We all have our memories of 9/11. I was working at the shop on Fulton Street when Caroline, my late wife, called to say an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I reminded her that a DC-3 had hit the Empire State Building during heavy fog during WWII, so this was probably just an accident. We retrieved the television from the office and set it up. No sooner than we’d turned it on the second plane hit. Then we all knew it was an attack – and just as quickly we all knew it was Muslim terrorists. We had a customer who was stuck in Denver that day. He couldn’t escape the city as all the rental cars had been taken. So he simply purchased a new car. I have a friend from my time with the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam who was working as a librarian for the Port Authority in Building Seven. He told me when the first plane hit he went to his supervisor and said, “I don’t know if it’s my Army training or I’m just a chickenshit, but I’m going home.” He was part way up Church Street when the second plane hit.
For a very brief period political differences were set aside while the government wrestled to assign blame to the shadowy terrorist group. Military action was taken and achieved some success, only to be abandoned for political concerns. Now we have tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of displaced persons seeking peace and a better life in Europe, and an avowed enemy racing to construct nuclear weapons. It is altogether a very different outcome from WWII when Roosevelt announced in his famous Pearl Harbor speech:
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
How times change.