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September 11, 2001

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scooter1369;1977602; said:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/29/the_black_hole_of_911?page=0,0

10 things from the last decade more significant than 9/11?

He makes good arguments, but I don't agree.
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Ageed.

That being said, most of his points are predicated on 9/11. While none of these things individually are more important to global development (though development isn't quite the correct word - history perhaps?) than 9/11, eight of the ten items on that site would not have happened if 9/11 hadn't happened. At best some of them wouldn't have happened for at least ten more years. (IMO)
 
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10672102_812122232160919_1640819448634467176_n.jpg


Credit: Gary Hershorn
 
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The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.
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- Hunter S. Thompson, Sept. 12, 2001
 
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13 years? Absolutely incredible. In a way it feels eons ago, in another way - just only moments ago. I was a freshman in computer programming (what a joke of a class). Left 2nd period to stretch my legs, came back (it was a double class) only to find the TV on with the coverage from CNN. To this day, I still won't fully understand some of the things I saw in contrast to what I had heard, but I'll leave it at that. I remember the feeling watching it though, I'd never forget that. Surreal, shock, confusion, then fear. I could finally draw something of a parallel to what I was told about the Cuba Missile Crisis from my grandmother. God bless the first responders, the military, national guard, their families and anyone that had the constitution to help those in need that day.
 
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I was at work. Waiting at the shop for a delivery of fence materials. Truck driver was waiting in his cab while we unloaded and was listening to his radio. Yelled out that a plane had accidentally flown into a building in NY. Finished quickly and went to the house i shared with my coworker. Walked in about five minutes before the second plane hit.

The first feeling was shock followed quickly by sadness. All those lives. Still emotional when I watch the tv shows about the day.
 
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That was a life-changing day in our family. My son was 12, almost 13, and in the 7th grade. He came home from school and asked, "What is going on? Parents were picking their kids up from school early and teachers were crying." I said, "Let's turn on the TV." He watched for 15-20 minutes without saying a word. When I turned it off he said, "There's going to be a war, isn't there?" I said, "Yep." He asked me how long I thought it would last, and I told him that I thought we would be fighting it when his kids were grown. He said, "Good - cause when I'm old enough I'm enlisting."

When 12 year old boys say stuff like that you tend to not take it too seriously, but his mother and I found out that this was not an emotional outburst from a child, but rather a solemn oath of a young man that he was going to do his part to avenge what happened that day. Every now and then he would remind us that he was going to enlist, and when he was a junior in HS, we allowed him to sign with the Army for 6 years. He went to basic training in the summer between his junior and senior years, and finished AIT after he graduated in 07. He called me in late 07 and told me he had a chance to get into a combat unit that was being deployed to Iraq as part of the "Surge". I knew this was it - how he was going to make good on his promise.

He came home a week before his deployment. It was late Feb, and he asked if we could go into the back yard because he had some things to tell me that he didn't want the girls to hear. We built a fire and sat out there for an hour freezing while he told me (just in case) how much he loved and appreciated his mother and I, what he wanted done with his life insurance money (pay for his sister's college and donate to soldier's charities), and details about his funeral. I never felt closer to him than that night.

We took him to Cleveland Hopkins to see him off. I thought I had dealt with it emotionally and was ready for him to go, but his mother and I wept bitterly as we walked away from him. The full reality just hit me right there as I was hugging him that I might not ever see him alive or whole again. I sat in the car and bawled like a baby for 20 minutes before I could begin to drive home. My wife and daughter said they had never even seen a tear come out of my eye, let alone seen me weep like that. I didn't expect it, couldn't help it, and had a hard time stopping it.

He got over there and began doing his job. I had a knot in my stomach the whole deployment. I was surprised at how often I heard from him via email - every 3-4 days. He would send two emails in one: one for my eyes only where he told me everything he had done and seen, and other sanitized one for the girls. He saw lots of people get killed in various gruesome ways, he killed people, and he had lots of people trying to kill him. It was strange to me for him to be so open with me about what he was experiencing and how he was feeling about it. I saw a friendly kid transform into a hard soldier. I understood that was where he had to go, but I didn't like it. Almost everything I know about his deployment I know from his emails while he was there.

He came home without any physical harm, but he was troubled in his mind, and had a hard time adjusting to being home. He has rarely said anything about Iraq, but initially told me, "If people knew what I did over there, they wouldn't want to be around me." But within 6 months he was pretty much back to his old self. No anger, guilt, PTSD, or other major problems that follow soldiers and marines home.

The most remarkable thing about my son's relationship to 9/11 is that he is not remarkable. There were lots of 12 year old boys that did the exact same thing. Despite all the reasons we have to think this country is going to hell, that makes me think we are going to be just fine.
 
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Ran across this, this morning. Really, long. Really really good. (and to be honest, not too depressing until the end, somehow the narratives kind of keep with the frenetic pace of the events...

Nearly every American above a certain age remembers precisely where they were on September 11, 2001. But for a tiny handful of people, those memories touch American presidential history. Shortly after the attacks began, the most powerful man in the world, who had been informed of the World Trade Center explosions in a Florida classroom, was escorted to a runway and sent to the safest place his handlers could think of: The open sky.
...
The story of those remarkable hours—and the thoughts and emotions of those aboard—isolated eight miles above America, escorted by three F-16 fighters, flying just below the speed of sound, has never been comprehensively told.

This oral history, based on more than 40 hours of original interviews with more than two dozen of the passengers, crew, and press aboard—including many who have never spoken publicly about what they witnessed that day—traces the story of how an untested president, a sidearm-carrying general, top aides, the Secret Service and the Cipro-wielding White House physician, as well as five reporters, four radio operators, three pilots, two congressmen and a stenographer responded to 9/11.
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So, among others telling their story here, White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, Mike Morrell, Karl Rove (who actually does a great job relating to the feeling of the day), Ari Fleischer, Dubya's secret Service detail, as mentioned, the Pilot of AF1 (and its crewmembers), the commanders of the Bases they visited that day.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-in-the-sky-214230#ixzz4Jn6Go1n1
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
 
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Well I'll spout this all again in different words given it is the middle of the night, my stray kitten adoptee is evil and won't let me sleep, and what else is there to do.

My law school was on 5th Avenue in NYC. When you get downtown, the streets in NYC start losing the grid they are north, so the World Trade Center towers were on bent avenues exactly positioned between buildings looking south from where I was.

I was always late to the game, and there was no exception here. It was 8:50 AM or so and we were having a smoke outside before our 9:00 class (glad I gave up that habit). I was facing north, so I just saw the reaction in my friends as the first plane hit. I turned around just in time to see an explosion. We all though it was a Cessna or something, something random and weird. We went to class.

A few minutes into class, someone barged through the door. The professor was seriously pissed. She immediately asked if he was spending his time gawking outside at the accident. The student said the other tower had been hit. Within seconds the alarms went off, and we were evacuated. We remained without school for a week, or a bit more, I don't recall.

My best friend, a true Buckeye, was a pilot for Delta and lived with me in the East Village. I hadn't seen him that morning. My school was a bit more than a mile away. While everyone gawked outside, unsure of what to do, and as we saw someone jump from a tower. . . I ran home.

Luckily he wasn't flying. He was just sitting and staring at the television. My wife at the time still lived in Boston, I had only moved to NYC in August ahead of time for school. I managed to get word to her via e-mail that my buddy was okay, as for obvious reasons everyone was worried about him. It was the first time she spoke with his folks. The only time, I believe. We debated what to do, if we could help, but we just watched the towers fall in our living room, occasionally looking outside (we couldn't see them from our place).

Then, for a week or so, we just lived in this empty city, in the closed off zone.

I have a few stories about that, but TV doesn't cut it. And no, we didn't wear masks. A very few people did. It smelled a bit like burning plastic, but with something else, wrong to it, more than anything. Most of the crap blew to Brooklyn. A few, well, at least one, bodega stayed open, so we ate the food that was weirdly never touched for years but remained under their shelves, I still would never touch that potato salad or chicken in any other conditions. We skated down the avenues, now empty.

Stuff got real after. Taxi drivers were nice. New Yorkers were a bit nicer. Everyone appreciated people coming back.

A few people from my school died, nobody personal to me.

And life went on. But things obviously got weirder, nationally.

Edit: I find it funny that Ohians seem to think of that disaster as worse than most New Yorkers I know. Anecdotal of course. Maybe it hurt their Americanism more. But I will also say my biggest regret is that I remember wishing I had my camera. I was a bit of a photographer. I hadn't yet realized (or faced) that people died. After, I was very displeased with myself. I also have many other personal stories about this day (for instance mapquest, the mapping site at the time, telling my family I went to school across the street from the towers for a few hours erroneously, my friend being on an identical flight out of Boston as the one that crashed, and being grounded in Indiana with no contact to her family in Japan for hours, etc.), but I have written enough of a book.
 
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