Sept. 11
My wife and I have been married for 14 years today. On Sept. 10, 2001, because back then I had Sundays and Mondays off, we went out to dinner on the deck at Siro’s at Marina Bay, and watched a beautiful sunset over Dorchester. That was the last night things were normal. In the morning before work, I was mowing the strip in front of the stone wall that I had forgotten to get the day before, when my wife came out to tell me a plane had hit a skyscraper in New York. She was upset about it. I was only moderately interested. That would be a wire story in the next day’s paper. It wouldn’t have much bearing on the course of my day. I thought she meant a small plane. An accident. I kept mowing. Â
Our five-year-old son had been flipping through the channels to watch Sesame Street or something like that before getting ready for afternoon kindergarten. He was the one who saw it and told his mom, because he could tell that was something very wrong.
I finished mowing and came in. My wife told me a second plane had hit the other World Trade Center tower. I called the boss, told him I was on my way in. I had just finished gassing up when I heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon, and reports of a plane down in a field in Pennsylvania. At that point it was clear this was beyond terrorism. It was a major attack on the mainland United States, and we were at war. It was a very strange feeling, under a brilliant September sky, not at all like today’s dreary overcast. I was very much ready for war, had spent time in several conflict zones in the past few years. I immediately understood this meant I would be going back, somewhere, sooner or later, and that a lot of people I knew would be going, too.
On the drive into Boston, I watched the planes empty out of the sky, each one looking ominous as it descended across the Southeast Expressway to Logan International Airport, where two of the hijacked flights had originated. I don’t recall, that early, if that fact had emerged yet. Shortly after I got in, on the TV at the photo desk, I watched the first tower collapse. One of the photogs said, “Matt West’s dad is in there.” Matt is one of our photographers. He didn’t come in that day. His dad was on the 104th floor at Cantor Fitzgerald, and in phone calls to his son used to laugh describing how close the planes seemed to be out his window, taking off and landing. They never found a trace of Peter West.
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about whether things are normal again, if anyone really cares, remembers like they said they would. Things started approaching normal for me maybe a little over a year ago, when the constant adrenaline rushes, images of death, and visceral memories of combat assaults subsided enough that I could go a day and not find myself thrown back into it, repeatedly. That was from Iraq. But that and Sept. 11 have never gone back to anything like normal.  The world did change. You don’t get attacked, experience war as we did that day on our own ground and overseas since, and go back to normal. Not when the work remains unfinished. And unless you are the most shallow of creatures, that will always be with you.  The fight today, waged by hundreds of thousands of our soldiers overseas, supported by millions here and affecting millions upon millions around the world, is to let it be normal for others someday.
It’s overcast today, which is appropriate for my mood. Yesterday, Gen. Petraeus prevailed in Congress. He stood his ground and threw them a bone. The anti-war faction made its speeches, denying and disputing everything he said before he said it, calling for shameless retreat and abandonment to no end. But it seems clear they are no more likely to manage that today than they were last month, or any time in the previous 9 months.Â
But I’m in one of those moods where, prevailing over such absurdity … American leadership that wants to surrender shamefully with no thought to consequences … is no cause for celebration. It may be uglier work than war to have to deal with cowardice and treachery. “May be,” because the cowardice and treachery have thus far been thwarted, stifled, pushed off, and the people who have embraced them are revealing themselves to be shallow whores who lack conviction or principle … too gutless even to be true to the shameful cause they profess. Beneath consideration, a nuisance to be dealt with. ”May be,” because they would throw away and dishonor the sacrifices of the dead and the maimed who constitute the real tragedy and ugliness of war, and condemn untold numbers to a terrible fate.Â
Six years in, I’m tired and feeling a little down. That happens in war, and you have to pick yourself up and keep going. Our country looks almost like normal most days, though for many of us, it will never be as it was, and the fight is far from over. It’s as normal as it’s going to get for me now, war the new normal. But I am out of combat for now. Others who are in it have all of this and more to pick themselves up from, and keep going. I hope they know some of us want it to be worth it.  Â
Anyway, that’s how it all started for me and where, in brief, it has led. Your recollections and thoughts about today welcome in comments. Â
Related links:
Debra Burlingame, NYDN. 9/11 pilot’s sister: Terror Attacks were an Act of War, Not Simply a Tragedy to be Mourned.
What Instapundit was posting that day.
Lorie Byrd at Wizbang rounds up best of 9/11 commentary over the years.
Sister Toldjah: Peter Edward Mardikian, Gone Too Soon, and other remembrances.
Blue Star Chronicles, In Memory of Lt. Michael Warchola.
Atlas Shrugs with a tribute vid.
Villainous Company with verse.
Malkin, Remembrance and Resistance, includes Zogby poll that at least 61 percent think of the attacks weekly. 16 percent have visited Ground Zero.
Blair wants to know why some bastards were so smug that day.
Judith Miller, UK Telegraph: Why New York hasn’t been Attacked Again.
Hotair re Osama anniversary video excerpt: Degenerate praised by Bigger Degenerate
Neoneocon with a learning moment: Osama Gives a History Lesson, and some thots.
Roger L. Simon at PJM: World War IV with the Wrong Rosie.
PJM fashionista The Manolo: Osama bin Metrosexual.
Small Wars Journal: Prepare for Tet.
Walid Phares, FrontPageMag: Iran’s Plan for Iraq
Powerline: liveblog thread for Petraeus’Â Congressional testimony today. Commenter: “So whose idea was it to have Petraeus testify before the Senate on 9/11?”
I dunno. Whose idea was it to have the 9/11 familis that rejected the government settlement be forced to argue motions in court today? Judge’s convenience?
Michael Hirsh, Newsweek: The General as Salesman … upcoming Pentagon report will “differ substantially.”
Peter Feaver op-ed, Boston Globe: MoveOn’s McCarthy Moment.
RiehlWorldView: NYT Ad Contradicts NYT Reporting.
NYT editorial: Empty Calories
WaPo analysis: The General’s Long View Could Cut Withdrawal Debate Short
E.J. Dionne: The Surge Has Succeeded … in Washington.
George Will: By Bush’s Own Standard, Surge Has Failed.
Captains Quarters re Will, “Curious George.” Re 9/11 conspiracy theorists, “Bad News for the Truthers.”
Argghhh!!! deconstructs some Petraeus reax.
Hyscience: Congress Goes Nuts over Congresswoman’s Attack on “Coward” Murtha. Notes USMC Vietnam combat vet Richard, “Truth hurts.”
Gateway: American Moonbat Kills Dutch Student with Ax over Iraq War
Wakeup America via Surber (sorry, WUA always stalls my crappy laptop, dunno why), His Name is Forest Langley. 100 percent disabled vet plans march on Washington:.
I am sick and tired of the Senators and Congressmen who want to pull our troops out of Iraq because they are afraid that they might lose an election. Our Soldiers Blood cries from the ground finish what you politicians voted for.
And I think we’ll end there.
Topics: GWOT
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:55 am on Tuesday, September 11, 2007
22 Responses to “Sept. 11”
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September 11th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Had a very similar experience - casually dismissive at first.
Now I realize that the event was just a dramatic symptom of a chronic disease infecting the world. It will not be over in our lifetime, so we must get used to it.
September 11th, 2007 at 9:56 am
9/11 victim Peter Edward Mardikian: Gone too soon (REPOSTING)
As part of DC Roe’s Project 2,996 from last year, I wrote this post in honor and tribute to murdered 9-11 victim Peter Edward Mardikian, and wanted to repost it today, the 6 year anniversary of 9-11. The links in the posts were valid, workable…
September 11th, 2007 at 10:14 am
[...] Jules Crittenden: “Six years in, I’m tired and feeling a little down. That happens in war, and you have to pick yourself up and keep going.” [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 10:56 am
[...] | BBC | Black Five | CNN | Fox News | Jihad Watch | Jules Crittenden | Laughing Wolf 1 & 2 | The Mudville Gazette 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 | Pajamas Media | The [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Today is the first Sept. 11 in recent memory that has been cloudy here in New England. Until now, each year since 2001 the weather has been as beautiful as it was on that terrible day. This year is different. Somehow the metaphor fits.
On September 11, 2001 I heard about the first plane on the radio, and assumed, as you did, that it was a small plane, an accident. We switched on the TV and were listening to an account of what had happened when the second plane hit. Then we knew it was no accident, and a strange feeling descended.
My husband decided to keep an appointment he had, but when he heard on the radio that the Pentagon had been hit, he turned around and came home. A colleague I had an appointment with called to see if I was working. No, I said, I don’t think I’ll be working for a few days.
We sat in front of the television and cried, in shock, for hours. We kept saying “nothing will ever be the same again.” What strikes me most in retrospect is how incredibly little has changed. That’s what is truly shocking to me. The extent of the denial. And so your post here (and your blog) is most welcome.
Humans are very good at denial. That’s one of the really creepy things I learned when my friends died. There’s a very, very strong human urge to pretend that things are just fine, no matter how fine they are not. When the third friend was dying, I finally started to learn this lesson. I was able to dwell with her, some, in the truth of her situation. That’s what people need the most, when things are terrible, the freedom to not be expected to cover up the pain. It hurts to see the truth, but it heals to tell it and experience it.
In November of 2001 I was at Wilson Farms (a nice produce mart in the Boston area, like an overgrown farm stand) and an older guy was asking everyone in sight about potatoes. He kept asking “what kind of pototoes are best for mashing?” but no one seemed to have a definitive answer for him. He asked the produce guy, who brushed him off with annoyance; “all-purpose!” he said. As if everyone should already know about potatoes. Not everyone does. I figured I could help this man by learning a bit more about the nature of his inquiry. Perhaps he was looking for a certain result.
So I took a moment to focus on the nature of his quest. I explained that many potatoes would work for mashing, but that we all have our preferences. What was his goal? He turned to me gratefully. As he answered me, his face began to crumble, and he said softly that he wanted to make them like his wife had made them. For Thanksgiving. Because she wouldn’t be there. She had been on one of the planes.
I felt so inadequate. I felt that we all should have stopped what we were doing, we should have gathered around and held him as he cried, we should have all invited him over to Thanksgiving dinner.
But all I did was slowly finish the conversation about the potatoes.
And you know what he said to me? I will never forget this. He said:
“Thank you for being nice to me.”
As if I had done something important by taking the time to make a human connection. As if it were unusual. Almost as if it were more than he deserved.
It didn’t feel like enough. But it mattered to him. I thought to myself then, and remind myself frequently: surely we can do at least this much.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Infidel!
Today, even Moqtada weeps. Must be sand in his eyes.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
In Memory of Lt Michael Warchola
Lt. Michael Warchola was a hero. I’m not just throwing the term ‘hero’ out there because that’s what people are supposed to say about someone who was killed in the horrors of one of the longest days in American history. He real…
September 11th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Web Reconnaissance for 09/11/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Today highlighting 9/11 posts, along with other must read info from around the net.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[...] leaked. Reposting it today because it reflects my memories of 9/11 pretty well. Curiously enough, Jules Crittenden is also remembering the day in detail. So is Vanderleun. And James Lileks, too. Why do so many of [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Never forget. Never forgive.
We’ve been at war since 1979 but it took the events of 6 years ago to wake a lot of people up to the fact. We’re still at war, with the same people, just on a different battlefield. The question
September 11th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Nothing makes me angrier than when I hear someone say 9/11 was six years ago and we should just get over it now. Like the rest of America, I sat in front of a TV screen and watched murder being done, and even more than that, I watched a brutal, cowardly attack on my country, my people, everything I hold dear. I can’t get over that, and I don’t want to. I wouldn’t dare. And those who think we should are blind fools who don’t realize what we’re up against.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
sarah rolph
That was a moving story, not one I’ll soon forget. Man’s humanity to man. You should write more. Do you have a blog?
September 11th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
My anger is directed at the idiots worldwide who might still trot out the chestnut of a “justification” for Muslim grievances
My anger is directed at the criminals and outcasts in the far reaches of Waziristan who, just yesterday, put out a call to …”every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues…”
The leaders of radical Islam in places like Pakistan and Gaza are always calling on the “young man” to do his duty of sacrifice while they themselves hide with bodyguards.
Why are the exploitation and hypocrisy implicit here so seldom mentioned ?
Finally, my anger is directed at America’s convoluted bureaucracies that were too distracted with infighting and professional jealousy to piece together the puzzle of many years’ time leading up to the attacks of September 11.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I was in my Manhattan office on September 11, 2001. I had just dropped my wife, pregnant with our twins, off at her office.
I was gathering some documents for a weekly status meeting when my administrative assistant came in and said, “My boyfriend said a plane just hit the World Trade Center.” I thought, “small plane,” then glanced over my shoulder at the bright sunshine and thought, “small plane, drunk pilot.”
As my meeting started, the people we were speaking with told us that a second plane had just hit the WTC. My co-worker and I stared at each other, then ended the call without saying much. I remember one of the participants from Minnesota saying, “You guys are in our prayers.”
Right after the second plane hit, you really couldn’t make a phone call in Manhattan. But as I walked through the hallways, hearing people crying and others incredulous, I kept hitting redial to my wife. My boss, Peg, stopped me and said, “Can you believe it’s happening?” Then the rumors started about more planes targeting the city.
Finally, I got through to Jackie. “Start walking to my office, and I’ll meet you. Come across 49th street.” I fled the building and started walking.
Everyone was walking with their eyes on the sky. The streets were starting to fill with panicked pedestrians. I started jogging across 49th street, scanning as I went…but the crowds got too thick. I eventually made it all the way to my wife’s office without finding her.
I ran back, and found her sitting outside my office. We went inside, to my floor, which had emptied of all the Manhattanites. Anyone living outside the city was stuck.
We sat in a conference room and watched TV. A security guard from my office sat there, hitting redial on his cell phone, trying to reach his two daughters who worked in the WTC. Eventually, he reached them: they had escaped.
When we heard (incorrectly) that they had opened the Lincoln Tunnel, we decided to make a run for it. We got in our car and started driving across 49th street. As we crossed each intersection, the streams of pedestrians moving north became thicker and thicker. The people ignored the lights, making it virtually impossible to cross. At one point, I nosed the car into the intersection, and had several people pound on the roof of my car in a moment as Jackie yelped and held her belly.
We got as far west as we could, and settled in to a diner, where we sat in utter silence with dozens of other people and ate pancakes. At 3:00, they opened the George Washington bridge, and we made it across. As we looked south, we both cried, seeing the smoke rising from lower Manhattan.
The next morning, I woke to a fighter jet buzzing my North Jersey home. Here, already, 40 miles from Ground Zero, you could smell IT. It wasn’t quite smoke, but something I had never smelled before. It would linger for days, weeks.
I don’t want to forget any of the sights, sounds or smells of that day.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Between 1990 - 1995 I was in Saudi Arabia, and over and over again heard the anti-West screaming coming from the mosque near where I worked.
When the first plane hit I thought it was an accident. When the second one hit I remarked to my wife that this was surely the work of Muslims.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Like so many others, I sat in front of my television, benumbed as I watched a second plane plow into the second of those magnificent buildings. There was no doubt that we were under attack. I listened as the rumors about other planes and attacks swirled in and out of the comments. Then the Pentagon. Then the buildings’ collapsing. Over and over, a short sentence kept
replaying in my mind. I wasn’t really paying any attention to it until I saw film of the Pentagon, where my Navy brother worked. In the still fear that gripped my insides, the words “Now we’ll see” finally became clear.
It took me a bit of thought to fill in what I meant by that. “Now we’ll see.”
After the short, feel-good Gulf War, when everyone was saying that Viet Nam was finally laid to rest, my brothers (both career Navy) and I talked about the obvious desperation of this sentiment. All we saw was that a battle had been fought, but the war had been postponed. No one among my military family thought that we’d seen the last of Iraq. Few of them thought the trauma of Viet Nam had been laid to rest, nor the lessons learned. We heard a lot of comments from the brass that concerned us–the most disturbing: exit strategy. We wondered at generals who were concerned about how to leave the field before the enemy had been engaged.
On that fateful Tuesday morning, as our world came to a halt and we sat in stunned silence, I knew on some level that we were going to be in a fight for the life of this country, and that the primary danger wasn’t from fanatics slamming planes into buildings. The danger comes from within, and what we would now see was how far down the road to destruction we had gone.
The first terrible words came from the usual suspects, like Susan Sontag and her fellow travelers. Within a week, while the buildings still smoldered and belched fire and brimstone, there were Americans who were testing the waters to see how much they could get away with. Turned out, they could get away with everything their anti-American hearts called for–with barely a peep spoken against them.
I realized then that we were further down that terrible road than I knew. More than the WTC and Pentagon were destroyed on that day. The attack ripped the facade off of every major institution this country depends on and displayed the rot hidden by the veneer of past glory and respect earned by others long dead. Our vaunted intelligence agencies, and the government, from the White House to the meanest bureaucracy. Our military. Our media. The entertainment industry. And source of all the rot, the universities and the philosophy responsible for disarming these institutions, along with a majority of Americans.
I am angered that everyone seems satisfied to consider this a long war. The only thing making it a long war is our own reticence to fight an all out war, making sure that those who started it and support it learn to despise even the thought of war. After six long years, and the death and maiming of the best of our young men and women, we’re not any closer to understanding what is wrong, and why, than we were at the beginning.
It breaks my heart.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
We could go in and kill them all and let God sort them out, but that doesn’t make sense if we’re trying to fix the problem properly. 1.2 billion people are a lot of people to kill and would require massive amounts of weapons systems to do the job. I doubt that we have the arsenal to do it. It will be a long war.
To keep the smoldering fire of dedication going is the goal, to eradicate the ones who subscribe to their particular perversion of the Abrahamic faiths is what we aim at, and to not corrupt our understanding of our God or our understanding of the laws that our faith engenders, is the discipline that we have to follow.
September 12th, 2007 at 1:59 am
I was on a construction site that day, and was no where near a TV. I got a call from my office telling me that a plane had hit one of the WTC towers. I responded, “What, a small one?” My co-worker didn’t know.
After a while, I got a call from another buddy, who told me to turn on my car radio. And that’s when I got the full story. I was stunned, I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t see any video until I got to my hotel room that night, and I was simply outraged. But until I saw it on TV, I didn’t believe it.
Funny thing was, we didn’t stop work that day. The construction crew was pi$$ed beyond belief, and I was with them, but there was no reason to stop, and every reason to keep on going. A few days later, the mobilizations began, and I volunteered for a tour with the command I was assigned to, and I left a month later. I stayed in the US, and helped develop force protection plans for military bases. They didn’t need middle aged light colonels for Afghanistan!
September 12th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I hear you, salty. You make some great points. It is indeed heartbreaking. On good days I think things are a little better than you describe. I wouldn’t make quite such a large generalization that “we’re not any closer to understanding what is wrong.” I think there are quite a few people who are quite a bit closer. And I think history shows that a very small number of people generally make a large difference. I think we need to find a way to keep hope alive and to be part of the solution. Maybe being angry helps you do that–you do seem to be angry about the right things!
MikeH, I think I agree with you. I am troubled by how many people seem to think it’s a bad thing that we’re working to kill as few innocent people as possible. I think it’s a good thing. Yes, it’s ironic and frustrating and infuriating and sometimes backfires. But I agree that it’s important to keep our values intact, such as reverence for life. In my view, that’s what we’re fighting for–to keep those values alive on earth. And by the way it’s nothing new for the U.S. military to be focused on killing as few people as possible. I worked for a military contractor in the area of command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I they called it; now it’s C41 and I can never remember what the new C is!). I was extremely impressed with our military, the people and the ideas and the heart. It really opened my eyes. The whole field of C3I is about using knowledge instead of weapons. We need both, but we have been working really hard to use the knowledge more and more and the weapons less and less. Yes, this is fraught with peril, yes, we may be taking it too far (not killing enough of the enemy) but the point remains that the military gets SO little credit for this ethical contribution to the world. We keep a lot of people alive, not just Americans. I find it maddening that the opposite impression is so prominent. As salty says, there is something very wrong when anti-Americanism is so popular in this country.
shoosh, thanks for the compliment! No, I don’t have a blog. I am too sporadic to be a blogger, I really admire people like Jules who crank out good copy every single day. But I do write for a living and you can learn about that at my website, http://www.sarahrolph.com.
September 13th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Sarah, C to the fourth, ‘Command, Control, Communications, and Catnaps.’ At least when I was in the Marine Corps that’s what we called it. I got out in ‘81 so it’s probably changed.
September 13th, 2007 at 4:51 am
I’m not going to go into what a “real war” would entail (I’ve spoken about this elsewhere several times), but simply say that it is an error to think that it would take killing on a mass scale. In our reverence for life, we encourage those who might not have joined the jihadists by appearing weak. While we aren’t doing the killing, we’ve allowed those we’ve encouraged to kill thousands of Iraqis (others may feel better about this, I don’t). Not only that, but we’ve prolonged the killing with our sensitive, PC, “just” war, with its perpetual “proportional” killing. All we’ve done is show just how weak willed we are. That is a much more dangerous situation than what we started with.
It is one thing to ask our forces to put their lives on the line to protect their own lives, the lives of their families, and their country. It is quite another to ask them to sacrifice themselves on the alter of Muslim sensibilities. Our own self-interest must come first. The lives of our people come first. No one has a right to ask another to die instead of those who have been complicit, if only in their non-action against their own tyranny, much less for those who hate us.
September 13th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Saltydog the pc ‘just’ war is out, you and I differ only on what I would consider a smart war. In order to prosecute an efficient and effective war we have to make sure that we don’t call down on ourselves unnecessary problems. As a Marine I had the occasion to watch, what I wound up calling, ‘aggravating a situation beyond the point of control’. In that scenario an individual comes down hard on a subordinate and gives him no ability to acknowledge understanding of his mistake or to back out of the problem. What started as a manageable situation progresses to an out of control situation. The ‘Bonus Riots’ in the aftermath of WWI where MacArthur fired on the veterans of the war comes to mind. They were ready to go home but weren’t given the choice by MacArthur. This can be superimposed on the action that we have going on today. There are folks who are not devout muslims and therefore have no dog in this fight. They’re only muslim because if they don’t put up a show they’ll be smacked as only that culture can smack. If they’re treated in the same manner as a ‘jihadi’ (mufsidun actually) they’ll join up with the bad guys as a matter of self protection. That’s all I’m saying. Not, we shouldn’t fight or we should catch and release or that we should be considerate of the religion. We need to go at the problem effectively.