My 9/11

"WAKE UP!" 

It was my dad. Why the fuck was he in my room? He never woke me up. I didn't work today. My head was throbbing from a killer hangover, I'd got in sometime early that morning, and my first thought was "What the fuck do you want?!". Instead, I just ask "What?".

"Turn on the TV!" He said as he turned on my TV and flipped through the channels. I stared at him dumbly. It's finally happened, I mused, he's cracked. It was only a matter of time.

The pictures I saw on the television didn't make any sense to me. There was the World Trade Center's north tower. American Airlines Flight 11 had already smashed into it, but I didn't know that yet. and smoke was pouring out of it. Someone was talking frantically about something I couldn't understand. Suddenly, from the side of the screen a large passenger jet, United Airlines Flight 175, appeared. It disappeared just as suddenly on impact, transforming into a ball of angry orange flames, thick black smoke, and falling debris.

"What movie is this?" I asked him.

"This isn't a movie." He told me solemnly. "This is happening right now. They're saying it's a terrorist attack. Two planes hit the world trade center."

I didn't understand even then what he was talking about. I remember sitting there stunned and watching the footage over and over and over again. Even when the first tower fell I was in a state of complete disbelief. Even when I heard of American Airlines Flight 77 had hit the Pentagon, even when United Airlines Flight 93 fell from the sky and into a bare, green field in Stonycreek township, and even when the second tower fell, I just couldn't get my mind around it.

I remember walking to the store some time later that day. It was a gorgeous day in Dallas. The sky was bright and blue, as it usually was, and the sun was shining. I looked up at it and realized that it was empty, there wasn't a single plane, and that's when the magnitude what had happened finally hit me. The realization of the tragedy I'd just witnessed came so hard and so fast that I could barely function by the time I arrived at the store. I don't remember what I bought, probably cigarettes, but I remember fighting back tears when I did. I walked home again under that clear, silent sky and wondering if anything would ever be the same again. It wouldn't.

A year later I was chased off of a bluebird bus in Fort Benning, Georgia, by a screaming drill sergeant.

9/11 changed a lot of lives. For me, it got me off of my ass and into the fight. It was the wrong fight, they were Saudis and not Iraqis, but my dumb ass didn't know that at the time. Still, I wouldn't trade those years for anything. It's strange to look back on it now and reflect on the profound change that event had on me. That morning, a sleepy Tuesday for a lazy slacker, altered the course of my entire life.

I'll never forget it.

Coincidentally, a piece that I read back then, and have read over and over again since, is what inspired me to write. I'll leave you with it.

Fear & Loathing in America 

By Hunter S. Thompson

It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colo., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV. 

Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake and probably the Battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 were slaughtered in one day. 

The Battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight Tuesday). The final numbers, including those from the supposedly impregnable Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, likely will be higher. Anything that kills 300 trained firefighters in two hours is a world-class disaster. 

And it was not even Bombs that caused this massive damage. No nuclear missiles were launched from any foreign soil, no enemy bombers flew over New York and Washington to rain death on innocent Americans. No. It was four commercial jetliners. 

They were the first flights of the day from American and United Airlines, piloted by skilled and loyal U.S. citizens, and there was nothing suspicious about them when they took off from Newark, N.J., and Dulles in D.C. and Logan in Boston on routine cross-country flights to the West Coast with fully-loaded fuel tanks -- which would soon explode on impact and utterly destroy the world-famous Twin Towers of downtown Manhattan's World Trade Center. Boom! Boom! Just like that. 

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. 

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper. 

Nothing -- even George Bush's $350 billion "Star Wars" missile defense system -- could have prevented Tuesday's attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying. 

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them. 

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force. 

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job -- armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy. 

OK. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing. 

The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators. 

The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.