September 11, 2001

Work was slow. It had been for months. So, I was reading. At a few minutes before 9:00 a.m, I considered turning on NPR to listen to the news, then the re-broadcast of Morning Edition.

I opted not to. I decided to go back to the book.

At about 10:00, I headed upstairs to meet up with the rest of the gang that would be heading down to the corner gas station for break. Once outdoors, someone asked if I'd heard about a plane flying into the World Trade Center. I said I hadn't, then I asked if it was a private plane. "No," I was told, "it was a commercial jet."

Apparently, he didn't know as much as a lot of other people did by that time. Anyone within earshot of a radio or within view of a television knew that four planes had been hijacked and used as weapons in an attack against the United States.

Returning to the building, we were told that a television was on in someone's office and we headed there to see what was going on. We immediately saw that one of the towers was missing, and that the second tower was billowing smoke. Footage of the second plane's impact were being replayed and replayed along with the gut-wrenching sight of the first tower's collapse.

I returned to my station and turned on NPR. By 10:30, the second column of metal, glass and humanity cascaded down, with dust and rubble and ash mushrooming into the crystal blue sky and through the canyons of Manhattan. I headed back to the television set upstairs to see if what I had just heard was really happening; as if having seen the video of the first crumbling high-rise needed further validation!

The following day, I wrote the following (please pardon any redundancies)...

9/12/2001

Yesterday, almost an hour after it occurred, I heard about the airplane attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. I had been reading The Red Tent most of the morning and for some reason had decided not to turn on my radio at 9AM for the replay of NPR's Morning Edition's second hour. I looked at the clock just a couple of minutes before 9:00 and had thought about it. "Nah," I thought. "I'll keep reading."

After hearing the news, I was also told that there was a TV on in one of the vacant offices. As I came into the room I was told that one of the towers had just fallen. I could hardly imagine the number of people who were instantly, suddenly dead. The thought that came to me -- and which I spoke out loud -- was, "and to imagine that someone is celebrating this!"

I turned and walked out.

Without a shred of real evidence, I immediately came to the conclusion that Osama bin Laden was the instigator of all this, but in thinking more and more about it as the day wore on, I had become less and less concerned with who was responsible for these catastrophic, heinous events.

My attention turned to the whys of the event. I thought about all the proclamations of our government officials of how this was such a horrific attack on innocent people... then I thought about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I thought about how we pay lip service to peace in the Middle East and around the world, then do nothing about it when we have the chance. I thought about all the people dead and dying on the streets and rubble of New York -- that they were victims of our foreign policy; victims of our corporate greed.

I thought about our lame-brained president uttering his by-the-book castigation of the villains of this crime: "Cowards" he called them; then I thought about how much of a coward he is for not pursuing peace in the Middle East; for not having a spine when it comes to promoting environmental issues; for not being anywhere near concerned for the thousands of people that die every day in this country as a result (either directly or indirectly) of the policies of our corporate-run government.

I thought of all the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters who will never make it home or who are waiting at home for someone who will never return.

Last night, I watched "our president" quote from his Bible, from Psalms. I watched as our elected representatives -- instead of taking action towards affecting a real peace in this world -- sang "God Bless America" for the TV cameras.

I am appalled at our short-sightedness with regard to our planned or anticipated actions against those who devised this mass murder. Even friends I have spoken with agree with the "need" to extinguish those at the heart of the terrorism.

Perhaps I'm hopelessly pacifistic, but until we turn our attention to the reasons these terrorists have unleashed their hatred as they have, we will continuously, foolishly chase our tails.

From the moment our first retaliatory missile or bomb or bullet flies, we will continue to be perceived as scurrilous murderers by those who already see us, the United States, as the devil incarnate.

The only way to combat the hatred is to show we are not worthy of it. I have no doubt that our violent knee-jerk reaction will breed more sensless murders. The children of these terrorists will murder our children -- if our children live through Bush's war.