I’d have to say that, all in all, our men and women engaged in the war on terror have done a pretty damn good job—as have the American people and most of the politicians who have been called upon to support their efforts. Not all of the politicians, but most.
The mission in Iraq seems to be accepted as successful now even by those among the reasonable who most strongly opposed it—what the unreasonable say is not important, and we do not hear their words. Anyway, I doubt we’ll be hearing much anymore about how Iraq is a “distraction” from the real war, which is supposed to be in Afghanistan.
I do remember that some of these pols and media people were, actually, opposed to going into Afghanistan. They spoke of the brutal Afghan winter, and how the British and the Soviets had failed so how could we hope to succeed? Today those same people now insist they favored the mission in Afghanistan all along. Success has a million fathers.
Where is Osama bin Laden? Does he even know anymore?
Seven years of vigilance. That means it’s about time for seven more.
If you’re reading The McGehee Zone on September 11, 2007, you’ll see on the front page my posts from the previous five anniversaries, plus a post dated September 11, 2001. On the front page, just scroll down past those entries to find recent content. If you’re on the individual-entry page the Next/Previous links will skip all the remembrance posts automagically.
On Wednesday I’ll edit this post to include links to all of the other 9/11 posts.
As past remembrances have been open-trackback posts, meaning you don’t have to link back, so is this one. Comment policy is also relaxed. A little bit.
Update, 3:30 p.m.: I’ve been posting a lot more today than usual, and a number of those entries got scrolled off the page because of the six archived posts that I’d been displaying, “sticky”-like, on the front page, so I’m going to unstick them and provide the links as previously promised—just a little bit early, is all. This post will remain sticky until tomorrow.
Below the fold, the contents of my 2005 “Remember” post. I intended to have 9/11-related open trackbacks again, but I’ve disabled trackbacks site-wide, so please use HTML (or the buttons) in comments to make links back to your post. Thanks.
I’ll have 2006 commentary of my own (such as it may be) later.
Somebody has made a mistake bigger than anyone has ever contemplated making. Somebody is celebrating when they should be getting their affairs in order. Having used hundreds of innocent civilians to kill thousands more, they have committed an act even more monstrous than the Sunday morning sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 — and our people will respond as they did back then, with grim determination to bring justice raining down on the guilty.
To those who did this, and those who shelter them: You may be able to topple our buildings, but you cannot topple us. You have unleashed forces beyond your ken. You have engaged us in a war where our only defense is your annihilation. Having sown the wind, now reap the whirlwind.
Let everyone else take caution, and stay out of the way.
Kevin M. McGehee September 11, 2001
In the last couple of weeks, it has seemed that this country is losing its mind. Nothing could be more inviting to al Qaeda or some other terrorist bunch looking for an opportunity to hit us again.
Here’s what I posted on this date in 2003, and in 2004.
UPDATE: This is an “open trackback” post. If you have an entry in solemn remembrance of 9/11 and wish to trackback here without linking back, that’s okay. This once.
‘NOTHER UPDATE, 4 March 2006: I’m planning on re-dating this same post for the upcoming fifth anniversary of 9/11, at which time it will once again be an open trackback post.
‘NOTHER OTHER UPDATE, 16 March 2006: Just found and posted the actual commentary I wrote and circulated by e-mail on 9/11 (since I didn’t have a blog, or even a proto-blog, back then).
Although Michele isn’t updating her “Voices” project, it remains probably one of the most powerful reminders of what happened to this nation three years ago today.
I didn’t contribute anything to Michele’s Voices project because I didn’t think I could write anything to do it justice, and I just wanted to stay out of the way of those who did contribute. What follows, I wrote intending not to post it until tomorrow. Reading it back, maybe it’s good enough to post today after all.
Since I had no one in the Twin Towers, nor at the Pentagon, nor on any of the jets, the deaths on that day are an abstraction to me—I have only the images of the fireballs, of the people who leapt, of the buildings collapsing. But I also have the images of the people of New York City and of the entire country rallying around their stricken countrymen in defiance of the evil that sought to destroy us. I have the images of people around the world, including some whose governments might not properly be counted among America’s friends, reacting with horror at what had been done to us.
And yes, I have the images of other people celebrating what had been done to us.
I have the stories—of people in the towers passing up a chance of quick escape to help someone else who would otherwise have been unable to escape, or who otherwise would have died alone, people who went back inside to find others who needed their help.
I have the stories of the police and firefighters who ran toward the danger, too many of whom would never return home after. I have the shameful realization that these men and women have always been heroes, but until this monstrous event I had taken them for granted.
I have the story of the passengers of Flight 93, and the words of Todd Beamer as he and the others faced certain death not with fear but with defiance.
I have the memories of waiting and wondering whether there would be more attacks; of watching jet airplanes passing overhead shortly after flights were resumed and thinking about what I would do if one were suddenly to plunge toward where I was working. I have the memory of deciding, oh so soon after 9/11, not to call off our planned cross-country flight to visit my brother and parents in California; of scanning the faces of my fellow passengers, and of my reassurance at seeing how many of my fellow passengers were doing the same thing, in the same spirit—all of us mindful that the role of an airline passenger in defending his own life and the lives of those on the ground, had changed forever.
To me that day is not about death, but about life. It is not about tragedy but about the indomitable inner strength of my fellow man when faced with tragedy. It is not about what we allegedly did to deserve it, but what must be done to those who perpetrated it and to anyone who would try to imitate it.
It is about how we are more than naked apes with oversized brains—we are children of a just and loving God who has given us the tools to achieve great good even if we forget to think of Him while doing it. It is about how the imperative of self-preservation can be lost without hesitation in the need to help others; how that capacity for goodness and compassion is so much an inherent part of us that risking or even giving up one’s life for others can be, at the time, the most natural thing in the world.
I always told myself I believed that good was stronger than evil.
In watching how most of my fellow men responded to the attacks two years ago, I had that faith confirmed.
That’s what I remember, and always will, about 9/11.
It's an examination of the temper of America on December 7, 1942. The contrast to the temper of America today (as represented by Big Media, for what that's worth) is striking.
It's not even 8:00 as I sit here tapping keys, and I've already had to turn off the TV to get away from the mawkishness of most September 11 observances. Nor am I alone in being fed up with the way Big Media is choosing to look back. It will be interesting to see what the consequences are of today's media tone -- whether Big Media gets slapped upside the head by an impatient public, or whether the talking heads' attitude accurately reflects the way most Americans want to think about what happened.
I wasn't going to talk about feelings about September 11, but I've changed my mind -- I'll talk about the only feelings I'm qualified to talk about: my own.
Although initially the events themselves seemed surreal, the message -- that there is no such thing as complete safety, that no one is universally loved, that there will be those who choose to commit monstrous acts for reasons most of us would never comprehend -- was hardly new to me.
Maybe that's because I grew up during the Cold War (and I mean "grew up" in every sense of the phrase) when there was an actual array of nations dedicated to spreading an evil ideology to the entire world, and which had the military capability to kill me and everyone I knew with the pressing of a button. One year ago today we discovered that Osama bin Laden had the same aspiration, and sought the same capabilities. I shrug in the general direction of his mortal remains. Been there, done that.
Yes, I'm angry at the goat-shagging savages that planned and carried out the attacks. Yes, I'm contemptuous of the mullahs and princes who set those maniacs in motion with their messages of blind hatred. Yes, I want to see them all suffer justice for what they've done before they can do it again.
But am I consumed with fear? Why would I be? Fear is useful only to the extent it engenders caution, and causes one to prepare realistically for potential dangers. In a world where perfect safety is impossible anyway, being truly free from fear is a danger in and of itself. Only those who don't understand the reality of fear could ever let themselves be consumed by it.
Am I in grief? The cold cruel fact is, I knew no one directly affected by the attacks, except through the media (e.g., Barbara Olson). I grieved in sympathy for the thousands who lost friends and loved ones, but I couldn't make their loss my own because I had no right to do so. I also had no such inclination. And since last January, when my 75-year-old mother died for reasons totally unrelated to September 11, I certainly had no need to carry anyone else's grief.
At this point I'd say my predominant feeling is a mild disgust. Look at how the Democrats are making fools of themselves trying to prevent a Republican President from removing Saddam Hussein from power, after slavishly having supported a Democrat's plan to do so four years ago. Look at the spinelessness of our European "allies" over the same issue. Look at the mess being made of airport security because of the bureaucratic mindset of those now in charge of it.
Hell, turn on your TV for five minutes and look at the way Big Media is turning this anniversary into a giant weepfest.
The only reason I can think of for why my disgust isn't more intense is, none of it surprises me. I hope things turn around, though.
Late the night before, my wife Chris came home from working the late shift to tell me that her dashboard had begun to light up like a Christmas tree with anomalous warnings, including one about her transmission. I was scheduled to be in Columbus, Ga., before 6:00 a.m. the next morning for work but without checking on what was going on with her truck I couldn’t tell whether the problem would require major service or a quick fix, nor whether it would be safe for her to drive to work the next afternoon — and frankly, she makes better money than I do. So I got out of bed there and then and called the office to tell them I needed to stay home the next day to investigate the trouble. I’ll admit I didn’t mind getting some more sleep than I would have gotten.
The next morning we got up and while I was eating a light breakfast and we were discussing what needed to do about her truck, Chris — as she often does — turned on the TV to The Weather Channel. After a while I decided I would start simply by taking her truck for a test drive, so I went in to take my shower, and turned on the radio in the bathroom to Eagle 106.7, a country station headquartered on the opposite side of metro Atlanta that I like because it plays more than just the country Top 40 of the moment.
As I was getting ready to get in the shower I listened with half an ear while morning DJ Rhubarb Jones spoke of what happens when someone flies a plane into a building. After some more comments sunk in, I came out of the bathroom and asked Chris to change the channel to Fox News so we could find out just what was going on in New York City.
By this time both towers had been hit, and the Pentagon too.
It wasn’t until long after both towers collapsed that I could tear myself away and see about Chris’ truck. I finally took it to a local oil change place that offers transmission service, and the men there were huddled around a radio listening to the coverage. There was speculation that we would be at war before the whole thing was over, and that the draft might even be reactivated, but I was thinking it was like a Tom Clancy novel come to life — and I rather hoped that the kinds of “black” operations he writes about might prove to be feasible in real life.
The transmission light — along with brake warnings that Chris had also reported — proved to be false alarms. An irrational voice in the back of my head whispered that maybe the plane crashes weren’t really happening, that it was all some kind of sick hoax with special effects and the collusion of everyone in the news media as well as the government and the entire populations of New York City and nearby portions of New Jersey who would be able to see the towers still standing despite what was on TV. Ridiculous, of course.
I wondered about the people on those jets, and Chris and I later talked about our planned trip by air to California in late October. We decided to wait and see, since we still had several days to decide whether to complete our reservations. My mother is 75 and my dad will be 77, and both have had cardiac episodes in the last few weeks. If we don’t go, will I ever get another chance to visit them? We can’t afford to take the time to drive.
Has there ever before been an attack on a civilian population — with which the attackers were not already in a formal state of war — that took so many lives? Surely not. People have been comparing this to Pearl Harbor, but the target in 1941 was military, and the Japanese made no attempt to conceal who they were. Some might try to compare it to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and perhaps if we had not already been formally at war with Japan for four years when that happened, they might have a point.
What motivates someone to mastermind something like this? It may bear the label of religious fervor, but it can only be pure, evil hate. What God would reward men for doing such things?
We often say, of individual acts of violence, that the guilty “have blood on their hands.“ The mind behind what happened in our country on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, must be drowning in a sea of blood. And maybe if he is captured, that is how he should die: drowned in swines’ blood.
Today there is no black or white, there is no North or South.
There are no liberals, conservatives, Democrats or Republicans. There are only Americans.
Somebody has made a mistake bigger than anyone has ever contemplated making. Somebody is celebrating when they should be getting their affairs in order. Having used hundreds of innocent civilians to kill thousands more, they have committed an act even more monstrous than the Sunday morning sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 — and our people will respond as they did back then, with grim determination to bring justice raining down on the guilty.
To those who did this, and those who shelter them: You may be able to topple our buildings, but you cannot topple us. You have unleashed forces beyond your ken. You have engaged us in a war where our only defense is your annihilation. Having sown the wind, now reap the whirlwind.
Let everyone else take caution, and stay out of the way.
