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SHEARON: Our business is not done |
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Wednesday, 12 September 2007 |
 “Did you hear an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center?”
That began my day, September 11, 2001, as I arrived at my office.
A few minutes later, word arrived that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center.
I got in my car and drove home.
I turned on the TV, and sitting in the living room with my wife, watched wordlessly as videos of an airplane hitting the World Trade Center played in a continuous loop. Then there was word that an airplane had crashed into the Pentagon, and that another had crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
I sat there for a while.
Not knowing what to do, I went back to work, where my corporate masters told me that it was just another work day — stuff happens; go make my sales quota. I also intercepted an e-mail criticizing me for going home “to watch TV” on company time.
It wasn’t another work day. People looked at me like I was some kind of vampire for trying to sell advertising while thousands of Americans were dying horrific deaths in airplane crashes and building collapses.
I don’t think I did anything that day but alienate people. Feeling ashamed, I finally called it an early day, went back to the office and wrote down my feelings for my weekly column. The column was rejected because it couldn’t run for another five days, at which time, I was told, it would be “old news.” Thank God I don’t work for those people anymore.
It’s been six years, and the nation’s wound still festers. The videos of the jetliners slamming into the Twin Towers still evoke revulsion. It’s not old news and won’t be for a long time.
One reason it remains so hurtful is that chapter of the American saga hasn’t ended. There’s no conclusion. We bombed Afghanistan back to the stone age (about two years for them, I understand), replaced their government and started dropping bombs on the hillsides there, trying to kill Osama bin Laden.
We haven’t killed him yet, although thousands of brave Americans have died fighting under a catch-all “Remember 9/11” banner.
In the six years since, Americans have seen their rights eroded under the nisnamed “Patriot Act.” America has started holding people in secret prisons and the executive branch has given its blessing for its agents to use torture. Scary, scary stuff. I remember when Americans were the good guys.
So much has changed. Tried to board an airplane lately?
I wish, instead of having 160,000 troops in Iraq fighting a war we started against a nation that was not a threat to us, we had those same 160,000 troops in Afghanistan, looking for bin Laden. We’d have probably found him by now.
Instead, we’re losing good men and women every day to homemade roadside bombs trying to keep members from two religious sects from killing each other. It’s crazy. It has nothing to do with 9/11. I’m sure bin Laden thinks it’s hysterical.
My hope is that, during my lifetime, America will regain the moral high ground and have the respect of nations around the world. We need to get out of Iraq. We need to kill bin Laden. And we need to write “finished” to that chapter of American history.
The column I wrote six years ago got deleted somewhere along the line. I hate that. I thought it was a good piece of work. I do remember noting that whoever was responsible for that horror had unleashed something that day they hadn’t counted on. As the Japanese learned at Pearl Harbor, you don’t attack America and get away with it. Afghanistan’s corrupt leaders paid the price for that, and bin Laden has since learned what it’s like to live in a cave.
I ended the column with an appeal to God to have mercy on us all, because then, in those hours after the initial attack, no one knew who had done what or how this would all play out.
God, if you’re listening, don’t forget the mercy.
Robert Shearon is news editor of the Courier. His column appears weekly.
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