"Where were you when..." A 9/11 Post

Every generation of Americans has an “I remember where I was when….” story. Each individual person’s memory is unique, but collectively, we all seem to remember the same event as a once in a lifetime memory maker. My parents’ generation has the assassination of JFK as their terror, and their parents remember Pearl Harbor.

Mine has 9-11.

I have a pretty bad memory. Things I remember I remember pretty accurately, but there are a lot of things I forget. September 11, 2001 plays back like a movie in my head whenever I want, yet I really have no story of interest.

I lived in Charlotte, NC and was at work. I worked for a brokerage house so we all had MSNBC on our computers at the beginning of the day. My family was split between Washington DC and New York, my brother-in-law being on his way to a job interview in one of the Twin Towers that morning.

I was on the phone with my sister, who also had the TV on, when the first plane hit. Being typical sheltered Americans, it never dawned on us that this was an attack; we both automatically assumed it was an accident. At this point my memory is blank until the next plane hit. This missing time was probably not memorable, just chit chat with my sister or some boring paperwork to finish for work.

Here is the interesting part for me; when that second plane hit, we both STILL assumed it was an accident. The idea that American soil could be defiled was so far removed from our minds that in the back of our heads we thought two identical accidents was more likely than an attack. It really did not occur to us and I remember both of us saying something like “Jesus, where the hell did they get these pilots”. We laugh at our naivety now.

As the first tower fell, just before I lost my phone connection to my sister (who was in Long Island) she said she felt the reverberation and her lights browned out. Then she was disconnected.

The rest of the morning was sheer panic to me. I didn’t know if my brother-in-law was in one of those buildings (eerily, he changed his mind about the job before he hit New York City and went home) and my father lived as close as you can to the Pentagon.

There were no usable phone lines and no planes in the skies over the US.

I ran into my boss’s office and explained to him that I had to go; everyone I loved was being attacked. He said no, I could not leave. I was in my car within 2 minutes. As I drove I didn’t really know where I would go or what I would do. I certainly couldn’t save them. Shaking violently, I drove home and calmed myself, keeping the TV on for days after that. Everyone I cared about was just fine and have their own stories now.

Every anniversary people swap stories and talk about the terrible loss of life on that day, but that is not how it affected me. Of course I cared about the ones in my life and like everyone else who just will not admit it, in only an abstract way I cared about the victims. I actually cared more about the first responders, the people still alive, who had to risk their lives trying to save others from that hell, and who now are literally dying from their heroism on that day.

In the subsequent days and months the media went wild with the story. It was like the news Santa had arrived. Movies were hastily made and America was soon America again…making a buck however possible. As I watched all this: the sadness, the fear of what this all meant, the national self pity, I began to get irritated.

We the people are lucky to have been born here, a nation so powerful, so influential, that we all sleep soundly at night, knowing that a burglar is probably our biggest thing to fear.

Well America, I have news for us. While we cry in our coffee once again about this event, countries like Ireland and Nigeria and Israel have terrorism as a way of life while we had a brief dance with tragedy. We are so self-centered that it took me a 10 minute google search to find anything on pre-9/11 terrorism outside of the US. We lost approximately 3,200 people that day, many more when you count the firefighters and other first responders who are still sick and dying from that day.

Even 15 years later we still have practically made it National Self Pity Day. I have had loved ones die and I do not revisit their death day like it is a wedding anniversary. By annually commemorating this tragedy, by not rebuilding buildings on that spot with a big “fuck you” sign on it, by making it a shrine, we give our power away. We let them have an emotional victory. We set ourselves up for more acts of terror when we cry while we let this school yard bully take our lunch money.

This martyrdom is a great disappointment to me. I am speaking collectively here. If you lost a loved one on that day then of course you and your family need to do whatever you need to do to cope and heal. What I am talking about is the ambulance-chasing aspect of it by people who had no connections to 9/11, and that is what this is. If you lost no one and you sit in front of your TV and watch footage, you are an electronic peeping tom.

By this time I suspect there are people on their way to my home with torches and pitchforks, coming to kill me, the monster. It gets worse folks.

Has anyone ever sat down and considered WHY this happened? Conspiracy theories aside, I would think that if men were angry enough to create an organization, train for, plan and carry this out, we must have done something incredibly offensive…yet during that time I only once discussed with someone the treasonous idea that we should sit down and think “Wow, we really made these people mad. What did we do and was it our mistake? Can we fix it if it is?” All I hear are battle cries.

Indeed, take a look at the wiki entry on reasons for the 9/11 attacks for many different theories, along with actual facts, as to why we were attacked…it boils down to our occupation of lands where we were not wanted, and sanctions which included food and medications, of which Bin Laden said, “the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known”.

In 1996, Bin Laden issued a fatwa calling for American troops to get out of Saudi Arabia. In the 1998 fatwa, Al-Qaeda wrote: "for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." And there is a lot more.

I certainly am not saying there is ANY justification for killing or terrorizing people, I am simply saying that if we had smoothed down out hackles and checked our ego that day, we might have at least been able to see their point of view, no matter how twisted. This would have been the first step in communication and perhaps, 15 years later, we would no longer have a growing threat of terrorism. I am not am optimist about our future with radical Islam. I think for both of us the time for communication, understanding and negotiations is long past. We missed the opportunity to be the “bigger person” and as a consequence we have become little, petty people, afraid of anyone who is not from a Judeo-Christian background. We have gone backwards in time as far as race relations goes, both for the brown skinned and, in a spill-over, the black skinned.

So what can we do? I do not have any answers for that question anymore. I think things could be different now if handled better 15 years ago, but there is too much water under the bridge and too much hate created and nurtured on both sides now.

However, we could begin by not commemorating the anniversary of 9/11 each year. I think it is probably a painful reminder to those directly affected by it and another reason for our enemies to see us as malleable, spoiled, ignorant Westerners (You will read why below).

The one subject we should remember has been all but forgotten. The men and women who spent countless hours saving lives, moving bodies and cleaning up after the attacks, who are now suffering and dying from exposure to toxins while they were busy being heroes. (and do not forget, the Americans that died that day were victims, tragic victims, but they were not heroes. The First Responders and the injured who reached out to help others, those were the heroes.)We need to demand our government give these people the care they deserve, provide for their families, thank them in a meaningful way for what they did for us.  Firefighters who worked at Ground Zero are 20 times more likely to die from cancer as those that did not work there. The World Trade Center Health Program stated last year that “over 21,000 people are getting treatment for conditions caused by the toxic and hazardous air following the terrorist attack, according to the program’s administrators.”

In September of 2014, three of the Ground Zero firefighters died of cancer on the same day.

Jon Stewart, formerly host of The Daily Show, has dedicated himself to helping these national treasures, and is responsible for The Zadroga Act, which extended the time limit on healthcare for 9/11 first responders. I believe it is shameful that a television satirist has to push congress to take care of our heroes.

Looking back 15 years ago, our world was a much different place. With every generations’ “I remember where I was when…” story comes the feeling some measure of innocence is lost. This feeling collectively compounds with every subsequent tragic event until it morphs into distrust and disillusionment.

9/11 stands alone because it solidified what were mere feelings before. My step daughter does not remember a time before 9/11.  To her, being frisked and probed and x-rayed at the airport is normal. Being constantly asked for identification for no apparent reason is routine to her generation, while my generation is outraged at the intrusion. We are supposed to be a free nation, one where its citizens are innocent unless proven otherwise, where a certain measure of privacy is expected. Because of 9/11 and the fear we have allowed to take over us, we have gone from government surveillance to marketers who know what you buy so they can customize their ads to your likes and buying habits. What is normal to the younger generation is an outrage to those of us who have memories prior to 2001. That subject alone could be an entire book so I will stop there.

I was raised in a world where there was privacy and freedom. 9/11 changed all that. To me, the most frightening thing about this event is that, where I say, “you may not have that info, that number, search that place or this person even though I have nothing to hide” the current gaggle of 20-30-somethings say “search anything and anywhere you want, I have nothing to hide”. The very idea that freedom and privacy are becoming a thing of the past because people will do anything if they are told it will make them safe, this is an abomination to me and proves we no longer are the land of the free and the home of the brave.