I still remember

[RainDog]

I remember September 11, 2001.

My son was stalling for the inevitable: clothes, shoes, school. Sixth grade ennui.

My sister called and told me to turn on the television. A plane had hit the World Trade Center. My first thought: who could do that? She knew it wasn't a "really bad pilot" even though she's from Texas.

As I watched, another plane flew into another tower. Did I see it happen? Or do I now think I saw it happen, after viewing that same image over and over on that day...and now on so many days of two more years.

The two towers were burning. The first tower seemed to have a gash which curved, like a cynical smile, across floors, lives, across decades.

My son was a baby when I heard the attack on Iraq had begun a decade before. I stayed up all night and watched the green night vision flash of bombs light up minarets and wondered if we would destroy ourselves and the rest of the world, along with Baghdad. This year it's deja war voodoo all over again.

I was a second-grader in Miss Eileen Fann's class when she rolled the television away from the back wall and turned it on. She started to cry as the black and white images flickered across the screen. I was filled with wonder that my teacher could cry. She was crying because our President had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. At 12:29p.m., I later learned, Nellie Connally quipped to President Kennedy, "You sure can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr. President."

In another minute he was dead.

Whenever this country faces a horrific event, I remember that first moment, for me, in Miss Eileen Fann's class.

Unlike Miss Eileen Fann, I didn't cry on September 11, 2001. I am more jaded than she was. I am a child of John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, and Medgar Evans. I wasn't allowed to date when four dead were in Ohio and soldiers were cutting us down. They weren't cutting me down. But they were. I got an education at Kent State before I could drive.

And then the second tower fell. It fell. The tower fell, and everyone in that tower was not going to come down the stairwells to safety. Was it inevitable that the twin towers would be destroyed together, as they were built? Did I wait for the second tower to fall?

I never once thought of George Bush as those towers were falling.

I thought of the waiters and chefs and firefighters and secretaries and couriers and brokers and managers. Who was holding hands as they jumped? How many merged with the air and the fluttering papers and ashes and fire in the terrible, terrible knowledge of death?

September 11 was about the people in my country who, like people around the world, become the casualties of arrogance and hatred.

I knew Bush would use them, like cannon fodder, to make himself powerful in an unholy communion of war lords drunk on oil.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. All I can say is WHOA and hello

that was moving and powerful. You communicated.

[shatoga]

2. memories

November 22, 1963
I was in school when the principal announced over the loudspeaker.
"The President has been shot."

Later when he was prounced dead,
Rightwinger neighbors threw their hats into the air and whooped for joy.

I was in a Republican family, but he was our President and we mourned.
Johnson picked up the reins and government continued.


September 11, 2001,
I woke up early with a feeling of foreboding.

Turning on the morning news, I set up VCRs to tape the Education speech Bush was to deliver at a local school.

I also felt an overwhelmning need to tape the major networks.


When the 2nd plane hit, I called up an old buddy who was a missile launch technician during the Cuban Missile crisis.

"Turn on the news!"
We discussed events,
"What's Bush doing?" he asked.
"I'm watching him live. he is sitting there on stage doing nothing."

News of a 3rd air crash into the Pentagon was reported.
"Where's the air cover?" he screamed into the phone.
"For over an hour, there is none."
"My God it's Northwoods!" he wailed.

My life also was changed that day.

I totally lost faith in my government.

[RainDog]

5. that's amazing

I'd never even heard of Operation Northwoods until someone told me about the ABC report and the former NSA guy's book.

I would have to say that faith in my govt was severely wounded during the election mess and the resulting Supreme Court actions. After more information became available, I got more and more outraged and realized we had had a soft coup.

I had no thoughts that Bush or any of his gang could have had anything to do with 9-11 until much later. I no longer think that's an impossible idea.

I suppose I'm getting another education.

[oldshoe]

3. Thursday, Sept 11, 2003

I have been spending most my Internet time on Conservative websites trying, just trying, to present things calmly, logically, civilly.

If you have been there, you know this isn't easy.

One of the guys I have most trouble with, a truly mean-spirited guy with an unreasoning hatred, turns out lost a brother in the WTC. As I too have lost a brother 25 years ago and a son 16 years ago, part of me has to go out to the guy. I am not going to be on his case today or for a week and just let him have his time in his own way. I’m sure he misses his brother like I do mine, so I owe him that.

I do not know if I can ever approach him brother to brother and talk about loss, sorrow and letting go without our record of Liberal vs Conservative interfering. I suspect he, with the most recent pain, is going to have a hard time. He will certainly resent me trying, and I am going to have to respect that too.

Hatred took away his brother, but hatred will also gradually take him away from those he loves and who love him. Hatred, the cousin of fear, is one of those "only thing we have to fear". Can he or even I ever forgive the perpetrators of 9/11? I doubt it. Nor do I think we can. I forgive a guy who drops a wrench of a scaffold in an accident, but cold-blooded murder is another matter.

But even so, hatred of these villains must be conquered, even while we dedicate ourselves to justice. The sad state of cyclical violence in Israel/Palestine shows the emptiness of hatred and vengeance. It is easy as an outsider to say this. Less easy when your own loved ones have been lost.

Sometime next week, I am going to try to approach my Limbaughian countryman using that site’s private e-mail service and see if we can talk out the pain. I do not know if I can say anything that he will listen to. I fear I will say the wrong thing.

A lot of Conservatives are in pain, and it's not hard to see where some of it is coming from. A lot of Liberals know pain too. There ought to be away through it together.

I've lit candles today for his brother, my brother, my son and one more for all who died on 9/11.

According to an NPR report the other day, many Saudis, after their own terror blast a few months ago, are finally beginning to examine the wisdom of Wahhabism, so maybe something good may eventually come out of this tragedy.

We can only chip away at the hate with love.

Give a conservative a break today, and approach them tomorrow with compassion. Our cause requires it, if it is to have any meaning at all.

[RainDog]

7. welcome to DU, old shoe

I would have to agree that now is not the time for hard talk with those who lost people they love on that day.

peace would be the greatest memorial to those people, and people around the world, but revenge is a powerful ache.

there are people who hate America, but I don't think we've dealt with that issue in the right way, and Iraq was a mistake of monumental proportions, to me.

I don't know why we continue to fail to insure greater safety at home while we incite terrorists to kill even more Americans...even if they're soldiers.

As long as Bush is in office, I don't have much hope for anything other than more chaos for all of us, Americans and the rest of the world.

[Paschall]

4. Very nice post, RainDog

Very nice, indeed. :thumbsup:

[RainDog]

6. thanks Paschall and NSMA

today I don't think I'll watch any t.v.