coworkers. I responded. “What would Caesar do?” None of this proportional response garbage, just true devastation until they submit or die.
B Bolton (bf0c49) — 9/11/2006 @ 7:30 pmI was at work at a military unit on the East Coast preparing for an exercise. My sergeant major came into the office and said “sir, you need to go to the commander’s office. History is being made.” The sergeant major didn’t have the flair for the dramatic, so I moved rapidly and got into the commander’s office. We stood amazed as we watched the television as the second plane hit. If you wanted to see cold fury, then watch men who have dedicated their lives to the protection of their country watch attacks on their homeland without the ability to strike back. We were astounded at the audacity of our enemy, and marveled at the magnitude of their evil. I remember doing the hard calculations in my mind of how many people were in the WTC, and thinking that I was watching the murder of between 30-50,000 Americans before our eyes. When we later found out it was a tenth of that grim calculation, we were relieved that so many escaped and absolutely resolute that those that did this had to be brought to justice. Within days after the attack, I counted myself fortunate to have an opportunity to play a small part in our nation’s response to the Islamofascists by deploying to take the fight to the enemy to make sure this never happened again.
Did it change my life? Absolutely. I went to war.
WarriorScholar (78e439) — 9/11/2006 @ 8:10 pmIt’s hard to remember all the details of that day- it went by in a sort of haze for me. It took hours for me to even comprehend the sheer cruelty of the attacks- prior to that it was almost as if the planes had flown themselves into the buildings for reasons completely unknowable to us.
There are two things I do remember, however. I had gotten up early for class (I was a junior in college at the time) and was- I assumed- the first of my friends to see it. I was in a near trance as I picked up the phone and started to make phonecalls. On one call, my friend’s answering machine picked up, and my mind froze on the question “do I try to shout and wake them up from the answering machine, or just leave a message?” I was trying to remember where their phone was relative to the bedroom, and whether their machine even did a live broadcast of the message. I don’t think I shouted.
The other moment I remember was when I went to class (my classes started before either tower came down, and I still wasn’t sure what any of it meant). I walked in with a few friends and there was a radio tucked in the back corner- it was a class in the drafting room and someone had brought it in ages ago for late night work. We tuned in to a station and the first report that we all heard was something along the lines of “We are now…getting a report…that…the…Sears…Tower…[even longer pause]…the…tallest…building…in…Chicago…[pause that could have lasted a minute for all I know]…hasjustbeenevacuated.” The reading of that one item nearly caused me to throw a chair out of the room’s only window.
Some Guy in Chicago (977299) — 9/11/2006 @ 8:19 pmI slept in late because I was teaching an afternoon class and I could sleep until noon if I wanted to. Most days I got up around ten. I woke up startled but not knowing why, as if alarm bells were going off. I had such a headache too, and at first I thought the noise I imagined was a neighbors car alarm. I keep a radio and a TV in the bedroom…and when I get up I like to listen to the radio for awhile. THAT morning my hand went straight for the TV remote. There was “something” urgent that I should know about but I had no IDEA what!
As soon as I saw what was happening, I immediately called my husband at work and later a friend that I knew lived in Chicago as I knew she worked near the Sear’s Tower. I had the cordless phone in my hand while watching both WTC buildings burning. She finally hung up and while still holding the phone I saw the South Tower go down. I remember gasping and dropping the phone on the floor. The rest of the day was a blur of watching coverage on television and trying to find out if I still needed to get to class.
I couldn’t get ahold of anyone at school except the automated voice message system (which was weird because I couldn’t even raise the switchboard) and that told me nothing so I got in my car and drove across town. Another strange thing happened that day. For some bizzare reason my car radio absolutely refused to work. On September 12th the radio worked as if it never had anything wrong with it…and has worked ever since. Don’t ask…I have NO idea!
Carol
Carol Johnson (b4100c) — 9/11/2006 @ 8:26 pmpatterico wrote in the opening entry :
Also, the media tells us that the attacks haven’t significantly affected our lives. I don’t agree. Do you?
What/which media is telling us that???
seePea (456345) — 9/11/2006 @ 8:37 pmWe slam others who use a generic , bland generalization like that and I would definitely be interested in seeing some examples of this.
/soapbox on/
Just a reminder to everyone out there with primaries Tuesday. Get out and vote , don’t make a mockery out of the War.
Even if you don’t think any of the candidates deserve your attention, get out and vote an empty ballot.
/soapbox off/
seePea (456345) — 9/11/2006 @ 8:41 pmHow’s this?
Patterico (de0616) — 9/11/2006 @ 9:27 pmFar be it for me to criticize the LA Times, but I should have qualified my request to
which responsible, intelligent media claimed few lives were changed.
As for the PEW Research, what the article itself says gives lie to the headline. More than 50% said that their lives had been “altered”. How is that few?
seePea (456345) — 9/11/2006 @ 9:42 pmI was watching Imus on MSNBC at the time. Charles had a newsbulletin about a small plane crashing into one of the twin towers, at which point MSNBC switched to a field reporter at the scene.
The speculation was that a private plane had crashed into a tower, and connections were made with the B25 that had crashed into the Empire State Building way back when.
I watched as MSNBC staff talked about evacuation, lost planes, and the cost of repairing the building. And I watched as the second plane – very obviously a passenger plane – flew straight and level into the other tower. And for a few seconds on MSNBC it was dead silence.
My first thought upon seeing it was, That was no accident.
I watched the rest of the morning as the story unfolded. The kamikaze into the Pentagon, the crash in Pennsylvania. Round after round of speculation, and the slow unveiling of what had happened, and who was behind it.
Since then I have become annoyed with how the administration has explained the need for the war, and their mishandling of the very valid reason for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Yes, we need to confront and destroy terrorist groups around the world. Yes, we needed to take Saddam Hussein out and get Iraq started as a democracy. But there was no damn reason to connect Saddam to al Queda or WMDs. He committed enough violations of the armistice by taking military action against our aircraft to more than justify a conquest and occupation. The radar locks the Iraqi military engaged in prior to OIF were matters no sane person could refute.
The draconian, unconstitutional measures taken at commercial airports, combined with my general anxiety disorder, have effectively barred my flying anywhere (even if I had the money). While the refusal to include the general public in the struggle has, in my opinion, done more to erode support for the war then anything the left could ever do.
Finally, I’ve seen the Democratic Party commit a particularly gruesome and regrettable political suicide. Once a Republican wins the White House and the Republicans gain seats in the Congress (both houses), you will see the Democratic Party collapse in on itself, and a new political party form under the leadership of moderate Democrates and Republicans dissatisfied by the Republican Party’s swing towards nanny-statism.
In all I have to say that my life is worse now than it was before September 11th, 2001. My travel is restricted, my government now preaches the message that the common man cannot deal with the world as it is, and the snitty opposition is so obsessed by a mythical betrayal they can provide no alternative at all.
So I support the war on tyranny, wherever tyranny in any form is to be found. All I ask is that, for once, let’s select a leader who knows what he’s doing and will stick to his guns.
Alan Kellogg (e1f267) — 9/12/2006 @ 7:24 amI was asleep when the attacks happened. I worked a tech job that was happy with me to keep erratic hours at that time; on a typical day I woke up around 9.30, checked email, etc, and got to work around 11. So I woke up, checked my email, and saw a curious email from a friend who commuted from San Francisco to Redwood City: he said it was very odd driving by the airport on the way to work that morning.
I had no clue what he was talking about, but I figured it had to be big enough that he could assume that anyone reading his email would know, so that meant it had to be on the new york times website (I didn’t have a tv, so the web was my only source of news).
It was well after noon by the time I finished reading news accounts (I never made it to work that day). I stumbled downtown, numb, to eat lunch, and wandered into a taqueria; the spanish-language news stations were chattering away about the events of the day, and replaying the falling of the towers.
—————
Five years later, though, I would agree that the attacks haven’t significantly affected *my* life. Neither I, nor any of my friends or family, knew people who were killed that day. After the first several months of waiting, terrified, for the other shoe to drop (and being afraid whenever I went into San Francisco or downtown Los Angeles), I calmed down; and life has gone on as usual. I can’t say that the trajectory of my life, or the day-to-day details of my life, are any different as a result of these attacks than what they would have been had the attacks not occurred.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 9/12/2006 @ 11:13 amaphrael:
I would guess that, in some ways, you’re one of the lucky ones. I didn’t know anyone personally who died in the Towers or at the Pentagon, or in PA.
But I have friends who lost relatives in the Towers, and friends who lost friends at the Pentagon.
I’ve had friends fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Is the trajectory of our lives different? I suspect that, at some level, all of our lives are different. Our conversations are different, our moods are different.
Living in a major city, I’ll tell you that seeing an airliner take off or coming in for a landing still raises troubling thoughts at times. So does getting on the subway, especially on 9-11, or other “major” dates.
I’ve learned more about Islam than I had ever intended; learned more about IEDs, too.
I think that the McGrory-Moynihan conversation applies to a lot of folks (me and you included). It’s not that we’d never laugh again, it’s that we’d never be young again….
Lurking Observer (ea88e8) — 9/12/2006 @ 12:22 pmLurking Observer: I would say I am one of the lucky ones, absolutely.
That said, my brother was already in the army in 2001, and he has fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq; and his life was deeply changed as a result of 9/11. Mine, not so much. 🙂
aphrael (e7c761) — 9/12/2006 @ 2:49 pmI would say that the events of 9/11 did indeed have a profound effect on my life. Like most Americans, I became aware of exactly how unsafe the world is. I also have a relative serving in Iraq atm and have known several others who have been there in various capacities. Unlike past TDY experiences, these have caused much more concern and stress.
sharon (dfeb10) — 9/12/2006 @ 3:36 pmIt was my grandaughters First Birthday. Her Mom and Dad (My son) were both active duty Navy. I am a Navy vet. It was quiet for a birthday. But we lowered the volume on the TV and had cake and presents. I had spent the day at work (In the O.R. as a RN). My second son decided not too long after that day to stop looking for work as a Firefighter and he joined the Navy, as a Corpsman like I was. Later that night we saw a piece of video, where a FDNY member of the family paused long enough to look into the camera, letting us know he was ok. For what it’s worth, 9/11 is the result of democratic appeasement going all the way back to 1979.
paul from fl (464e99) — 9/13/2006 @ 4:11 amHi. I find forum about work and travel. Where can I to see it?
MichaelDZH (e2ec7d) — 4/1/2007 @ 5:30 pmBest Regards, Michael.