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Five years ago...
Sep. 11th, 2006 10:29 amI slept through pretty much all of it. I was in college, classes didn't start for another week, and I was on the west coast to boot, so I didn't wake up that day until past 10am Pacific. My first clue that anything was odd was the faint sound of my roommate's TV on -- he never watched TV at that hour -- but I didn't actually know until he poked his nose out, saw I was awake, and told me to turn on the news, we were under attack. Oddly, I still feel guilty that I wasn't awake to see most of it live... irrational reaction, I know, but it's hard to react completely rationally to something like that.
I numbly watched TV and discussed the events of the day in various panicked online environments until 6pm that evening; I was finally dragged out of the apartment by an email on the church mailing list for an emergency prayer meeting. Spent an hour praying for the protection and recovery of New York, some sort of peace for the families of the victims, and wisdom for the nation's leaders. Then on the way home the radio started playing "Blue Skies" and I thought of the debris-clouded sky of Manhattan. And just like that the true weight of the day, which I'd been trying to ignore, finally hit me full force, and I had to pull over to the side of the road and sob.
It is still beyond my understanding how someone could do that. The Pentagon, I can see. It was a military location; hitting it disrupted military operations, and the people killed within were soldiers who signed on to die for their country... and for that matter fight the same people who hijack airliners. No less of an act of war, but still no less legitimate a target than, say, Pearl Harbor; the only things obscene about it were the choice of weapon (okay, not everyone can afford cruise missiles, but if there had been any way to get an empty plane, they should have used it) and the unprovoked nature of the whole thing. But the World Trade Center consisted of 3000 civilians working at their desks. Hit aircraft carriers. Hit military bases. Hit troops on patrol in Iraq. I don't like it, but it's still legit warfare. But deliberately targeting those you know to be civilians? What purpose does that even serve, other than to enrage those whom you attacked?
People can't understand why these people* hate us. We must have done something to them, they say. it must have been deserved. Do gay people who get beaten to death by homophobes do anything to deserve it? Did the victims of lynch mobs do anything to deserve it? Do abused spouses do anything to deserve it (no matter how much they believe they have)? It's hate, pure and simple.
And for all that, I still don't get it.
PS: As for the recent "docu-drama" business, I don't know enough about it to make a judgment call. I think it's too soon to the event to make dramas on the subject with any objectivity, so I won't watch; I skipped "World Trade Center" and "United 93" for the same reason. But if you want to view something on the subject today, watch this. No propaganda or politicization (the filmmakers were French), and everyone involved started the day thinking they were making a documentary about a rookie firefighter instead of a world-shattering event... but those people were THERE.
* DISCLAIMER: "These people" = Al Queda and similar. Not "all Muslims" or "all Arabs" or other sweeping generic categories; I mean those who actually hate us enough to kill 3000 of us because they can.
I numbly watched TV and discussed the events of the day in various panicked online environments until 6pm that evening; I was finally dragged out of the apartment by an email on the church mailing list for an emergency prayer meeting. Spent an hour praying for the protection and recovery of New York, some sort of peace for the families of the victims, and wisdom for the nation's leaders. Then on the way home the radio started playing "Blue Skies" and I thought of the debris-clouded sky of Manhattan. And just like that the true weight of the day, which I'd been trying to ignore, finally hit me full force, and I had to pull over to the side of the road and sob.
It is still beyond my understanding how someone could do that. The Pentagon, I can see. It was a military location; hitting it disrupted military operations, and the people killed within were soldiers who signed on to die for their country... and for that matter fight the same people who hijack airliners. No less of an act of war, but still no less legitimate a target than, say, Pearl Harbor; the only things obscene about it were the choice of weapon (okay, not everyone can afford cruise missiles, but if there had been any way to get an empty plane, they should have used it) and the unprovoked nature of the whole thing. But the World Trade Center consisted of 3000 civilians working at their desks. Hit aircraft carriers. Hit military bases. Hit troops on patrol in Iraq. I don't like it, but it's still legit warfare. But deliberately targeting those you know to be civilians? What purpose does that even serve, other than to enrage those whom you attacked?
People can't understand why these people* hate us. We must have done something to them, they say. it must have been deserved. Do gay people who get beaten to death by homophobes do anything to deserve it? Did the victims of lynch mobs do anything to deserve it? Do abused spouses do anything to deserve it (no matter how much they believe they have)? It's hate, pure and simple.
And for all that, I still don't get it.
PS: As for the recent "docu-drama" business, I don't know enough about it to make a judgment call. I think it's too soon to the event to make dramas on the subject with any objectivity, so I won't watch; I skipped "World Trade Center" and "United 93" for the same reason. But if you want to view something on the subject today, watch this. No propaganda or politicization (the filmmakers were French), and everyone involved started the day thinking they were making a documentary about a rookie firefighter instead of a world-shattering event... but those people were THERE.
* DISCLAIMER: "These people" = Al Queda and similar. Not "all Muslims" or "all Arabs" or other sweeping generic categories; I mean those who actually hate us enough to kill 3000 of us because they can.
