The official blog of the Libertarian Party
September 11, 2007
9/11/01: Where were you?
For my generation the Sept. 11 terror attacks were the J.F.K. assassination of the baby boomer generation. I always heard people say they remembered exactly what they were doing when news came in from Dallas that the President had been assassinated, and they remembered it as if it were yesterday. The same can be said for all of us who hadn't grown up with a national tragedy. Not to gloss over the tragedy of the OKC bombing, or the Challenger exploding, but nothing I had experienced in my lifetime had the significance of what happened on Sept. 11.
I always like hearing about other people's stories of what they were doing on that day when the United States came to a silent hush. It's not that I enjoy them, or take pleasure out of it. It's just that hearing other people's experiences make 9/11 more real and keeps the tragedy of that day close to my heart. Much like how stories of the past are kept alive through the word of mouth, 9/11 will always be fresh in the American consciousness as long as people never forget the emotions of that day. And in the times when America seems ripped apart in political strife, it is good to remember how we all came together on that morning.
I don't remember much about that morning. I don't remember the temperature outside. I don't remember whether or not it was cloudy. But, it must have been close to 9:00 a.m. when someone knocked on the door of the English class I was in and said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center, and the building was on fire. We immediately turned on the TV to watch what was happening. The first image we saw was a wide shot of the Twin Towers, with the north tower smoking.
My first thought was: 'How could this happen? Did a pilot just get blinded by the sun and not see the building?' My class and I discussed in hushed tones what might be the cause of the plane hitting the building. I believe the news floated around the ideas of terrorism, but few of us in the room, being so young, really remembered the first WTC attack in the 90s, or really knew whom Osama bin Laden was.
It wasn't until 9:03 a.m. when the second plane appeared on the TV screen on a direct course towards the towers. I thought: 'What is he doing?! Does he not see the buildings?!' Then there was fire on the screen, gasps from my peers, and finally dead silence across the room. We talked a little about what was going on, though I don't remember much of what was said. My mind was in a different place: a place where events like this took a heavy load of concentration to rationalize and accept. A place I'd never get to return to again.
At 9:30 a.m., Bush went on television to confirm the suspicions we all had in our minds. America was under attack.
We ended up turning off the TV and went back to work, or at least what we could do with our minds heavy from what we had just seen. Soon after, we abandoned work and turned back on the TV. Reports started floating in at 9:45 a.m. or so that the National Mall was on fire. Nobody really knew the cause at the time, or whether or not it was related to the attack in NYC. Later it would turn out that it was not the National Mall, but the Pentagon that had been struck by a plane.
At 10:00 a.m., after shock had fully set in, we shuffled down to the commons area for break, where my friends and I all discussed what we had heard and what we thought. I didn't have much to say. My head was spinning, and I didn't feel much like talking. I didn't feel like much of anything. I just felt numb. Numb and heavy. Later I would find out that as I walked down the stairwell for break, the south tower of the World Trade Center was collapsing. Other people walking down other stairwells in another building wouldn't make it to the bottom floor.
At 10:15 a.m., I walked through the door of my next class. As I was walking to the room, I had heard another student jokingly say: "The south tower of the WTC collapses, in other news, Dunkin' Doughnuts stock goes down...." I immediately wanted to choke him, and ask him how he could act in such a way despite what was going on. But quickly that sentiment waned as a new one took over: 'What did he mean the building collapsed?'
When I walked into class, the television was already on, and a few students were clustered by it. I looked at the screen, and only saw one tower standing. I thought: 'Where is the other one?! Can I just not see it from the angle? It has to be there.' It wasn't. A few seconds later, the anchor restated the South Tower had fallen, then cut to a picture of it crumbling away.
We continued to watch for a while, and we all saw a live feed of the second tower falling. You can't really explain a sight like that, even watching it from the comfort of a living room by way of the television. But what did it matter? Words were sort of in short supply that morning.
We turned off the TV only a little later, and got back to work. I didn't see a TV for the rest of the day. When I got home, I turned on the news and watched for a few hours, then went to bed.
On Sept. 12, I would wake up in a new world.
Later I would reflect on how naive I was, because from then on out I would never look at the world in the same way as I once did. You see, that day, my generation lost our innocence, and was stripped of the naivete we enjoyed as children who had grown up without a national tragedy of this magnitude. It changed how we looked at the world. We saw that every action has a consequence, and that not even an ocean could protect us from the evil of men.
Even writing this now takes me back to the way I felt when I watched America stand still, and I think this is a good thing. We must never forget the sacrifices of those who walked into danger to save the lives of others. And we must never forget the lives of those innocent Americans who perished. Their lives are a testament to the liberty we enjoy, and how badly our enemies would like to see it destroyed.
The emotions of that day remind us that we are not alone in this world, and that liberty comes at a cost. Given this, we must never sacrifice this liberty for any person, or any ideal. We live in a society where freedom and security coexist, and are not mutually exclusive principles. The day we sacrifice one for the other is the day all of the 2,974 lives taken on Sept. 11 will be without consequence.
If Sept. 11, 2001 taught us anything, let it be that liberty is at the foundation of this country, and that while terror attacks may knock down buildings and break our hearts, it will never destroy the bedrock principles of the United States.
I'd like to leave you with this cartoon I ran across today. I'm not sure why it hit me like it did, maybe because the emotions it evokes are the ones that I felt as I watched the second tower collapse, or maybe it just shows how the world can change in a matter of minutes. But I like it:
Posted by Andrew Davis at September 11, 2007 01:22 PM
Reader Comments:
I was at work. My ex-wife was away on business and I could not reach her. My parents were freaking out because I live near DC and they could not reach me. I think that day single-handedly changed my world view forever. I became much more obsessed with my country, my liberty, and my safety. It took a war in Iraq under the guise of national security and over 3,000 American troops dead to push me out of the Republican Party and into the LP. I wonder if I would have jumped ship had 9/11 not happened.
I was working in my last job before jumping ship and becoming self-employed. I worked at a mid-size Connecticut-based insurance company in the IT dept. Because we were in IT, we were able to feed CNN right to our desktops. Everyone was watching within 5 minutes after Flight 11 became the first to hit the towers. When the second plane hit the other tower, my first verbal reaction was, "That's terrorism."
My biggest memory came on 9/12, one day later. A small group of us had been meeting to discuss the possibility of trying to open a Sudbury-model school in our area. (For those who don't know, Sudbury is a very libertarian-friendly philosophy of education where kids control their entire school day.) We were all devastated by the previous day's events, as was everyone else. But after sharing personal stories and feelings for awhile, we decided to dedicate ourselves to doing whatever it took to open this school, as our way of fighting back against the attack on America's liberty.
On September 11, 2002, we successfully opened Mountain Laurel Sudbury School in New Britain, CT, exactly one year to the day after 9/11. The school is still running today, six years later.
it still gives me chills.
i was headed from my apartment on W 88th in Manhattan up to Columbia at 116th and Broadway. I was a Columbia Business School student at the time. I entered the lobby of the building and everyone was huddled around the TV's watching the first tower burn in disbelief. Then, as we were watching, the second plane hit the second tower and nobody knew what to do or say. A full lobby of people with jaws on the floor. I attempted to attend a class but the it was so disrupted by cell phones ringing with people's family's checking on them and people checking on friends that it wasn't much of a class at all. I went to the subway after class which I found to be closed and so i started heading in the direction of home hoping to catch a bus. There was nobody on the roads at all. All I heard was the sound of sirens in the distance. I would up walking all the way home. An hour later a roommate came home. An hour after that my other roommate came home as well. The three of us sat there and watched CNN for about 12 hours straight with the window's shut to keep the smoke and smell out. Months later I went down there with my then girlfriend, now wife. Waiting in line we picked off the names of all of the college friends of ours that were lost that day. Having been in finance prior to school I used to speak to several people in those towers every day. I still have some of the old Cator Fitz telephone numbers in my address book. I haven't been able to delete them.
I was at work. A communications specialist working in USSTRATCOM at Offutt AFB, NE. I had just gone over the one year mark in the Air Force a couple of months before. One of the guys who had the day off actually called us and told us to turn on the TV and we just barely saw the second tower get hit. Later, after the Pentagon had confirmed that they were hit, we started thinking about what could be next. We weren't too scared for ourselves, the "bunker" that we worked in wouldn't have had much of a problem with a plane or with anything else. We mostly tried getting in touch with our wives who lived on the base outside and tried to get them to leave, as if they had some place "safer" to go. It sounds crazy and paranoid now, that an air force base in the middle of nowhere could be a target, but everything that happened on 9/11 was crazy, and we didn't know how bad things were going to get before they stopped. The President showed up later on, one of the last stops on his "field trip" that day. By then there wasn't anything left anyone could do to surprise me.
I was in 2nd period in high school when the towers got destroyed by the jet liners. My reaction was "Holy crap, this is serious". If you want my little note on the 9-11 anneversary, search my name on Facebook.
I was sitting in a Landstuhl Regional Medical Center waiting room in Rammstein, Germany waiting while my wife was getting an MRI. I was a part of the crowd around the television in the waiting room watching what we all thought had to be a movie preview or something. Nobody could bring themselves to believe that what we were seeing was real. When my wife came out she was still groggy from being sedated and as we watched it she came out of the sedated state she was in very quickly and went into shock.
When we left the hospital and headed home to Heidelberg I was amazed at how quickly the Army in Germany mobilized security. Even as the event was still happening things were instantly locked down and we almost were not able to get back to our house. I was not in uniform and the guards were still trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing. Up until this point the gates had mostly been manned by german contractors but now the MP's were out in force.
It was truly a testament to those MP's training how quickly they were able to mobilize and react. I think I sat up all night that night watching the limited amount of news I could find trying to figure out what exactly had happened...
I was in 8th grade at the time of the attacks. I remember everything about that day. It was a cloudy rainy and dreary day. As I walked to my second class I noticed several people talking about a plane crashing or something. Making my way into class, I noticed the tv was on with the words "BREAKING NEWS" across the bottom. There was a wide shot of the New York City skyline and the twin towers standing there, one of them smoking. My teacher stated "A plane just hit one of the world trade centers". We all sat there, too young to really realize exactly what was going on. A few minutes went by only for us to suddenly see a plane come into view, dissappear behind the towers, and a huge ball of flames shoot from the other side of the second building. It was crazy. By now we knew something had to be wrong. Watching both of the towers collapse, my teacher freaked out. She began crying. Everyone knew now this was a huge event in the history of our country. We were under attack.
My mom was working in New Jersey for a few days and was supposed to be going into the city to do a little sight-seeing before she flew out in the afternoon. I hoped with all of my heart that she wasn't near that area. It turned out that she was held up and wasn't into the city when all of this happened.
September 11, 2001 will always be a day that everyone, old enough to remember, will remember. "We will never forget"
I remeber hearing about the first plane crashing into one of the towers on the radio while I was driving to work. At the time they were reporting it as an accident and I didn't really think much about it. I used to be an auto mechanic and at that time I was working at a small independent auto repair shop in Mesquite, Texas. I remeber I was working on a car and another mechanic was watching the event on tv in the break room and he came out of the break room and told everyone to come and see the plane that had just crashed into the World Trade Center. Myself, the 2 other mechanics, the office manager, a porter, and our boss gathered around the tv in the break room. While we were watching the second plane appeared on the screen and flew into the other building. We couldn't believe it. I remeber being in shock, like everyone else for quite sometime after that.
Where we were at the time of the WTC attacks is not important. Neither do I remember what I was doing the day JFK was assassinated. At least, the LP isn't using this anniversary to say America's imperialism, or worse, actual complicity, was responsible for 9/11. Should we be grateful for small sanities?
Yet, "9/11 truthers" are claiming 9/11 was an inside job. Much easier to blame Bush, or Cheney, whom we know will someday leave office, than some foreign ideology that cannot be dislodged democratically or easily defeated militarily. Like blaming the father we know, rather than the stranger we do not.
Most Americans do not know, but western civilization has been at war with Islam since Mohammed murdered, raided, and raped his way to conquest of the Arabian peninsula. The list of formerly Christian or pagan lands, now Muslim, is large. How many today know that Istanbul was once Byzantium?
A much more significant date is 1683, when western military forces drove back Islamists storming the gates of Vienna. To learn about history and it's relevance today, visit this site:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/
Libertarianism is rooted in the writings of Rand, Mises, Friedman, Mises, Smith, and Cicero. We should respect libertarians of previous generations, and recognize that Rothbard is the outlier, who imagined he would remake libertarianism in his own a-historical and more than eccentric image. Please, hear what libertarian hawks have to say:
http://libertariandefensecaucus.blogspot.com/
Kevin: since you seem to be interested in keeping score, historically-speaking, I suggest you take a look at my article I published yesterday, entitled "9/11: Bush's Greatest Failure" which you can read at http://www.nolanchart.com/article17.html
If we're going to keep historical score, let's keep the entire score.
http://www.national911memorial.org/
It was a terrible and terrifying day. In part because there was so much uncertainty and a poor defensive response.
We are thankful so many were still able to evacuate safely.
Liberty and Peace to all.
RIP
John Perry
I was at home, working, when the 9/11 "faith-based initiatives" were taking place. I read the first news of the attacks on the internet and turned on the television.
I was at the World Financial Center that day. It was just across the street from the World Trade Center. My family was worried about me and was relieved when I was able to call them later that day.
While I support going after those who attacked us, particularly going into Afghanistan, I was opposed to Bush lying about Iraq being part of 9/11. Now we also know that he knew that Iraq had no WMDs. We went from being the victims to being the victimizers.
KEVIN HALLUCINATED: "At least, the LP isn't using this anniversary to say America's imperialism...was responsible for 9/11."
No, but 'they' ought to be saying it..trying to tap dance around reality to appeal to some dullard Republicans into 'joining the pary' appears to have moved some really stooooooooopid Republicans in...and many decent, knowledgeable libertarians out!.. ;o)
Can't we get an ignore author button on this blog? I'll be the first to donate my fake $$$.
KEN MITCHELL WROTE: While I support going after those who attacked us, particularly going into Afghanistan,
What evidence are you in possession of that made you decide that 'going into Afghanistan' was the right thing to do?
(Republicrats appear awfully trusting of their political/media ma$ter$..)
Soviet-era Russia: POLITICAL CONTROL = MEDIA CONTROL..
..Modern-day USA Republicratdom: MEDIA CONTROL = POLITICAL CONTROL
JAMES R WROTE: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" ;o)
Clark,
You contribute nothing positive to this blog. No one wants you here. Please go away.
I was ill and did not go to work that day. My wife woke me up as she was leaving saying "history is happening, you need to get up and watch it." -- I was already addicted to the History Channel by then, or as she called it "The Hitler Channel." -- I laid on the couch all day, watching everything.
I remember seeing the towers collapse. That is when my "inside job" alarms first went off. The week before, my wife and I watched a show on Discovery about demolition and imploding buildings. I noticed the tell-tale series of explosions at the corners of the towers as they happened. I said out loud at the time "That was no accident, they took it down on purpose."
* side story *
When I was about 11 or 12 I was home alone after school and swinging a baseball bat in my living room. I lost my grip on the bat and took out the big front window. I tried to tell my parents I came home to find someone had thrown a rock at the window, but dad wouldn't buy it...the broken glass was on the outside of the house, not the inside...the debris didn't travel in the right direction
* now back to the main story *
When I saw the report of a "plane" that crashed into the Pentagon, I immediatly noticed that A) it was just a round hole, no damage where wings should have struck the building; B) no wings in the yard outside the building; C) building debris in the yard - blow outward. Seeing this made me think of throwing the bat into my living room window. It looked like the building was blow out from the inside - the debris went the wrong direction if a plane caused the damage...and I never saw the plane.
I knew we were being lied to AS IT HAPPENED.
Now go watch Loose Change.
Wow...Clark is back...he was so missed...
Clark, I will be in Denver for the LP convention. If you're a real Libertarian you will be there too. We can talk then. It will be a pleasure to meet you.
I was fourteen years old and a freshmen in High School. The head of the math department walked into my D period class in an excited, not happy but excited, frenzy and told my math teacher that a plane had hit the world trade center. It was just after the start of the period and no one came in afterwards to tell us of the ensuing events. During English my teacher said that we were simply going to go through the lesson for the day and try to get what happened out of our heads. I still didn't know what had happened. He cried as he said it, but he was something of a melodramatic man, and I simply wrote it off as over reacting to a small plane crashing into the world trade center. At the end of the period, just before lunch, went went downstairs to the library to see it on the television. We were only there for a minute or two and the video at that time was of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. They were interviewing a family member of someone on board the plane that crashed into the WTC. At lunch no one seemed to talk about it. Afterwards was my Physical sciences class. There were a lot of questions for our teacher, but he refused to answer any of them and said simply, or something to the effect that "It was just too soon for all of the answers, and he definetly wasn't the one to know them, if there were any." It wasn't until I got home that I found out what had happened. I felt numb watching the two planes hit the World Trade center, seeing the smoke and devastation at the pentagon, the two towers falling in succession, and the downed plan in Pennsylvania. It was a while before I felt anything in relation to what had happened. Throughout the night it was a bipolar situation between fear that the US had lost it's trade center, and calmness that these sorts of things happen all the time all over the place and civilization has lasted this long. Everyone else I knew had was brought into a room with a TV when their teachers found out that a second plane had hit the WTC. Most of my friends saw the towers fall in real time. I still wonder to this day what difference it's had on me not watching the towers fall in real time. I wonder if going from hearing that only a small plane had struck the WTC and a plane had crashed hundreds of miles away, to learning everything about the events of that day within the span 2 minutes has had a different effect on me than everyone else hearing the story unfold. I went to sleep that night with image of two beams of light where the WTC once stood burned into my brain forever.
JAMES R WROTE: "Clark, I will be in Denver for the LP convention. If you're a real Libertarian you will be there too. We can talk then. It will be a pleasure to meet you."
So only 'real Libertarians' will be in Denver?! What are you expecting..maybe 1500 people?..
Btw, I find the written word a much better way to expose monetary ignorance, etc. ignorance..The spoken word goes in one Republicrat ear and out the other whereas the written word is frozen and unyielding..
..Besides I enjoy having my ideas attacked by Republicreeps..and being a big, strong, imposing person I've found most/many people too scared to tell me what they really think to my face..so written debate works well for me!..
Do have a good time in Denver, but please note the sharpest libertarians will probably have something much better to do than listen to the suits!..
Maybe someday the LP will be the first to hold an honest 'virtual convention' so the Republicans/crats with excess frequent flyer miles don't/can't sully the word 'libertarian' too much! ;o)
Clark, this is the "illionth" time I've said this. Instead of EXPOSING ignorance of the dollar, take action to educate. In other words, quit complaining about the situation and take steps to change it.
Yes, Clark. A "real" Libertarian will be in Denver. Using my own fake money to get there.
I was a senior in high school, and I was in my 2nd or 3rd period class when the attacks occurred. I had a vague idea of what happened. And, throughout the day, many students were pulled out of school by their parents who feared that there may have been bombs in the school. I was ordered by my family to stay home from school on the following day. I went back to school two days after the attack, and it felt surreal because nearly all of the Mid-Eastern kids remained absent from school.
THE 'COACH' WROTE: "Clark, this is the "illionth" time I've said this. Instead of EXPOSING ignorance of the dollar, take action to educate."(END)
As I've said and written many times: I am not going to/can't 'educate' YOU..'in the end we are all our own teachers'.. (maybe it's some 'coach mentality')
..The best I can do is hope to make you conscious of the HIGHLY probable FACT that YOU, COACH, are worse than merely ignorant of the basic nature of YOUR stinking 'money system'..particularly the hideous aspect of how our 'money' is issued and therefore controlled.. (although this is apparently all fog to you as we speak)
..And who can blame you 'Republicrats?' As I too was once a gross Republicrat money dummy..
Perhaps some of you Republicrats, etc. monetary ignoramusses, (imo, not much to be ashamed of) might agree with CLARK that the Constitution of which some of you claim some knowledge and reverence (very overblown, Republicrats..very overblown) CLEARLY INDICATES http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_5s6.htmlthat AT LEAST, our money system, MAYBE ABOVE ALL THINGS, ought to be TRANSPARENT TO ALL..not run/controlled by $ecret $quirrel bank$ters, etc. creep$ in such a way that not 1 in a 1000 Republicrats has any honest understanding..(not one in 20 'Libertarians') (data from The CLARK Institute of Monetary Reality)
And why would any of you Republicrats, COACHES, etcetercrats be knowledgeable as to your money system? After all, they hold their meetings behind closed doors and physically alter the minutes...so you COACH might be excused for being in the dark..
But Chrissakes COACH, even Ralph Nader gets it a little bit!!: ;o) http://www.nader.org/template.php?/archives/536-The-Federal-Reserve.html
"The Federal Reserve wields enormous power over the national economy. Its decisions have a major impact on every citizen. Jobs, shelter and the quality of life are greatly affected by what the Federal Reserve decides on monetary policy.
Yet, the Federal Reserve is allowed to make its decisions in secret.
The transcripts and minutes of the meetings are carefully "sanitized" before they are released. When the Federal Reserve voted to lend money to Mexico, for example, the Federal Reserve's records were carefully redacted to keep the details of the transactions secret..."
(END)
So go ahead Republicrats..bitch about the stinking pot laws, high taxes, big government, war, etc. ad nauseam in between bouts of football and nascar and britney spears and essays about where you were on 9-11 andonandonandon...but don't talk about money..as it's apparently very confusing to most all folks!.. ;o)
Attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith:
"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it." Money: Whence it came, where it went - 1975, p15
"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled." Money: Whence it came, where it went - 1975, p29
I was on the West Coast, I had gotten up very
early that day and was at a donut shop when a
man came up to me and told me of the disaster
that nit New York and Washington DC.
My wife woke me up that day to tell me something horrible happened. I watched as the first building burned. At that time the news reporters really hadn't realized exactly what had happened. They were saying that a small plane had hit the tower. Then on the TV, as they talked, I watched as the second plane hit. It was the worst feeling in my life. It was evil, dark.
We must make sure that as Americans, we will do everything possible to protect ourselves. It wasn?t Iraq that attacked us. The man that did is still out there making tapes, praising those that committed these terrorible acts. It's unacceptable that he is allowed to breathe the air that so many good Americans can no longer. The two parties in power have failed us.
EPRO REGURGITATED: "The man that did is still out there making tapes, praising those that committed these terrorible acts. It's unacceptable that he is allowed to breathe the air that so many good Americans can no longer."
One wonders if there is any evidence supporting this seemingly asinine claim not emanating from Flush Dimbulb, Charles Gibson, or the rest of the drooling Republicrat babblers?
Like most of you, I was at work. I worked for SABRE who runs the reservations systems for the airlines. Our systems held the PNR (Passenger Name Record) data for the passengers on those flight. I was in the control center and watched as the second plane hit and the towers fell one by one. Shortly after witnessing the events we came to our senses and began locking down the systems to prevent passenger lists and other data from going public. The data was secured and given to the FBI who arrived later that day. I will never forget that day. I believe it was the JFK experience for my generation. We will all remember what we did that day and the feelings we felt.
Then to add insult to injury, we let the terrorists win and passed the patriot act. We were now a nation in fear. Game over, they win.
I am happy everytime a terrorist is killed and if I were still in the Army I would have been glad to spill AQ blood on their own ground.
When the Patriot Act became law I became an active Libertarian.
I was in the Philippines, scheduled to fly back to the US on 9/12, (which is 9/11 here in the US), and thus my return was delayed for awhile. I have the following observations:
1. I remember thinking that if Americans buy heavily the next time the stock market opens up, they can strike back immediately against the terrorist that were responsible for 9/11. But, while people were talking tough, they did the cowardly thing and sold. No problem sending our young off to foreign lands to fight terrorists, but can't take a chance of losing any money.
2. Right after the attacks there was an incredible sense of fellowship and support from most Filipinos whom I interacted with. The Philippines is generally a country that has maintains a favorable view towards the US over the years, but most of that has changed since 9/11 to the present; six years of Bush and his retarded foreign policy has caused quite a bit of disdain for the US in the eyes of many people around the world.
I had just got home from working the night shift, approximatly 9:00 am. I remember backing up in my driveway and I even remember the song that I was listening to on my radio.
Then DJ's came on and began speaking of the first plane that had hit. I immediatly thought it was a terrorist attack but realized that accidents do happen.
I got into my apartment and plopped on the couch, turning the tv on; I knew it would be on tv. Sure enough, it was. Then the second plane hit. My wife had woken up at that point and I told her that something bad was happening in NY.
I watched it for the rest of the day.
I recall 9/11. I woke up at 10:00am to a beautiful, cool day that was sunny and bright. I was attending College at the time and worked long nights at a local pizza place. I walked around campus to where my brother was working at the time. I heard the news from him and his secretary that the attacks were going on. She said frightfully, "America is under attack!". I asked what was going on and was told about the attacks against the Pentagon and the world Trade Centers in NYC. I was not very surprised, I was just anxtious and wanted to know what would be hit next! I thought to myself, WOW!, this was a long time coming! I spent the rest of my day watching and listening to the news. I went back to work as normal that night. It was very busy as everyone wanted to stuff their faces with pizza as they stayed home to watch the news that evening. Life goes on, Huh!?!
I was 2 blocks away at the Fed (I now work in the private sector). It was a warm, cloudless day with a nice breeze going. I had been in work about 1/2 an hour.
When the 1st plan crashed, a bunch of us went out to Maiden Lane, which gave us a face to face view of the enormous burning slash across the tower. I remember thinking, "My God, how the hell are they going to get help up there." Then burnt paper from the building started to waft down and we went inside. I was on the phone with my dad, telling him what was going on, when the Fed seemed to rock on its foundations. I hung up, thinking the top had fallen off the Tower. My friend Vadim came running down the hall, screaming that we were under attack. I grabbed him as he ran by, telling him to stop panicking...that some idiot pilot had lost fuel or something over the city and crashed, that it was a horrible accident, and to stop scaring everyone.
That's when he told me about the second plane.
I don't remember much until the first tower came down...I was pretty much in a daze. Suddenly this horribly loud continuous exploding sound began, seemed to last forever. We thought our building was under attack. I looked out the window that faces Liberty Street and saw this wickedly fast-moving express train of smoke/dust/debris racing past, engulfing us, breaking every window as it did. That cloud would engulf us for hours, augmented by the second collapse.
We were allowed to leave around 4pm. The ground was covered in a snow-like dust about 3 inches deep - I would soon be covered head to toe in it. Those of us who lived on Long Island trekked to South Street Seaport, where they were running ferries out of town to Brooklyn and Glen Cove. I looked back, and couldn't see a thing. Everything was still enveloped in that stinking brown cloud. The towers were, of course, gone.
Nothing much more to say. It's something I will never forget.
WAY off topic, but too funny
CLARK THE ONE TRICK PONY
..Besides I enjoy having my ideas attacked by Republicreeps..and being a big, strong, imposing person I've found most/many people too scared to tell me what they really think to my face..
Does THIS:
"I'm-a-big-strong-imposing-person-most-people-are-scared-of"
Bring THIS:
"I'm-18-blonde-and-wearing-no-panties-and-hot-and-ready-just-for-you"
to anyone else's mind???
Ahhh, the nice, safe anonymity of the internet. It's a beautiful thing!
I Was in Mrs. Ford's World History class 6th grade. The T.V. was on and the first thing I thought was that a small personal aircraft or helicopter had hit the W.T.C. Later I found out that they were jet airliner's and the twin towers were gone. I was shocked and mostly mad.
If loose change is right and the government did knock down the towers, then why does the gov't let Loose change still play or even ever let it get online. the entire internet is controlled through servers in California, the people incharge could have A) killed everyone in loose change and B) never let it get out, the gov't shuts down websites with regularity when they have things like child porn, they get shut down with in minutes of going up. Also if the gov't is as all powerful as you people say then why would they bother attacking the world trade center instead of doing something off shore and easy like bombing an embassy or blowing up oil rigs or just invading because they fucking feel like it? Give me a break
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I was at work. My ex-wife was away on business and I could not reach her. My parents were freaking out because I live near DC and they could not reach me. I think that day single-handedly changed my world view forever. I became much more obsessed with my country, my liberty, and my safety. It took a war in Iraq under the guise of national security and over 3,000 American troops dead to push me out of the Republican Party and into the LP. I wonder if I would have jumped ship had 9/11 not happened.
Posted by: Chris at September 11, 2007 03:17 PM