I Still Remember

This day bothers me. Not because it's the 10 year anniversary of the day the towers were struck, "Let's Roll" became a new motto, and the Pentagon was hit.

No, it bothers me because I remember it ... all the time. It affected me very emotionally, even though I didn't know anyone who died. Nor did I know anyone who lost anyone. I remember the fear. My job had an office in New York and we were all frantic to find out if anyone had been in the towers that morning. Several had been scheduled there but for some reason had their meetings delayed. Several had been there just the night before.

One of our Money Managers was actually on the phone with some financial people in the towers when the plane hit. They were alive and spoke as the chaos broke out and finally the line went dead.

I went home early that day in a fog.

And now I hear politicians and newscasters talking about today as a day of unity, a day to go out into the community and help each other.

That's great. Except those are things we should be doing every single day. Not just on one day in September. Today we should be remembering those who were lost...who were murdered by evil men with evil hearts. There's no sugar coating it. We should be celebrating the firemen, policemen, medics, chaplains, and all first responders who lost their lives and who survived. Instead our politically correct politicians are declaring "Chaplain Free Zones" at Ground Zero.

I don't need tv shows or documentaries. I don't need news men and women blathering on about this or that. And I certainly don't need politicians of all stripes trying to cash in on today as some sort of publicity stunt.It's kind of comforting, in an odd way, to see that we haven't really changed all that much, since World War II at least. Though perhaps in some ways we've changed too much.

What we don't see...and what we should see ... footage of the towers falling, of people jumping to their deaths to escape the fires. We won't see the people in the Arab street dancing for joy as America wept. That's too provocative. Though it is reality.

But I remember. And I won't forget. We have enemies who hate us and want us dead.

"Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe.
…
They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the Enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish.

They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the Enemy. And that, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the Enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn’t done enough for — yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part — something that we could correct. And this means that that our first task is that we must try to grasp what the concept of the Enemy really means.

The Enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the Enemy always hates us for a reason — it is his reason, and not ours."