They are reading the names again this morning as they have every year since 9/11/2001. The same sadness, mourning the thousands of lives erased in a heartbeat. I’m still in shock as I remember that day. But I’m also perhaps more angry than I have ever been in the past 20 years as I listen to the names being read. The sight of Bruce Springsteen singing one of his songs at ground zero is sickening when it’s people of his political beliefs that have taken us completely back to being as much in danger of another terrorist as we were on 9/10/2001! Osama bin Laden has won the war in Afghanistan and the world’s largest terrorist training camp is back open for business.
I remember where I was and what I was doing on 9/11/2001 very clearly as everyone does. It was one of the most beautiful, clear, end of summer days I’d ever seen and my friend Johnny Brown and I and another hundred surfers were out early on Sandy Hook, NJ riding some waves. A few of the surfers that day had skipped going in to work at the World Trade Center and still suffer from “survivor guilt”. I was supposed to be on a local TV broadcast later that morning being interviewed about the “house call” medical practice I had started a few years earlier. I was getting dried off in the parking lot and the NYC skyline was crystal clear and standing in the distance like the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz. Johnny asked me what time it was and I said “8:45” and the world has never been the same since……although you could argue that it IS the same today. As you leave Sandy Hook National Seashore you crossed a draw bridge and as I left it was open. Traffic was stopped and I got out to chat with some fisherman on the bridge. Looking north we could see smoke billowing from the area of the two WTC’s. Sometimes there were fires in the swamps just behind Manhattan and the skyline would be superimposed in front of them. But today when I got back in the car the first reports of a plane having hit the north tower were coming in. By the time I got home and turned on the TV the second tower had been hit and the Pentagon shortly afterward. America was at war with terrorists from halfway around the world who had patiently and quietly gotten ready for nearly 3 years RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA to launch an attack that was as organized as Pearl Harbor. It’s my belief that the freezing of all air traffic probably aborted another dozen or so hijackings that WOULD have taken place had planes continued to take off.
I got dressed and headed down to the Highlands to NYC ferry terminal just knowing there would be hundreds if not thousands of injured escaping lower Manhattan by ferry. There were a dozen or so other local physicians there and nearly a hundred ambulances ready to triage survivors to surrounding hospitals………..but there were essentially no one coming in with serious injuries. Most coming in were people covered with dust and debris who needed their eyes irrigated…….the WORST were those in hysterics having seen people jumping to their certain deaths from the flames and smoke and Hell the WTC’s had become before they collapsed. By 5 PM that afternoon the triage area at the ferry began shutting down as it was clear that you either had survived and walked away…….or you had perished in many cases without a trace.
I lived across what’s called Raritan Bay and had a view of the NYC skyline. For weeks there was smoke rising and the familiar skyline containing the WTC’s was scarred forever. I had to keep my windows closed because the acrid smoke drifted south for weeks and would make me sick to imagine what I was smelling. Hundreds from NJ had been killed with around 50 cars left at the Middletown, NJ train station abandoned when their owners never came home. Everyone knew someone who hadn’t survived. I would read the newspaper at breakfast and cry as I read the heart wrenching stories….but it was ok because we ALL did.
So this morning when I hear the names being called out again it still brings tears to my eyes. Sadness…….but now more ANGER than I’ve had in 20 years. We’re now in JUST as dangerous a situation as we were on 9/10/2001. We’ve abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban. The same people we went to war against 20 years ago are now dictating terms of foreign policy to our lame demented President who ABANDONED AMERICANS in his rush to please the Taliban and leave “their” country. 2448 American lives GONE…..oh, excuse me…make that 2463 since we abandoned Bagram Airforce Base and let the Taliban dictate what Americans could leave. In the meantime ISIS is back and blew up an additional 13 U.S. Servicemen! Yes…..the same ISIS that President Trump had virtually obliterated are BACK! I assure you…..the beheadings won’t be far behind. MSM will try and tell you that ISIS is the enemy of the Taliban so it’s ok since they’ll tell you the BS line of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”…………..just another part of the absurdity of the times we’re living in. Afghanistan will quickly become the world’s #1 terrorist training ground once again.
I heard a few interviews with some college students who weren’t even alive on 9/11. They were asked how they thought we should remember that day 20 years later. They said things like “I think they should leave out the gruesome details”……Another said “I don’t think we should be blaming it on Islam”. Others said “we should avoid placing blame on any one group.” Imagine THIS brainwashed genius: “American exceptionalism is ‘rooted in a lot of colonialist and imperialist notions of how we should treat other people”. So WE’RE the bad guys????
And THIS is why I’m angry. America is likely in GREATER danger today than we’ve been in 20 years. Illegal immigrants are pouring over our borders. Unvetted Afghani’s are being flown in by the planeload. Terrorists are patient people…..they have eternity in their minds and don’t mind dying for the cause as they’re promised eternal life for their efforts. The first bombing of the WTC was in 1993…….the terrorists patiently waited 8 years before their next major attack. They’ll be back.
