none wrote:
> I live in Washington State, and so when my clock radio woke me that
> morning, it was an awakening to a changed world. I had never before been
> fully aware of the true depth of the hatred that some barbarian
> "civilizations" have oh-so-carefully cultivated toward the US. That they
> would gleefully murder almost three thousand people of all nationalities
> and cultures simply because they happened to be in a large building in
> America - and for what?

Which barbarian civilization are you referring to? The attacks were not
sent forth from any nation. They were the product of a group of radicals
whose members, true to radical front form, espouse someone else's
arbitrary rhetoric and invest little of their own intellect into their
actions as members of that group.



> Some captured terrorists claimed it to be
> retaliation for Pres. Clinton's cruise-missile assault on terrorist
> training camps in Afghanistan and the Sudan earlier, which in turn were
> said to be in retaliation for several terrorist attacks on US
> Embassies... Sounds almost reasonable for a madman's excuse, until you
> remember that the World Trade Center was not a singularly "American"
> target. A lot of those who died there that morning were Islamic Arabs.
> That is the difference between a soldier and a terrorist. Whatever his
> cause, for good or evil, the difference is whether he fights against
> other soldiers, or he deliberately targets and kills innocent civilians.

The WTC was a singularly America target. It was an extreme monument to
American idealism under attack by a group targeting American idealism.
The attackers were not a nation's fighting force warring against another
fighting force.

That point was well established long ago, and still so many refuse to
get it. It's astonishing how many people think it is and has always been
about Iraq and Saddam Hussain.



> I made it through that day and the days after, like a robot, doing my
> job and getting by as best I could. It wasn't until I heard the first
> airplane take off from a small local airfield, and watched that little
> turbo-prop twin climbing like a homesick angel... That I finally fell to
> my knees and cried.
>
> "It's over." I thought, And I would give all that I am and all that I
> have to prevent it happening again.

I tend to be dismissive of those who went "on autopilot," "walked around
in a daze" or "a haze" or any other manner of bludgeoned existence in
the days following the attacks, unless of course they had friends and/or
family involved in it or experienced it personally. It was shocking and
certainly effecting when it happened, but it's extreme drama to insist
that the shock carried on as a personal matter for weeks on end when one
was not even a third-hand involved party. Most people as far removed as
that carried on immediately and recovered rapidly. Sometimes, someone
would mention a sudden feeling of guilt when they realized that they had
recovered so well they had forgotten all about it as they went about
their lives very normally.

So understand why I gag when I see "I finally fell to my knees and
cried" and "I would give all that I am and all that I have," especially
this late in the game.