9/11--Five Years Later

Where were you when it happened? Like the folks of my parents generation, who remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, we remember where we were when the Twin Towers came down and the Pentagon was hit.

I was in the middle of only my third week at my new job at the Beach, and I remember walking out on the floor of the big furniture store where I worked and seeing several people gathered around one of the televisions. To my horror, I saw one of the towers on fire and then I saw footage of a plane crashing into that tower. Fear gripped much of our office, since being near a military installation, many of the workers there had husbands or other family who would likely be put on alert, and not many were sure what was going on. As the events of that day unfolded, I'm sure that most everyone in America felt numb--especially those in New York and Washington--by the end of the day.

But are we still affected by the images, by the thoughts of what happened? Are we still resolved, as a nation, to fight against this terrorist plotting? I'm not so sure we just haven't moved on (all excepting those who experienced first-hand the treachery of that day, or were directly affected by it), almost dismissing the danger.

I watched the "Path to 9/11" special on ABC last night, and I'd have to say it was very interesting--after all, it was a movie, so while events portrayed were based on actual events, there were fictional scenes. But the thing that stuck out in my mind more than anything else was this (and in this I echo a sentiment Michael Medved made in a radio show of his last week): I wish I would have taken the terrorist threat more seriously. In the special, they do an EXCELLENT job of tying together the first WTC bombing, the embassy bombings, and the Cole in leading up to 9/11. It seems it took the events that happened on 9/11 for America to realize what the objective of the Al-Qaida terrorists was--if the events, for the most part, are true as they took place in the movie, it would seem that parts of our government was grasping the threat, but as big as our government is, with all our agencies, departments, sub-departments and sub-sub departments, we did not get the right people to grasp the big picture.

I'm not going to stand here and blame the previous administration for not doing this or that, because even with the movie, we won't know the whole story (though I see as very credible the proffered evidence that we didn't take the chance to get Bin Laden when we could have). There was a very stark moment in the movie last night, when a CIA operative stated that in war we had to go find terrorists and destroy them and their property, and the response? It's a law and order problem.

This is a war that constrains us, because we are fighting in a manner that would be conventional, in the sense that we are dressing up soldiers in uniforms trying as hard as possible not to kill innocents, while the terrorists intentionally blend in with their surroundings and do not blink an eye to kill innocents, if it will serve their purpose. They're not playing by the same rules, and they know it.

But beyond all this political and social commentary, simply remember this day, and remember the families that were left behind in the aftermath of this tragedy. Pray that they would be drawn into the fold of Christ, and be comforted.