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This is another in a series of what I intend to be my annual dedication to the events of 9/11. Nothing in my lifetime has affected me the way the events of 9/11 have. We have all certainly experienced horrific events since then like the devastation of Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti and many others and I know those places and people are not fully recovered. I’m working on updates for those events as well but I can’t seem to “move on” and I can’t “get over” the events of 9/11. Yes, I live my daily life and I participate in society but I’m never ever going to get over it. Party because it was unbelievable and partly because we still don't understand what happened. And mostly because it keeps on giving. The amount of hate generated by that event is at the critical meltdown level. It made us lose our perspective on what it means to be citizens of the earth. We’re all in this together.
When my kids were in college I would drive to visit them around this time each September because my mother and son have birthdays one day apart, the 12th and 13th, respectively. But I always started with my daughter who was at CSU Chico and she would give me gifts to transport to her grandmother and brother. After a few days with her I’d drive to Ukiah to visit my parents for mom’s September 12th birthday, then I’d drive to my son’s place at CSU Sacramento for his birthday on September 13th. I’d take a week or so off to relax with my family and drive around northern California during that special week.
On the morning of 9/11, having spent a relaxing few days visiting with my daughter, I planned to leave her place to head for Ukiah for mom’s birthday on the 12th. My daughter and I planned to sleep in on the 11th then go out to breakfast before she went to classes and then later to work and then as usual I would drive to mom’s. However, the phone started ringing very early. My daughter’s friend was literally screaming for us to get up and turn on the TV. I remember my daughter was annoyed because she so seldom had a chance to sleep in and we had planned a relaxing morning. She also didn’t have cable so we were limited to antenna TV channels.
It is my foggy recollection that she didn’t catch what he told her, just that we had to immediately get up and turn on the TV. By this time I was on my feet headed to the living room but she continued to whine about the intrusion and went back to bed. It was a small apartment so she heard sounds coming from the TV and correctly assumed it was an airplane crash. She asked me questions about the crash from the bedroom but I was speechless so she got up. I was groggy and stunned at what I was seeing and literally could not put it all together. I don’t think many of us did at first. I actually never have.
After a few minutes I started to comprehend a bit what we were watching. My daughter stood in the corner of the room for a very long time and I switched the TV from fuzzy channel to fuzzy channel trying to soak up the latest information from every news source I could find. They were all reporting almost the same information and no one seemed to have an edge so I settled on CBS and left it there because that was the one channel that wasn’t as fuzzy as the others.
Like millions of others we then saw the second plane hit the second tower. It was at this moment that I believed we were under attack by a foreign country. I was literally paralyzed. When news came about another plane hitting the Pentagon and a plane crash in Pennsylvania, I absolutely knew it had to be an attack by a foreign country and I fully anticipated reports coming from Chicago, San Francisco, and all other major cities. I called my mother and told her to turn on her TV then I called my son and told him to turn on his radio or to get online. (He did not, and still does not, have cable. His TV is only connected to a DVD player. Because of 9/11 he called his cable company and had it installed for a period of about a year then once again had it disconnected. He did this purely for escape route information.)
There are many more details of my personal memory of the 9/11 events that unfolded but that is the gist of it. It was scary but the news reporters were doing their very best to calm an entire country and in fact the entire world. We all know what can happen if we lose our grip. There are so many nuclear warheads in existence that we could easily obliterate our entire world population in an afternoon. That of course was my initial thought, that this was the beginning of the nuclear holocaust we had all been dreading. I had no idea what to do or where to go. My family and friends were spread out all over the country and I was miles away from my own home. So many of us were stuck somewhere away from home during that event. People on vacations, people on business trips, people in other parts of the world, far far away from “home.”
Over the following months and years people in the news media urged us to move on, to put it all behind us, to remember those who lost their lives and to be brave and pay attention to those around us. Life had gone back to almost normal it seemed. We had to show the evil planners of this horrific event that Americans were strong and could continue with life no matter what they threw at us. We had to pay a price for this event with the loss of some of our civil liberties as they relate to privacy and the government soon began clandestine investigations of anyone and everyone all under the umbrella of the newly formed Homeland Security Act of 2002. Few complained then but since then more intrusions have taken place and now people are beginning to think we may have lost too much and we may not get it back again.
I watch old movies and occasionally see the Twin Towers in many of those movies. The moment I see them I am filled with sadness. When I see the Pentagon on the news I feel a little catch in my stomach. If I even hear the word Pennsylvania in any report I catch my breath. 9/11 has affected me in much the same way Pearl Harbor affected my parents. My mother has never forgotten Pearl Harbor and I can’t seem to move on from 9/11. Each year as the formerly happy period of the month approaches a small cloud follows me around until this very day, September 11. The day before my mom’s birthday, and two days before my son’s birthday. I can’t move on. Just sitting here writing about it should be helpful and cathartic but instead it’s dredging up profound feelings of sadness for the loss and confusion about the truth. I do not believe we know the truth. Maybe that’s why I can’t “move on.”
There are hundreds of conspiracy theories about the events of 9/11. I do believe Osama bin Laden was the figurehead and a major player but perhaps with help from Iran or Libya or Yemen or Lebanon or all of them and more--and let us not forget that 15 of the murderers were renegades from Saudi Arabia, our “friends.”
I’ve spent way too much time reading the theories and some are simply ludicrous and some have science behind them. Some conspiracy theorists claim the buildings did not collapse just because of the crashing planes but were further demolished through the use of explosives (planted weeks or months prior to the plane attacks) much like we sometimes see when old buildings are demolished. I once viewed a Twin Tower video where the narrator highlighted each explosion on each floor about halfway down in the buildings. But this theory is rejected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and by the American Society of Civil Engineers who both concluded that the jets filled with fuel and flying at high speeds and the subsequent fires were solely responsible for the total demolition of the buildings. Not all of the engineers agree with the official conclusion. In fact, people in the know regarding technology and explosives have continuing doubts.
Then there are theories and official conclusions that state our security agencies knew “something” was going to happen (see 9/11 Commission Report below in its entirety) of an enormous magnitude but the when, where and how of it escaped them. Security agencies in the world are aware if we flush our toilets so I don’t believe that for a minute. I don’t know why they didn’t move into action to prevent the disaster but as we all know, government moves in mysterious ways, and frequently binds up and doesn’t move at all. There are even theories that aliens from outer space directed bin Laden. There are theories that it was the beginning of the Biblical Armageddon.
Sometimes I wish I was a fanatical conspiracy theorist. That way I could devote my life to ferreting out others like myself and live in a fog of mystery and fear. But I’m not. I’m too analytical to believe in almost anything. If I can’t comprehend a fact, a hardcore scientific fact, I don't rest. That’s what I want and that’s not happening.
There are also many “coincidences,” perhaps as many coincidences as there are conspiracy theories. One is that Al-Qaeda’s Mohammed Atta’s luggage (actual physical leader of the attack) didn’t make it to his flight and papers were later “discovered” listing all of the murderers. It’s a fantastic neat little coincidence that this found luggage provided “factual information” on who was behind this atrocity. Sort of wrapped it all up in a nice tidy bow. Lost his luggage, his luggage had the list of who did it, case closed. Oh, for Pete’s sake. Who would believe that? That sounds like the script of a bad spy movie. I don't doubt it was found but I do doubt its creation.
The FBI investigation into the attacks was the largest and most complex investigation in the history of the FBI. Because of interrogations of U.S.S. Cole bombing suspects in Yemen, the FBI linked the hijackers to al-Qaeda. They determined that al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden, had sole responsibility for the attacks. Author Laurie Milroy in an article in the conservative political magazine The American Spectator in 2006 theorized that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his family are the primary architects of 9/11.
The Inspector General of the CIA reviewed the CIA's pre-9/11 performance and stated CIA officials did not do enough to monitor increasing threats of terrorism, including failing to stop two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they entered the United States. Everyone knew those two were up to no good. There are or were teens in Guantanamo who may or may not know anything about the past, present, or future, but for all the scandal coming from Gitmo very little concrete information has ever been divulged to the public. We have only learned about methods of interrogation and more theories about how those methods do or do not work.
And on it goes. If we spend even one hour researching the events of 9/11 it becomes clear immediately that something just isn’t right and there is no real conclusion other than the true story is fragmented and lacking and not conclusive. Even if we read and view only the agenda based media they truly don’t have manageable conspiracy theories on all that happened before, during, and after the catastrophe. Or what lies ahead. Usually they just make things up to suit their causes but they have never come up with much of a theory either. Except that going to Iraq would solve the entire matter and we all know how that has worked out. What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. We were in a feeding frenzy and lashed out at Iraq, our old thorn in the side.
On 9/11 over 3,000 people lost their lives, and over 6,000 were injured. Many of the dead and injured were heroes trying to help suffering people in the buildings and on the streets and each other as they succumbed to fumes, falling debris, fire, and were trapped in stairways. That’s over 9,000 people and each person had a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a daughter, a son, a husband, a wife, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, a niece, a nephew, a friend, a pet. The loss is unfathomable and I for one am not going to get over it and I’ll never stop feeling sadness and pain for everyone lost on and after September 11 and also for all the lives that are being lost in Iraq (over 4,000 U.S. deaths) and Afghanistan (U.S. deaths 1275) every day chasing the elusive Osama bin Laden, one cog in a huge unknown wheel. I, for one, just do not believe that’s all there is to it.
(You’ll need really strong coffee or hard liquor to get through it, but give it a try. I read it once a year.)
Muslims shouldn’t be living in daily hell with hate directed at them everywhere they go. Muslims didn’t do this. Evil men did this and they used their sacred religion to justify murdering innocent people and causing hate and fear in the world. Throughout the history of humanity people have used their religions to justify their evil ideas and deeds. Religion is powerful and easy for people to use and abuse—and to be used. We cannot allow that to happen by giving in to hate. We can’t blame an entire religion or people for the acts of murderers and fanatics. We need to remember the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, continuing ethnic cleansing and purging (often within the same faith, faction against faction), and let us not forget the Nazis who killed millions of Jews and Christians and anyone else they hated. Hating entire groups of people because of their religion can lead to cleansing. That isn’t who we are.
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