9/11: nine years ago today I sat at the desk in my office

Nine years ago today I sat at the desk in my office in the church and heard on the radio that one of the World Trade Towers had been hit by an airplane. I turned on the TV in the corner and the Tulsa news was talking a mile a minute about the terrible accident.

I was reading a book at the time written by Tom Clancy about a plane crashing into the Capitol building, killing all of congress, the Supreme Court justices and all of the administration, leaving a newly appointed VP as president. The only reason he had been spared was that he was so new he hadn’t moved in yet. It made an interesting book, but it became a chilling reality.

The whole thing was almost unimaginable except for the fact that we were seeing it. Peter Jennings commented on ABC news that we see so much violence on TV that when we watch this, it is easy to see it as a TV happening and not a real thing. It is hard to see the real people and the real damage done. It could be thousands dead, he said.

Not long after I turned the TV on, another airplane hit the second tower. I came out of my seat in shock. I knew that this was no accident. A bit later, the towers came crashing down killing almost 3000 people. As I watched a man jumped from one of the top stories of the building, thinking I suppose that it would be better than being trapped.

It seems like yesterday. I still have the Tulsa World News from that day in a box in the basement. Occasionally I will come across it and will be surprised again. Today watching the news, I began to weep. It was horrible. And for what reason? Men who had a grudge against America had somehow learned to fly jet airliners, then had hi-jacked them and had flown them into the World Trade Towers.

People were walking on the streets stunned, covered in dust and debris. One man said, “this is one of those things you dream of in your nightmares”, and he was right. The Pentagon also sustained a blow from a third airplane, blowing up a major part of it. All state buildings and federal buildings throughout America were being evacuated. It was truly horrible.

I went to the jail for one of my bi-weekly visits and one of the jailers greeted me through a small vent demanding to know what business I had there. The head jailer told him that I was one of them and fine so reluctantly, he granted me entrance. Everybody everywhere was scared.

Today the news is talking about it. And I am thinking about it again.

There are a few things that stick in our collective memory. In 1963 I was in Junior High when we got the news that John F Kennedy had been assassinated. We were shocked. I read reports of people cheering because he was gone. I found it hard to believe.

In 1985, the space shuttle Challenger blew up right after takeoff. I saw it in the Student Union building where I was attending college. Again I was shocked. Then I heard people say that America was overreaching itself and it needed to happen. Again I found it hard to believe.

Then the World Trade Towers were destroyed by people flying jet airliners into them. I was more than shocked. I read reports of people cheering in the streets of some of the Muslim countries. And this time, I believed it.

But there were things that came of it. For one thing, I was more than glad, I was grateful in the extreme that Mr Bush was president. He had the cojones to deal with the situation. Yes, it caught him off guard. He was reading to some children when he got the news. It took him a few minutes to assimilate the whole thing, and as he did, he kept on reading. When he finished, he was in charge. He didn’t rush out and do stupid things, but he was definitely in charge.

Yes, I think he went too far with some things, but he made himself hated by many in order to save our country. There were no other attacks on US soil in the whole rest of his term.

Another thing I got out of 9/11 was an intense sadness. It has not gone away. It’s a combination of things, mostly a sense of loss. Things were better before 9/11/2001. But we cannot go back to it. We are at war with a psychotic enemy, one that it seems the government will not recognize. But it is one that is merciless and totally devoted to removing American freedoms. And worse, it is doing it in the name of God. Any time violence, division, anger, harm is done in the name of God it is all the more ugly.

It made the last thing almost baffling. After 9/11, we were united as a nation. Flags were flown everywhere. There was no opposition to our government or our president. There was an almost overwhelming unity to go into the belly of the beast and get these people and their leaders. War was declared, most of Congress voted for it and agreed to it. The unity was massive.

Then, bang, we weren’t. People began to gripe and dissent. Sniping began, movie stars felt empowered to speak out in spite of the fact that they had little or nothing to say, politicians quietly switched side and pretended to have been against the war from the beginning.

The unity was fractured and before long, a president who was a good man and doing what he felt was needed to keep our country safe was vilified on all fronts.

Suddenly, everything was his fault, even hurricane damage and earthquakes. People got incredibly stupid in their desire to get rid of the governing party. Yes, he made mistakes and the government grew too big. But there was honor in the man.

A quick terrorist attack on New York forever altered not only the skyline, but also the lives of all involved. Tens of thousands of people in a two block radius, and millions of people in America. It made us afraid.

But thinking about it and mourning it year after year is kind of like people keeping the picture of their dead child on the TV in the front room. The child has been gone for a long time, but they have never let the wound heal.

It will never heal as long as we remain afraid, as long as we waffle about worrying about doing the wrong thing and offending people who are beyond offense.

The only real memorial we could ever build to the memory of those people who died in the 9/11 tragedy is to rebuild our country, to make it stronger than before, to make it impervious to outside influences. In my opinion, the best thing to do would be to rebuild the towers taller than before with anti-aircraft guns at the top.

We cannot stay sad and mourn forever.