Remembering 11 September 2001

Eight years ago today, the United States was attacked by foreign enemies who had been harboured on her own soil, learning the skills that they needed to enact their appalling acts of violence and being supported  by the freedoms and abundances of a great, if imperfect, nation.

At that time, I worked as communications director for a pilots’ union. This union served the flight crew of a major global cargo carrier. It was around 7:45 a.m. my time, and I was on my way to work when I heard on the radio that an aircraft had accidentally struck one of the Twin Towers. My first thought was, That was no accident! You can’t fly a plane into one of those buildings by mistake. Every alarm in the cockpit would be shrieking, and it’s not exactly hard to see those things!

Five minutes later, I was in my office, frantically trying to tune in CNN to get the straight story. Just as I got the receiver tuned, I straightened up in time to see a speck in the sky near the second tower. My God, I thought, there’s another one! And seconds later, my pilot friends and I watched in horror as the second tower was struck. My guys were standing in stony silence; I sat in shock and disbelief, with tears raining down my cheeks.

Throughout the day, we got more news. Another plane struck the Pentagon. Courageous passengers took down another plane in a Pennsylvania field … God only knows where that one was headed. The towers collapsed. People were missing. People were dead. Four courageous and highly-trained flight crews were lost.

Many of my guys knew the pilots and flight engineers on those hijacked aircraft. That was the first time I heard one of my guys swear. One of the news anchors had the audacity to suggest that the pilot had been forced to fly his aircraft into the tower. My guy swore colourfully and shouted, “No ——- way! They are dead! You couldn’t make a one of us fly a plane into a building. You’d do something like that over our dead bodies! Those pilots were killed and these ——– took over!”  Turns out he was probably right.

That day was the beginning of a week of 14-hour workdays for me. My guys were grounded—and they were scared. Even more so when the TSA and other government agencies focused almost exclusively on passenger flights. My guys wanted to know if the Feds realized that it would be easier to hide in a cargo jet than in a passenger jet, and why weren’t the Feds paying attention to the dangers to cargo flights. Quite honestly, I’m still wondering that.

I’m also still wondering why we have such a dichotomy among our population in the response to what was clearly an act of war. Some three thousand people were killed in the four hijackings. The World Trade Center Towers were destroyed and the Pentagon was badly damaged. It’s quite clear, from the identities of the hijackers, who they were and what their motivations and intentions were.

And yet there are those who reject the invasion of Afghanistan and the secondary front of Iraq as somehow unrelated to fighting terrorism and eliminating the threat that Al-Quaida presents to the non-Muslim free world, as represented by the United States of America.

I don’t hate Muslims. Please understand that. I hate controlling fundamentalist religions. I feel the same horror of a fundamentalist Muslim who wants to shroud all women in burqas and tell other people what lifestyle choices they are allowed to make, as I feel of the rabid fundamentalist Christian who kills abortionists or tries to force all women into the home-bound brood mare mold.

But it’s very clear to me that it was not rabid fundamentalist Christians who hijacked four aircraft, killed several thousand people, and continue to train their youth to act as suicide bombers in countries around the globe. And I cannot understand why anyone would object to our soldiers being sent to respond to an overt act of war. Maybe I never will.

But I close today’s post with a tribute to our brave young men and women who serve in the United States military. Any branch, any service. Thank you all, for your sacrifice and service. For your dedication to the difficult and dangerous job of securing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all of those who wish to enjoy the inalienable rights with which our Creator endowed all men and women. May God bless you, keep you, and hold you safe in the hollow of His mighty hands.

Tags: Afghanistan, fundamentalist, gratitude, Iraq, September 11, soldiers, terrorism, terrorist, True Stories, war