Monday, September 11, 2006

9/11


I think I'll just leave this space open today for your comments, your reflections on this day. Where were you? What were you doing? What most stands out in your memory of that day five years ago?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I started putting this here, then it became a thread at my blog, but I am going to post it here anyway.

I have been surfing today to the political comment blogs and I am really saddened by what I have seen. The subject for most discussion there is whether 9/11 was more Clinton's fault or Bush's fault.

This is ABC's contribution to the debate. People are almost pretending like Clinton was flying one plane into a tower and Bush was flying the other or something. Can't we put the Left/Right divide away for one day? Just one?

Five years ago I saw my country come together like I had never seen before. I never thought we could do it, but we did and we forgot. We were one nation for a few weeks five years ago.

That is pretty much all I can think of today.

Serena said...

Were you in Germany at that time, Steve? I thought it was a tragic accident, too, until the second plane hit on live TV. At that moment, it became clear that it was intentional and that war had been declared by somebody.

Serena said...

That's just damned sad, Kan. And wholly ridiculous. Neither Clinton nor Bush was to blame for what happened. I don't care much for Bush. He strikes me as not all that bright (always has), but 9/11 was no more his fault than it was any other American's. The blame lies squarely on a bunch of Islamic fundamentalist zealots who hate the West and everything it stands for. It wouldn't have mattered who was President at the time, no more than it will matter who is President in the future. They've declared jihad on the West and they're just going to keep on coming at us until something happens to smash them back into their caves where they belong.

One of the things they hate about us is our right to say what we think, whether it's right or wrong. I happen to think the political pundits assigning blame other than where it belongs are wrong. I'm sure they think you and I are wrong. Nobody has the power to shut us up, though. Yet.

Anonymous said...

It just means that some people will never learn. People like you and I already knew the lessons of 9/11 on 9/10. We treated everyone with respect. The rest learned it by 9/12, but forgot it all by 9/17.

RainbowDemon1952 said...

Serena, I clearly remember five years ago today, with about an hour left before I had to leave for work, I was listening to the radio and surfing the web, when the news lady, Kelly Vaughn, announced that a plane had just struck the world trade center.
I got up from my desk, walked into the living room, turned on CNN, and saw the flames coming out of the tower. I picked up the phone, called my wife at work to tell her what had happened, and just as I was hanging up the phone, thinking what I was watching was an accident, plane number two flew past the first tower and plowed into the second one, blowing up in a ball of fire.
I stood in disbelief, knowing then that neither of these were an accident. I called my wife back, called her minister, and left immediately for work, and told my co-workers what had just happened.
At that time, we were not permitted to have a radio on at work, but I grabbed one out of my cabinet, plugged it in, and that was all radio station was playing at the time.
Almost every customer I had come in that day was in shock, horror and disbelief. Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of customer traffic that day, because most were either at home glued to the news, or they were either listening to the news or watching the news on tv at work.
More than one time that day I heard the comment that our lives would never be the same again. How true those words were.
And then there was the bunch of capitalistic creeps who ran gas stations in Indianpolis who jacked the price of gas up to $5 a gallon, just because they thought they could get away with it.
WRONG! Thankfully our state attorney general charged each of the owners with price gouging charges and they turned the extra amount of money they hauled in that fateful day over to charity.
I've never placed blame on anyone other than the necrophilic bastards that hide behind the excuse of their "God" telling them to commit mass murder in "his" name.
Pacifist that I am, I would still love to see Bin Laden and his entire sick bunch of pathetic excuses for human beings tortured beyond words for their actions.
There, enough said. Thanks for giving me the space to vent, because this was actually going to be a blog for me today, and now, I don't feel the need to write one since I left my thoughts here with you and your readers to view.
God bless and thanks again!

Serena said...

Me, take away freedom of speech? Never! What I meant -- and perhaps expressed badly -- is that we each have our opinions on a given topic. My opinion may differ from someone else's, and somebody else might disagree with both of us. We all have the right to say what we think, though. It's one of our fundamental rights, and one the terrorists vehemently dislike. They'd be appalled that you and I as women dare to express a thought in public as well. I'm sure there is enough political blame to go around, on all sides, but, in the end, I don't think Americans can be blamed for what ultimately happened.

You're right -- we as a nation do have a short memory. Let's hope the next wave of terrorists isn't counting on that.

Serena said...

Good Lord, RD, jacking gas up to $5 a gallon? That's awful! Thankfully, I don't remember that happening around here in the aftermath.

I was already at work, going through a conference room with a TV on to get coffee when I saw the image of the smoke pouring from the first tower. I asked another woman in the room what had happened and she said it looked like a small plane had crashed into the WTC. Naturally, we thought it was a tragic accident. Until, still standing there, we watched the second plane hit the south tower. We knew then that it was no accident.

Nobody worked that day. Everybody sat glued to the TV in the conference room, through the hit on the Pentagon, the crash in PA, the falling of both towers, and all the other unimaginable events.

Bin Laden needs to be taken out, no question about it. Unfortunately, there are plenty of henchmen waiting to take over where he leaves off.

Serena said...

Not to worry, Lesia. Most days, I don't get around to blogging 'til pretty late. It usually depends on how my day is going. I do have something in mind so, who knows, maybe I'll get it up (reasonably) early.:)