Remembering the Attack

Image courtesy of US Navy, public domain

It's been 8 years now since a group of Islamic extremists brought down the twin towers, extinguishing the flames of 3500 individuals. In this time, there have been two major military conflicts and several minor ones, two presidencies, and great shifts, spectacular shifts, in America's self-image. The fight continues, with both groans and hoorahs, with machine guns and with words and thought, with young men of uniform and old men in the halls of congress, and with many dreams and thoughts flowing through on this forboding September day.

I was only 13 at the time the towers were struck. A deep despair came over me as I saw the destruction, the kind that most will maybe feel twice or three times in a lifetime and I only felt that day. I was jubilant at the actions of what seemed to be an intelligent capable president leading a nation during hardship.

The wars came, his popularity sank, his tongue was tied against an opposition all too sensitive to his greatest weakpoints. The economy leaked and then rose, Enron happened, Iraq rose, sank, then rose again, and all in all the great machine of history kept churning along. Some were lost, some were found, some were won, and some were destroyed. This is for all those who died that day and all that this country has been through since then.