9-11 thoughts

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday.  I remember being at work, chatting on AIM with my friend Dre, when he said that two planes had hit the World Trade Center.

My first thought were that two biplanes were flying around the city and hit the towers.  I was thinking that the planes were destroyed, but it didn't even occur to me that the towers were damaged.

Then another post- a plane had also hit the Pentagon.  And that's when it sunk in- not an accident.  An attack. 

Someone at work found a tv and plugged it in, and we watched the first tower fall.  Heard that a fourth plane had crashed in Pennsylvania- people were wondering if we had shot down our own plane. 

I made some calls to my brothers.  The attacks had taken place in New York and Washington DC.  We lived in Cleveland, and my youngest brother and parents lived in St. Louis, so they were safe, right?

Only- my parents were visiting my dad's relatives- in Washington DC.  Suddenly the calls got a LOT more frantic- cell reception was shot. 

Some time later- an hour?  two?  My mom was finally able to call us.  They were in DC, but safe.  They couldn't drive out of the city, but were walking and were nowhere near the Pentagon when the plane crashed.

The rest of the day was a blur.  The second tower fell.  I'm still amazed that, for all of the damage done, only (only?) 2,800 people died.  That number could have easily been 10 times that.  In the original bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993, the plan was to knock one tower into the second, which would have killed many more.

One thing I remember was going to a bar after work, and seeing Congress- Republicans and Democrats- all standing outside, singing "God Bless America."  All I could think was that the shit had hit the fan- this was serious in a way that nothing had been for a long, long time.

It's a decade later.  A lot has happened since then.  Al Qaeda, the terrorist ground that executed 9/11, is still around but in tatters.  Osama Bin Laden is wormfood.  We've been partly good and partly lucky in that there hasn't been another attack on our soil since then. 

Are there lessons from 9-11?  There aren't that many truly evil people in the world- but anyone who thinks that killing thousands of innocent people is a good way to get your cause across qualifies.  We do what we can to protect ourselves, but every form of protection has a price.  In the end, we do what we can, and hope that it is enough.