It’s been seven years, if you can believe it. And yet it still doesn’t seem real. Who doesn’t remember those awful days back in the Fall of 2001, when all sense of order and reason seemed to have burned up in the fireballs we could not help but watch over and over and over again? We were glued to the TV set, hour after hour, ostensibly to listen for further developments, but subconsciously desperate to hear that it wasn’t real, that it hadn’t happened.
I grew up on Long Island. I’d been to the Twin Towers (as we called the WTC) many times. I never thought they were especially attractive, but they added a sense of balance, like bookends, to the New York skyline. You had the Empire State Building and all of the midtown skyscrapers to the north, and you had the World Trade Center with the downtown skyline anchoring the south end. Ugly tough they were, the Twin Towers were as New York as the Brooklyn Bridge. I never in a million years imagined those towers would disappear over the course of a single sunny morning.
Because of my New York roots, it stands to reason that I’d have known some of the victims that day. I did. I had known Craig Blass from Kindergarten through high school graduation. He and I were not close friends, but we were almost always in the same classes. He died that day as an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald. By all accounts he would have suffered and died in such a violent manner that it’s difficult to imagine. A nephew of a close friend of my parents, Peter Genco, was also at Cantor Fitzgerald that day, and likely rode the flaming tower to the ground with Craig. That neither body was recovered beyond a small piece of bone speaks to the unfathomable horror of the way they died.
I remember the sudden helplessness I felt that day. I had dedicated my life to the defense of my country, yet I was completely powerless either to stop this thing or to exact retribution of any kind. Stories of mothers, sons, and even babies, killed in such a wanton, inhuman manner poured over me like an ocean. And there was nothing at all I could do about it. Later, the invasion of Afghanistan began, yet I was sidelined as a Master’s degree student at the Air Force’s postgraduate school. They didn’t need me no matter how badly I wanted to go. Finally, in 2003 I got my chance to participate in the “Global War on Terror.” However, I was sent not to Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden, but to Baghdad. These people had not attacked my country, so it didn’t feel the same. This was a different war to me. It felt good to see the Iraqi children wave to us and treat us as liberators, but in no way did my time in Iraq do anything to settle my score with bin Laden and al Qaeda.
These days I realize that nothing will un-do 9/11. Even if I personally captured bin Laden (and unlikely achievement for an Air Force meteorologist), it would not put 3,000 lives, two airplanes, and two towers back together. Instead, strangely, life went on. Seven years later, life really has gone on. Much of America has completely moved on, while those of us in the military are still wrestling with the unfinished business of two difficult wars. But on 9/12/01, the sun came up just as it always had. Eventually the smoke cleared.
It's tempting to imagine a world in which 9/11 didn't happen. But it did. And we have never been the same since.
I grew up on Long Island. I’d been to the Twin Towers (as we called the WTC) many times. I never thought they were especially attractive, but they added a sense of balance, like bookends, to the New York skyline. You had the Empire State Building and all of the midtown skyscrapers to the north, and you had the World Trade Center with the downtown skyline anchoring the south end. Ugly tough they were, the Twin Towers were as New York as the Brooklyn Bridge. I never in a million years imagined those towers would disappear over the course of a single sunny morning.
Because of my New York roots, it stands to reason that I’d have known some of the victims that day. I did. I had known Craig Blass from Kindergarten through high school graduation. He and I were not close friends, but we were almost always in the same classes. He died that day as an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald. By all accounts he would have suffered and died in such a violent manner that it’s difficult to imagine. A nephew of a close friend of my parents, Peter Genco, was also at Cantor Fitzgerald that day, and likely rode the flaming tower to the ground with Craig. That neither body was recovered beyond a small piece of bone speaks to the unfathomable horror of the way they died.
I remember the sudden helplessness I felt that day. I had dedicated my life to the defense of my country, yet I was completely powerless either to stop this thing or to exact retribution of any kind. Stories of mothers, sons, and even babies, killed in such a wanton, inhuman manner poured over me like an ocean. And there was nothing at all I could do about it. Later, the invasion of Afghanistan began, yet I was sidelined as a Master’s degree student at the Air Force’s postgraduate school. They didn’t need me no matter how badly I wanted to go. Finally, in 2003 I got my chance to participate in the “Global War on Terror.” However, I was sent not to Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden, but to Baghdad. These people had not attacked my country, so it didn’t feel the same. This was a different war to me. It felt good to see the Iraqi children wave to us and treat us as liberators, but in no way did my time in Iraq do anything to settle my score with bin Laden and al Qaeda.
These days I realize that nothing will un-do 9/11. Even if I personally captured bin Laden (and unlikely achievement for an Air Force meteorologist), it would not put 3,000 lives, two airplanes, and two towers back together. Instead, strangely, life went on. Seven years later, life really has gone on. Much of America has completely moved on, while those of us in the military are still wrestling with the unfinished business of two difficult wars. But on 9/12/01, the sun came up just as it always had. Eventually the smoke cleared.
It's tempting to imagine a world in which 9/11 didn't happen. But it did. And we have never been the same since.
