WE MUST NEVER FORGET

My daughter was a little over a month old on September 11, 2001. That morning, I was in the living room with her when both my mother and my mother-in-law called within minutes of each other to tell me & my husband that a plane crashed into the north tower of the WTC. I quickly turned the television on to see for myself and witnessed the hit on the south tower shortly thereafter. At that time I was pretty tired and suffering from a bout of post-partum depression, so I didn't process what I was seeing very well. I felt like I was watching scenes from a Hollywood movie, so I did not realize the gravity of the situation. The human toll this devastation would take did not hit me right away. It did when I heard the myriad of news reports as the day wore on--reports about people jumping to their demise rather than being burned alive, thousands of people reported missing, people trapped, the estimated body count--it went on and on.
Today, the 5th "anniversary", I have read various articles written by survivors of this travesty. One in particular grabbed my attention through his description of what it was like to be there. He had just exited the north tower after it was hit, and he looked upward. He described it as looking up into a huge flaming, smoking grill. Amidst that horrifying backdrop he saw people jumping out of the skyscraper and heard them hitting the pavement. The smell of acrid smoke filled his nostrills. He did not remember calling his wife when he was taking the ferry home to Long Island. Needless to say, it took him several months to process his own feelings and return to his normal daily routines. By now most of us, especially those that were not there and did not suffer the loss of a loved one on 9/11, have settled into our normal routines. Many of our politicians have done so as well, having forgotten the absolute helplessness we felt as a nation as they shot down the Patriot Act and called for U.S. troops to be pulled out of Iraq. They are impatient and are disregarding the bigger picture, which is mounting an effective, proactive system to thwart terroristic attacks in this country. One of the most important duties of our government is to provide a national defense, and if we need to surveil suspected terrorists in order to learn of their plots to destroy the people and property of this country, then let's do it. If we need to send the men and women of the U.S. military to countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq to bust up terror cells, depose dictators and aid in stablizing these countries so their people may establish governments resistant to terrorists' influence, then let's do it! We cannot afford to be rendered helpless again, for I fear the next terrorist action could be more devastating than that of 9/11. Now, I will leave you with a quote: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ---- Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857.