9/11 — May We Never Forget

The World Trade Cen­ter as it used to be.

I think in the past few years, most Amer­i­cans have for­got­ten what hap­pened to this Coun­try and our Coun­try­men on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.  I — for one — have not.  I never will.  I’ll never for­get the feel­ing of being told, “A plane just flew into the World Trade Cen­ter!”  At first, I thought they were telling a bad joke…Then I real­ized they were seri­ous.  I imme­di­ately thought, as prob­a­bly most Amer­i­cans did, that it was just an acci­dent.  But when some­one in our office yelled, “Another plane just flew into the Trade Cen­ter!”  I — prob­a­bly like you did — real­ized it was a hor­ri­ble attack on our country.

I tried my best to work, to get my mind off of what happened…You see, I had just started in June at the com­pany I was work­ing for.  I wanted to show every­one that I was a hard worker, that I could do my job with­out being dis­tracted by idle con­ver­sa­tion.  But when some­one told me they had the TV in an adja­cent office on, I ran to it.  I had to see for my own eyes what was happening.

Big mis­take.  About 15 of us stood in that office and watched both of the Twin Tow­ers fall.  It was hor­rific.  I was think­ing, “This is just a bad, bad movie…It’s not real.  It can’t be real…”  But it was…way too real.

The Pen­ta­gon.

For the next sev­eral days the only thing I could feel was fear and sad­ness.  Every other emo­tion was lost to me.  I felt sad­ness for those who lost their loved ones.  Sad­ness for those who wit­nessed it first­hand, who had to watch as those they loved — their fam­ily, their friends — chose to jump out of win­dows instead of burn­ing alive or being trapped in a crum­bling build­ing.  Then, I real­ized I couldn’t feel fear.  I would not feel fear.  That’s what the ter­ror­ists want us to feel.   They want us to trem­ble at the name of “Allah” and their extrem­ist views.  But guess what?  Amer­ica won’t trem­ble.  We won’t give in.  We rill rise from this tragedy stronger, bet­ter, more deter­mined than we were before.  I just wanted to get Osama bin Laden.  I wanted to kill him with my own bare hands.

Flight 93 Memo­r­ial — Tower of Voices

I still do.  I want to get him.  And I know we will — even­tu­ally.  That’s why we need to keep our resolve; keep fight­ing extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism where it is grown — in the Mid­dle East.  In the mosques that teach hatred for Amer­ica, for Chris­tians, for Jews.  We need to stamp them out before they stamp us out.  It’s called self-preservation.  It’s called courage.  It’s called America’s Will.

Related Posts:

• How will we win?
• Never For­get — A Hero’s Pro­file: Welles Crowther
• Word of the Day v. 2.0: Travesty
• Ter­ror­ist Kills U.S. Sol­dier, wounds another
• Flash­back: Sep­tem­ber 10, 2001