Not So Sweet Sixteen
As Irma pounds the hell out of the Southeast today, it's a bit hard - no, it's impossible - not to let the memory stray back to the man-made catastrophe of sixteen years ago. Late in the evening of Sunday, September 9, 2001, I gave my brother-in-law, Bob Borski, a ride to his home in Brooklyn. At around ten o'clock we passed just under the Twin Towers. I hadn't been that far downtown at night in a decade-or-so. I remember thinking how beautiful they looked towering over the night sky of Manhattan. Would George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue have sounded any different had those buildings existed in 1924? The 1993 terrorist assaut on the World Trade Center was still a fresh memory. I speculated to Bob the damage a privately-owned D-10, it's aisles racked with 55 gallon drums of gasoline could do. It never occurred to me that a commercial airliner would do the trick quite handily.
Forty-eight hours later, those buildings were gone forever.
The horror of September 11, 2001 has faded like the smoke that lingered over New York City for so many days afterward. I'm lucky in that I didn't lose any loved ones. My cousin, Patricia Cullen, who was working in one of the towers, barely escaped with her life. For about four hours we thought that she didn't make it. She was finally able to get through to us and let us know that she was safe and sound. The relief was palpable. Of course the families of many others wouldn't be as lucky as ours. My other brother-in-law, Jack Dermigny. lost his cousin Dan. The brother of my pal, Joe Stark, was one of the scores of firefighters who went into the towers, never to emerge. September 11, 2001 was that kind of day.
America's luck ran out on that day. Throughout all of our history, whenever we were confronted with a national trauma, the United States had been blessed with a leader at the helm who was able to guide the ship of state through the crisis with wisdom and clarity. Within months, in spite of the mass good will that was directed at him, it became clear what a mistake it had been to elect George W. Bush as president of the United States. His complete incompetence has been foreshadowed only by the corrupt and disastrous administration of Donald Trump. After nearly eight months of Trump, Bush is starting to look like Franklin Roosevelt. Never did I dream that things would get this weird. Did you? Hindsight is a funny thing, isn't it?
By noon on the day of the attack, all civilian aircraft were grounded. Late that night, for reasons I cannot remember, I found myself walking a deserted street in front of the commons of the college I had attended over two decades before. It was there that I happened upon an old girlfriend. Of course, we were discussing the atrocity of that day when, from out of nowhere, the sky of Middletown, New York was jolted by the roar of what I assumed (and hoped) to be a military jet. Although invisible to us, it was obvious that it was flying at a low altitude. After a few minutes, we gave each other a hug in the darkened street and went on our separate ways. It was such a surreal ending of what had been a completely surreal day.
Sixteen years after the fact, 9/11 is still too depressing to think about. The fact that the American people have foolishly turned over their government to incompetents who don't believe in government makes a terrorist attack on the scale of what happened on that day (or much worse) almost inevitable. This is the grave that the inmates of Idiot Nation have dug for themselves.
Have a lovely day!
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
SUGGESTED READING:
Trump's Assault on 'Dreamers' Might Work Politically
by Matt Taibbi
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-trumps-assault-on-dreamers-might-workpolitically-w501352?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=090917_12
As is always the case, Taibbi is on top of it.
posted by Tom Degan @ 9:36 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
Tom Degan: "The fact that the American people have foolishly turned over their government to incompetents who don't believe in government makes a terrorist attack on the scale of what happened on that day (or much worse) almost inevitable."
Tom, you can bet there will be more false flags to come -- especially under this corrupt and maligned administration.
I like what you have written. Like you, I remember exactly where I was when 9/11 happened. I have to say, though, that a rabbi I know (he had a full career of 30 years working for the gummint in DC bt -before trumpf) who went to NYU feels that the towers were a middle finger to the world - especially the arabs. Why celebrate kapitalism as it was practiced here in amerika? After all, they are tearing down other monuments, too, aren't they? And murder (and slavery) was going with that, too, right?
You know what the WORST part about 9-11 is? OUR ATTITUDE.
England had a "9-11" every day for 5 years. What did they do? THEY GOT ON WITH THEIR LIVES!!! Of course they fought against Hitler, but they didn't let Hitler WIN by changing them.
We got hit ONCE and now we are paranoid xenophobes, willing to spend TRILLIONS over the ILLUSION of stopping "terrorism". It's all about SYMBOLS now, since we hate those who USE their rights while worshiping the SYMBOL that allegedly represents them.
bin Laden said it himself. He doesn't have to beat America militarily. He will beat us FINANCIALLY. We'll destroy our economy ouselves trying to stop terrorism with a military.
Tom
Do you believe that 9-11 was an inside job?
No, I do not believe that 9/11 was an inside job.
I do not think the US government planned or carried out 9-11.(Bush certainly didn't have the intellect) I think they lied to us about who did and why, and I think they used it to political advantage to get support for the Iraq invasion that was already planned. They used it to take away many freedoms we used to enjoy, minor though they seem. And They used it to make SOME of us paranoid and xenophobic so they could promote the "Let's make America White again" movement the Kochs have lusted after for so long. It was also VERY convenient that the ONL:Y buildings to "fall" were the ones owned by Larry Silverstien, and it's obvious that a MISSILE hit the Pentagon, conveniently on the ONE SIDE that had just been renovated to survive a....wait for it...MISSILE ATTACK. it's also interesting that of the 80+ vdeotapes that were confiscated from businesses and highways surrounding the area, the ONLY one we've EVER seen is the blurry "It could be anything" shot from the Pentagon parking ramp.
I think "major Clucky" is an OUTside job" OUTside the realm of rationality and a nutjob.
Bill, the only "monuments" that are being removed are those that celebrate TREASON and BIGOTRY.
Mozart, AKA, not the sharpest pencil in the box.
No one cares what you think.
Mozart, regarding almost everything you wrote concerning 9/11, I agree. I do believe the red flag event was extraordinarily complex -- both operationally and technologically -- and involved people very high in both government and in the private sector. More importantly, the desired outcome allowed many to profit handsomely -- both immediately, through insurance payouts and securities fraud, and in the long-term, through another addition to the military-industrial-complex -- namely, the "surveillance" tag being added to the notorious deceptive duo which Eisenhower forewarned us about in his farewell address.
As the saying goes, follow the money. As with all crimes, there's a motive and a profit. This one was no different.
Chris Columbus committed treason?
9/11 was a lot more than a few buildings falling down, it was Americas falling from grace. As Chaney so aptly put it"We went to the dark side." 9/11 was the "Perl Harbor Event" needed to catalyze America to get on a war footing. This was all laid out in The Project for a New American Century, a Neo Con road map for world domination where we would overthrow five Middle East countries in seven years.
Oddly enough almost two decades later we are still following that psychopathic road map no matter what the costs.
9/11 was the beginning of the end of the US being the foremost nation on earth, in the near future our fortunes will change dramatically. We are rapidly losing ownership of the worlds reserve currency, it is about 60 % and falling. China will take it over and then our 20 Trillion debt will make life much harder from then on.
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