Back to September Blogs
So, yesterday, that was my moment of silence. To be honest, I was in Sicily on September 11th, three years ago. It was almost Two O'Clock in the afternoon when all that mayhem started, and our power had been out since that morning. If it hadn't been for my brother in-law, who had heard that news when he went to pick up my sister at the military base, yelling it when he came through the door, I wouldn't have known until that night. I wouldn't have turned on the TV, and watch stunned for nearly half-an-hour, before the second plane slammed into the south tower.
You see, I had been to NYC several times. Being a small-town boy, I was awed automatically by a city that literally never sleeps. It instantaneously became my second home. I ran around the whole city, including the usual tourist traps: The Statue of Liberty; The Empire State Building; and of course, The World Trade Center.
Like many intellectuals have done for the past 2,500 years, I have found the need to name a city on this globe "The Capital" of the known world. The first was Athens. The most widely-known had to have been Rome. The most fashionable had to have been Paris. The one that held the title for the longest period was London. And although there are a few cities that could rival for the title now, Tokyo and Mexico City amongst them, in my mind, none can top New York City.
And although this might sound callous, when the towers went down, I thought less of the great loss of life, but took personally the damage done to such a great city, and the loss that it would mean.
Don't get me wrong. When I went to Ground Zero in March of '03, you can feel the sadness of it. I don't just mean the American flags that have been put up on the barricades, or the photos or tributes to those who lost their lives; you feel a tug at your soul as you stare down at a psychic sinkhole that sucked down over 3,000 people. I felt for the people that had to work down there, knowing that where they were working was a mass grave.
And I don't blame regimes, or religion, for the atrocities that happened. I don't blame all Christian fundamentalists for the Oklahoma City bombing nine years ago, - I blame them for something else entirely - so why should I blame all followers of Islam for September 11th? These were just young men with a great anger inside of them, and their anger got pointed to the United States by veteran brainwashers. They brought down four planes, killing nearly 3,500 people, and yet their sought-after body count was much higher.
With all the continuing terrorism going on in the world to this day, we should seek to stop those brainwashers responsible, and seek to resolve the situations that drive desperate people to do irrational things. Because in the crossfire of all this violence, ultimately there are children. I can't bear to think of those children who saw others crushed under rubble and debris in Oklahoma City. I can't bear to think of those children on board those planes on September 11th; their parents knowing that their children awaited the same fate they did. I can't bear to think of those children killed by gunfire and bombs in Beslan, Russia, last week. And through it all, I think, what if my niece, who I've cared for as my own daughter since she was an infant, were in those situations. And it tears my heart apart each and every time.
19 children died when domestic terrorists detonated a truck-bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995
8 children died on the four flights hijacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001
335 people, mostly children, were killed by bombs and gunfire after Chechen rebles seized a school in the southern Russian city of Beslan on September 3, 2004
© 2004 [email protected]