Remember
9/11
Gary
Gerard, dumbhoosier.com
This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of
a grim day in our nation’s history.
Sept. 11, 2001, was the day when jetliners were
deliberately flown into both towers of the World Trade
Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon in Washington,
D.C.
If not for the heroic efforts of passengers aboard a
fourth jetliner, the White House or Capitol likely
also would have been targeted.
It’s unusual being in the news business. You know how
people always ask if you remember where you where when
you heard about 9/11? Or where you were when the Space
Shuttle Challenger exploded? Or where you were during
any other historic event?
Well, the answer for me is pretty much always the same
– in the newsroom.
I remember 9/11 quite well. We have a television in
the newsroom and it’s always streaming CNN. They threw
up the “Breaking News” graphic and started reporting
about a small plane striking the World Trade
Center.
Within minutes they had video from the scene and I
remember thinking that it looked like an awfully big
hole in the building to have been caused by a small
plane.
Within a few more minutes CNN was reporting that it
was, in fact, a jetliner that crashed into the
building.
I remember wondering how in the world that could
happen. Why wouldn’t the pilot avoid the building? Why
wouldn’t he aim his disabled plane out over the ocean?
As I was standing in front of the television, sort of
staring in disbelief, the second plane flew into the
the second tower. I remember instantly and chillingly
thinking to myself and turning to those gathered
around the television and saying, “Oh my God this is
not an accident.”
A half hour later CNN was reporting a bombing at the
Pentagon, which, of course, wasn’t a bombing at all
and a half hour after that they were reporting a plane
crash in Pennsylvania.
By then we all knew, without any official
confirmation, that the U.S. was under attack by
radical Islamic terrorists. I leapt to that conclusion
even as one of my staffers reminded me that was what
everybody thought when Timothy McVeigh blew up the
federal building in Oklahoma City. But I was not
unconvinced. I knew it was terrorists.
It was a cloudless September day. High sky. Low
humidity. It was absolutely gorgeous outside when I
left the building after deadline. I remember looking
up in the sky and noticing there were no condensation
trails. No evidence of air travel. No airplanes at
all.
It was truly surreal.
As I looked at the sky I remembered the horror of what
we saw on TV earlier. People opting for certain death
jumping from dizzying heights because it was
preferable to the inferno they faced inside the
building. The collapse of one tower after another. The
realization that there were so many people in those
buildings. The knowledge that as people were rushing
out of the building to safety, police officers and
firemen were rushing in to save even more.
I remember looking up at that calm, blue sky, stunned
by the jarring contrast between what I was looking at
and what I had seen earlier.
The burned-out, smoldering, twisted wreckage of
collapsed buildings and fire-gutted vehicles. The
anguished, stunned look on the faces of sooty,
wandering survivors.
We’d seen it before, in Lebanon or Iraq or
Afghanistan. But this was New York.
I remember wondering what would drive such lunacy? How
could anyone be filled with so much hatred for our
country they they would be capable of such
unimaginable cruelty?
Frankly, during those first couple of days, I thought
the death toll would be much higher because there
could have been up to 20,000 people in those buildings
at the time of the attack. How sad is it that I later
felt relieved to find out “only” 3,000 people lost
their lives that day.
It truly was a world-changing event. Looking back,
it’s easy to see just how world-changing it was. We
went to war over it. We are all a little less free
because of it. The world’s opinion of us has declined
because of our response to it. We enacted myriad new
laws and created a whole new government agency –
Homeland Security, hiring nearly 80,000 new government
security workers because of it.
Air travel has become more cumbersome and overall, I
think Americans are a lot more suspicious of certain
types of people than ever before.
It’s completely appropriate on this 10th anniversary
of such a monumental event that we should remember it.
Certainly it is appropriate to memorialize the fallen
and honor the heroes of that grim day.
And I think it’s important as we reflect on 9/11 to
remember that it’s really not about terrorists. It’s
about us.
*****
Update: Last week I wrote about a California company,
Solyndra LLC, that recently filed for bankruptcy after
getting a half-billion-dollar, fast-tracked federal
grant from the Obama administration.
The company’s CEO, George Kaiser, bundled between
$50,000 and $100,00 for the president’s 2008 election
campaign, gave $53,000 of his own money and made a
bunch of visits to the White House.
The bankruptcy came just two years after the approval
of the federal funds. The administration intended to
showcase Solyndra as an example of the success of its
stimulus program. Not so much.
Instead, 1,000 workers are out of work and the
taxpayers are out a half billion dollars.
The plot thickens. On Thursday, FBI agents executed
search warrants at the company’s headquarters,
refusing to comment on what they were looking for.
In addition, the House Energy and Commerce Committee
sent a letter last week to the White House seeking
information about the White House’s role in the loans
to Solyndra.
In the letter, committee members say they’ve learned
from a previous investigation that Department of
Energy officials, as well as officials from the Office
of Management and Budget, were aware of White House
interest in the Solyndra loan deal.
In addition, they said they were aware that Kaiser was
a bundler for President Obama’s campaign.
Stay tuned.
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