Skip to main content

 

Today is the anniversary of 9/11. 20 years. Wow how time flies. I am pretty sure that everyone remembers where they were when the towers came down. I will always remember watching the second tower coming down on live television. The whole world saw it and the most of the worlds felt for America. The horror that we were all seeing was just heartbreaking. 20 years ago the word terrorism took on a whole new meaning in America. It was something that happened elsewhere not in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We should have seen it coming but were too arrogant to think it that it couldn’t happen to us. Most people didn’t even know that Al Qaeda attempted to assassinate Clinton in Manila in 1998. The CIA also had reported to the Clinton administration that they were planning air attacks on the US. Why was the US asleep at the wheel on Sept. 11th 2001? Someone dropped the ball and history will record who.

I have seen a few historical moments in my lifetime. I was in elementary schools when Kennedy was shot. I was  a sophomore in High School when we walked on the moon. I remember Nixon resigning and the Berlin wall coming down. I will never forget the destruction that Timothy McVeigh brought to Oklahoma City. I was fixed to CNN when the bombs began to drop at the beginning of Desert Storm. To be able to watch a war starting live on television was just amazing. After everything that I had witness in my life I had never witnessed anything like what happened to the twin towers. Everyone knows where they were when the towers came down. As I watched the second tower come down during my lunch I was just in shock. The death and destruction that I was witnessing must have been what some witnessed during the bombings in World War II. America had never had to witness something like that before.

Al Qaeda had been hiding, plotting and training in Afghanistan. That was where there leader was holding up and bragging to the world what he had done to the great Satan, the United States. His reasoning was because of not anything that we had done. It was because of the support we were giving to groups and governments that he said were suppressing Islam. It was not our freedom that he hated it was how we used our power and wealth. That is why it had to be the World Trade Center. Innocent people died because he wanted to attack our money and the power that we exercised using around the world. The World Trade Center was a symbol of that power. They all came into the country legally and even trained here in America and we never took any precautions.

The nation rallied around our President similar to how they rallied around Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor. Right after the September 11th attack we had the support of pretty much the entire free world. Some will say we wanted revenge but others will say that we needed Justice. We needed to hold those people responsible accountable and we did. Along the way we made many mistakes and even got sidetracked little but that may be for another blog. Al Qaeda now is no longer much of a force but it took us just under ten years to find Osama Bin Laden who was not in Afghanistan but hiding in Pakistan right under the noses of the local authorities. In the end though we were a country that held the people responsible for 9/11 accountable. Will we ever have closure. I don’t know. There are still so many questions that have not been answered that it makes closure difficult.

On Jan 6th we were again attacked by terrorists but what was different. This time it was an attack on our freedom by domestic terrorists. I will never forget it unfolding in front of me on live television. People storming into our Capitol wanting to hang our Vice President. People wanting to hang the Speaker of the House. People wanting to install a non-elected person to the Presidency of the United States. These people were sent by the outgoing President of the United States Donald Trump. Like Osama Bin Laden he had attacked our democracy. Just like Osama Bin Laden we need accountability. We held Al Qaeda accountable and the country is safer for it. We must also hold Trump accountable. If we do not our democracy may crumble.

 

Comments

  1. Kim CarneySeptember 19, 2021 at 11:01 PM

    I was up and watching the news, getting ready for work. After watching the first plane hit the tower, I told my husband, wake up, something horrible is happening in New York. We both work for news organizations, I jumped in my car and quickly headed for work. So did he. But I told my 10 year-old son, remember this day. There will not be another like it, it will go down as one the the most tragic days in our history

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  There’s a simple way to judge a country: look at whose lives it protects, and whose lives it’s willing to forget. For years now, we’ve heard the phrase “All Lives Matter.” It sounds fair. It sounds equal. It sounds like common sense. But a country doesn’t reveal its values through slogans. It reveals them through actions, through the lives it defends, the lives it ignores, and the lives it quietly pushes out of sight. And lately, America has been doing a whole lot of looking away. When Black Americans said they were being killed during traffic stops and routine encounters, the response from many leaders wasn’t concern; it was irritation. Instead of saying, “Let’s fix the problem so fewer people die,” we heard “Blue Lives Matter,” “Stop resisting,” and “BLM is a terrorist group.” A man died in a chokehold on camera. We all saw, from the beginning to the end. It was like a modern-day lynching. Millions marched peacefully. The answer from those in power was “law and order,” and “...
Post a Comment
Read more
  On Saturday, I was looking at Facebook and a person I was friends with, in fact, someone I went to High School with, posted something I knew was wrong. The post claimed that four lawmakers in Colorado decided jail time shouldn’t be mandatory for people who committed sexual assault of children. She claimed they were pedophile protectors. I opened up Perplexity and asked about the situation, and this is the reply I got back: You’re referring to a recent controversy in Colorado over a proposed bill that would change sentencing rules for certain sex crimes. Here are the verified facts to clarify what’s actually happening: • In early 2026, the Colorado House Judiciary Committee held a vote on a sentencing reform bill that aimed to give judges more discretion in certain felony cases. • Some lawmakers voted against an amendment that would have made mandatory prison sentences apply to all sex crimes, including child sexual assault, preferring instead to let judges determine sentences...
4 comments
Read more
  Dove or hawk? Donald Trump ran for President promising to end “endless wars”, avoid new ones, and put American families first. He cast himself as an outsider who would bring peace – the only candidate who wouldn’t drag America into another conflict. The message worked because let's face it, after so many years in Iraq and Afghanistan, America was tired of war. As a country, we were all tired of War. The country wanted stability, not another generation of men and women sent into danger. But once in office, he governed very differently. He governed like a Hawk, quick to threaten, quick to escalate, and willing to use both bombs and tariffs as weapons. What was missing wasn’t just consistency. It was an honor: the sense of responsibility and restraint that should come with the power to risk other people's sons and daughters. This isn’t about ideology. It's about whether someone who promised peace, but repeatedly chooses confrontation, can still claim to be a “dove”. A core...
2 comments
Read more