Never Forget
With the events of Hurricane Katrina bombarding our thoughts, prayers, and emotions these past two weeks, our forefront is filled with poverty, homelessness, and water damage; all real concerns facing both the Gulf Coast and America for a long time to come.
Yet another sad note to this national tragedy is that it fell on the eve of the 4 year anniversary of the attacks from September 11, 2001, overshadowing an event that has propelled us into a new era in our lives that will forever be stained in our hearts as horrifying and heroic.
I had all but forgotten the day be 9/11 until I sat down to the television after a birthday dinner for Heather's grandmother, in which I didn't so much as acknowledge the day as I said grace, and found The Flight that Fought Back on the Discovery Channel, a documentary on the United flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, PA.
Even after I became intrigued by the title and selected it from the guide menu, I still hadn't put it all together that today was in fact the anniversary of the landmark attack on America, and it wasn't until a few minutes into the program that the whole thing began to sink in. I watched in sadness, and amazement, as actual recordings and family testimonials recounted the painstaking details from just one of the 4 flights that was raped by cowards, and how the plane crashed inverted at 580mph into a field only 18 minutes away from downtown DC.
I watched how 4 middle-eastern disgraces to humanity lied to passengers and made sure the plane crashed to the ground after the heroes from that flight thwarted their attempt to carry out a mission, a dilusioned excuse of a mission to attack US landmarks of power and honor to our country, and having failed still making sure those passengers would die, completely contradicting everything they were supposedly out to do in the name of their God. I listened as heroes arose threw the headsets of family and emergency service telephones as they accepted their mission, and their fate, not allowing what had happened to the 3 earlier flights happen once again.
And as I listened to the actual passenger recordings saying goodbye to loved ones, wishing them love, telling them not to worry, and to take care of the children, and listening to the control tower recordings of the screams from the cockpit as those fathers and sons and husbands and brothers broke down their fear and attacked the terror with furious resolve, unarmed and unprepared, screeches of pain piercing through the headsets of United Control as box-cutters and sharpened pocket-knives slashed those men as they made a desperate attempt, a last stand, to protect everyone but themselves, including this country. Their was a lot of love lost that day, in all of us, but after listening to those tapes it was reassuring to know God filled that fuselage and brought a comfort and calm to 40 people (half of which were from NJ) that no other power could possibly do to allow so many to act so rationally and unselfishly at such traumatic times.
I remember just after the attacks, you couldn't shake the pillar of strength this united country formed, and we stood behind our President as he vowed to take vengeance on terrorists and those harboring such, and so began a crusade that a rational human would realize will take years to develop and may never end. And so our altered lives went on, mourning friends and family lost in the attacks, like Mark Bavis, an NHL hockey scout and great family friend who hit the 2nd tower from the Boston flight. Hearing accounts of the personal close calls and lists of acquaintances lost subsided, memorials were erected, and American pride still stood tall.
Four years later the question you have to ask is where it went? What happened to the pride and passion this country had, the fire that had every other nation in the world wanting to be our ally? We all remember exactly where we were when we got the news of the attacks that morning, as clear as day, yet for some reason a lot of people have repressed certain memories, put that fire out, want the troops removed, and taken down their flag.
It's truly a shame in this great country that the tide of compassion and strength is an event-spurred, short-lived one that takes tragedy or an election to create, and that we lose sight of the greater good until we're asked to respond via an attack or natural disaster. Then, and only then does the majority get onto the caring-and-giving-is-good bandwagon until the media decides the ratings are no longer worthy of the reporting, and the celebrities retreat to their mansions having never actually given any money of their own and the dis-banding of America begins, usually it's some POS public figure creating the wall of us-against-us vs. The us-against-them we see during the unification period.
The most incredible difference between 9/11 and Katrina was the way the people responded under intense situations; we took for granted that the people of 9/11 handled themselves and the situation so well; I'm sorry Katrina victims didn't use it as model behavior. The North East? Who would have thought. Forgeta bout it!
www.honorflight93.org
Yet another sad note to this national tragedy is that it fell on the eve of the 4 year anniversary of the attacks from September 11, 2001, overshadowing an event that has propelled us into a new era in our lives that will forever be stained in our hearts as horrifying and heroic.
I had all but forgotten the day be 9/11 until I sat down to the television after a birthday dinner for Heather's grandmother, in which I didn't so much as acknowledge the day as I said grace, and found The Flight that Fought Back on the Discovery Channel, a documentary on the United flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, PA.
Even after I became intrigued by the title and selected it from the guide menu, I still hadn't put it all together that today was in fact the anniversary of the landmark attack on America, and it wasn't until a few minutes into the program that the whole thing began to sink in. I watched in sadness, and amazement, as actual recordings and family testimonials recounted the painstaking details from just one of the 4 flights that was raped by cowards, and how the plane crashed inverted at 580mph into a field only 18 minutes away from downtown DC.
I watched how 4 middle-eastern disgraces to humanity lied to passengers and made sure the plane crashed to the ground after the heroes from that flight thwarted their attempt to carry out a mission, a dilusioned excuse of a mission to attack US landmarks of power and honor to our country, and having failed still making sure those passengers would die, completely contradicting everything they were supposedly out to do in the name of their God. I listened as heroes arose threw the headsets of family and emergency service telephones as they accepted their mission, and their fate, not allowing what had happened to the 3 earlier flights happen once again.
And as I listened to the actual passenger recordings saying goodbye to loved ones, wishing them love, telling them not to worry, and to take care of the children, and listening to the control tower recordings of the screams from the cockpit as those fathers and sons and husbands and brothers broke down their fear and attacked the terror with furious resolve, unarmed and unprepared, screeches of pain piercing through the headsets of United Control as box-cutters and sharpened pocket-knives slashed those men as they made a desperate attempt, a last stand, to protect everyone but themselves, including this country. Their was a lot of love lost that day, in all of us, but after listening to those tapes it was reassuring to know God filled that fuselage and brought a comfort and calm to 40 people (half of which were from NJ) that no other power could possibly do to allow so many to act so rationally and unselfishly at such traumatic times.
I remember just after the attacks, you couldn't shake the pillar of strength this united country formed, and we stood behind our President as he vowed to take vengeance on terrorists and those harboring such, and so began a crusade that a rational human would realize will take years to develop and may never end. And so our altered lives went on, mourning friends and family lost in the attacks, like Mark Bavis, an NHL hockey scout and great family friend who hit the 2nd tower from the Boston flight. Hearing accounts of the personal close calls and lists of acquaintances lost subsided, memorials were erected, and American pride still stood tall.
Four years later the question you have to ask is where it went? What happened to the pride and passion this country had, the fire that had every other nation in the world wanting to be our ally? We all remember exactly where we were when we got the news of the attacks that morning, as clear as day, yet for some reason a lot of people have repressed certain memories, put that fire out, want the troops removed, and taken down their flag.
It's truly a shame in this great country that the tide of compassion and strength is an event-spurred, short-lived one that takes tragedy or an election to create, and that we lose sight of the greater good until we're asked to respond via an attack or natural disaster. Then, and only then does the majority get onto the caring-and-giving-is-good bandwagon until the media decides the ratings are no longer worthy of the reporting, and the celebrities retreat to their mansions having never actually given any money of their own and the dis-banding of America begins, usually it's some POS public figure creating the wall of us-against-us vs. The us-against-them we see during the unification period.
The most incredible difference between 9/11 and Katrina was the way the people responded under intense situations; we took for granted that the people of 9/11 handled themselves and the situation so well; I'm sorry Katrina victims didn't use it as model behavior. The North East? Who would have thought. Forgeta bout it!
www.honorflight93.org
posted by Jonathan at 12:45 AM
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