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Where Were You on 9/11?
I will, in so many words, attempt to express my feelings about the great loss of the American people on the eleventh day of the month of September, 2001. The strike was hard, in our backyards, and there was no escaping it. For we fortunate people not in New York that day, we watched our families, our friends, our fellow Americans, suffering and under attack. The brave Americans in New York that day witnessed a sight that we all pray to never have to face.
From the moment I woke up that day, I felt wrong. The house was still and no one had come to wake me for school. As I walked down the hall to the living room I could very definitely hear urgency in the voices on the television, punctuated with small gasps from my mother. When I came into the room, I saw that my mother was crying and gripping her chest. All I saw was smoke and ash and panic.
In school that day, none of us did work. We sat in our assigned places and followed the news. Our teachers were worried, some of them had family at the towers. All day long, blacks and greys and whites and tears and pain. All day long. No one knew what to say. Every so often the teacher would give us commentary, making sure that we understood, the best we could, what was happing.
The incredible thing about Americans is our extreme resilience and ability to heal ourselves. The following days and weeks and months, the American people held their breathe, and hoped it was all some terrifying dream. There was a hole that would take years to fill.
And now, here we are eleven years later. A little shaken up and less innocent, but Americans all the same. We the people were tested that day in early September, and we showed our true colors, and they were bright.
God bless us all, the tried and true Americans, and while we are strong, and resilient, may we never be tested again at so great a cost.
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ABOUT Caleb Jacobo
Caleb Jacobo is an independent writer living in Southern California. He runs the New American Scholar Project, an orginization focused on making great works of literature accessible for everyone. You can find out more about Caleb at his blog at calebjacobo.com. You can find out more about the New American Scholar Project here thenasproject.org.
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By Green Shadow Cabinet
6 comments on "Where Were You on 9/11?"
September 12, 2012 3:37pm
A nice simple remembrance. I can say that upon learning of the events in New York and D.C and Pennsylvania that day, I had a moment of stark recall, (I almost said nostalgia which would be true but only in the strict definition of the the word, "the pain of remembering"), a day in November of 1963 sitting in a junior high school English class and having the teacher inform us that the President had been killed in Dallas. It had the weight of making me feel as though the world would now truly end. It did not. American did not collapse. There was no ensuing revolution in the streets, (that would come later with the killing of Dr. King), the economy resumed and I was still responsible for completing that English class.
Reflecting on 9/11, after recovering from the enormity of the crime, I understood that the greatest danger lie in what our governments response would now be. I was certainly suspicious that this would give an administration I already had no faith in, an opportunity to capitalize on this event for it's own ideological agenda, suspicions that proved to be correct and then some.
I perfectly understand why the large number of unanswered questions about the events of 9/11 has brought out the tin hat troops in droves, just like the JFK assassination did. I suspect few of us alive at the moment that 9/11 happened will live to hear the full truth,...... that's too bad. We're Americans and we CAN handle the truth even if our presumed leaders think otherwise.
September 11, 2012 3:25pm
Conspiracy theories aside, this was a horrible day for every freedom loving person in the world. The result of these attacks, without regard to who planned them an pulled them off, has put the US into a police state. We are no longer innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of our peers. We no longer have the right to travel freely about the country. We can be detained without charges, without a lawyer, and held indefinately. We have the SS at the airports, spy cameras on drones waiting to fly over our homes, and no right to privacy.
But I will never forget where I was on Tues. 11 Sept 2001 nor will I forget where I was supposed to be. Nor will I forget the National Guard Soldiers holding the M16's telling us that if we strayed from the defined "smoking" area we would be arrested and maybe shot. We were literally held hostage in the hotel. I will never forget the airline person who got me on one of the first planes flying (literally and it was not commercial) so I could get home to my kid ( hope they have been rewarded for it). I will not forget the older lady sitting next to her husband who was on a stretcher and said 'Look Floyd (not his real name) there are Air Force fighters escorting you to the hospital.' He was retired Air Force. The pilot sitting next to me said we needed to pray that the guy flying the plane flew perfectly or we would be shot down. I hope Mr and Mrs Floyd ended up okay. I knew a few of the crew members of the AA planes, I had co-workers in the Towers and Pentagon. My half sister flew for United but had not been on either plane. It was a bad day and little did I know it would only be the start of it.
September 11, 2012 11:46am
Caleb, Thank you for your remembrances of being a young, terrified student on that horrendous day.
To truly honor all those whose lives have been devastated by that day or lost or crushed in the wars of "retaliation" since, please look deeper into the reality of what actually took place that day, and help us all out by writing eloquently about what you honestly find, now that you have an adult mind with which to comprehend it.
September 11, 2012 11:35am
http://www.youtube.com/user/ae911truth
Sixty minutes every American should see and hear.
The only criticism I have with it--they plead for inquiries and the truth of what was behind the sudden collapse of the towers.
However, what we must face is that a government arm that could orchestrate this type of "Pearl Harbor" is so secret, powerful and unaccountable that we mere citizens cannot possibly mitigate what has become of our Republic since then. If the lessons from 9-11 eleven years later say anything, it's that for those awake and who care we are too impotent to prevent our government/corps from doing this again.
Don't forget the summer of 2008's economic plunder, either.
September 12, 2012 3:33am
They put their plan into action the moment of the SCOTUS Bush v Gore decision.
Look what has happened to "our" nation since then. It is obvious.
September 11, 2012 11:21am
In balance to this piece of fluff I suggest Dr. Paul Craig Roberts article over on the Global Research site titled "On 9/11 Doubts Were Immediate." Dr. Roberts was assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury and had high level security clearences; enough that he was in line to head the government should no higher offical survive an attack under his FEMA responsibilities. Guess we'll never know the truth...