9/11: 5 Years Later

I've written a good deal about this personally and have never released any of it for public eyes.  As a whole, I think most Americans feel the same about it.  I remember where I was when it hit.  I was asleep since I didn't have my mass communications class until 12.  My then girlfriend left 2 frantic messages on my machine.  My machine was in the other room so I paid no mind to the first, but when I got the second I thought, "Damn, I guess I better go check what she wants."  I remember hearing a bunch of loud blather about something at the WTC, but I really had no idea what she was talking about.  I turned on the TV to find ESPN (Ch 35) from the previous nights events.  They were showing coverage...then to FOX  (70) @ 944am...then to CNN (42)...then to local ABC affiliate (2).  Finally, I settled on one and I don't remember which one.  I remember standing three feet from the screen in nothing but my LSU football shorts, the remote in my left hand and my right hand holding my left elbow, feeling completely vulnerable.  One knee slightly bent, I found myself in complete disbelief as I watched the replay of the 1st plane hitting.  I thought, "What kind of sick documentary is this?"  But it was very real.  I was 4,000 miles away and felt so close.  Thinking about it right now, puts a small choke in my throat.

I get very angry when I hear these nutjobs (I was going to put a link here but refuse to give them more publicity than necessary) make comments about the whole thing being staged.  These ignorant people live in a world on paper that is governed by thesis statements.  These are the same people who accuse New Orleans officials of blowing up the levees in order to get black people out of the city.  I remember morons like Harry Belafonte and Kanye West (please stick to singing) saying that Bush was a racist for doing that.  Are you f*&$ing kidding me?  I took that as a personal slap in the face.  I know many on both sides of the color spectrum that are in the same boat to this day.  The weather didn't discriminate just like the terrorists didn't discriminate. These people have a serious agenda.  Had Gore won the seat in 2000 and not Bush, then the extreme right would be saying the same crap.  These people seem to miss the fundamental idea that the terrorists don't care who's in office...they don't care about right, left...Donkeys or Elephants.  They HATE Americans and everything we, as a cohesive unit, stand for. 

I heard a poll on the radio that 40-something percent of Americans blame Clinton and 40-something percent of Americans blame Bush for 9/11 happening.  Who cares?  I know no one did right after it happened.  The thing that matters is today.  What are we doing to crush these people?  I remember the fire that came out from the American public for a good year after the attacks.  Five years later where has that fire gone?  We need to get it back.  Three  things need to be realized: 1) Politicians on both sides need to stop using this day as a scapegoat because it's a sacred day.  Whatever politician is in office is in a lose/lose situation.   So make the best of it.  2) As proved just a month ago at Heathrow Airport, the threats are still looming very real.  We need not lose sight of this and remember how they injured us on that day.  I remember.  I felt insulted and humiliated.   3)  When you see one of these nutjobs  and want to slap them, just use your energy to smile.  It will do no good to waste your breath.  Go find an area to pray, stand on your head for Yoga or find a Zen place. 

I know many people that were affected directly and indirectly in NYC, DC and PA.  I really feel for them.  I know that choking sensation you get.  I know that heaviness in the tear ducts you feel.  I can't imagine being 60-something floors up and trying to decide whether or not to jump out of a window as maybe my best option.  Can I call my family?  Can I call my son?  Can I call anyone that I love?  What will happen to them?  What will happen to me if I don't jump?  What will happen if I stay?  I wish I hadn't fought with my wife this morning.  Does she know I love her?  Do I...Oh my God, what is that vibration...the floor is moving...the wall is coming closer.  Ok, I'm jumping out.  I just can't imagine. 

I guess it's human nature to always aim to take down the top dog.  With being the best, comes a responsibility to maintain the image and give people opportunity to be a part of that image.  That's why they gun for us.  That's why they want to take us down.  That's why we are the best...the United States of America.

Comments

[Sheley]

Very moving, Christien. :)

[Enlightenment]

One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying "We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]". Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I've ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four "pilots" among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake "pilot" of the bunch. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports. These "hijackers" somehow managed to board all four airliners with their tickets, yet not even ONE got his name on any of the flight manifests. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn't work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn't work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won't let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you "aren't supposed to think about". Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name, more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn't respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn't happen, not even close. Somehow these "hijackers" must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn't have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were "supposed to see". Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these "hijackers" wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn't even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying "We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down" attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers' magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be "Muslim hijackers" the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don't laugh) one of their passports was "found" a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously "surviving" the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also "survived" the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be "indestructable" like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn't bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastical far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the "nineteen hijackers" is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America.