Remembering 9/11

Mr. Bush...what part of "Osama bin Laden determined to attack the US" didn't you understand?



And why haven't you stopped al-Qaeda and caught bin Laden? Six years after Pearl Harbor we had won. Decisively. Six years after Pearl Harbor Hitler was dead and many of those responsible for atrocities brought to justice. Six years after 9/11, where is Osama bin Laden?



Imagine leaving home in the morning, voting in a primary election for mayor, catching the subway to work and starting your day. Imagine hearing strange noises, but thinking nothing of them. Then imagine hearing that the WTC was no more and desperately trying to reuinte your family, now scattered across a city in crisis with no subways running. That was six years ago.

Six years ago today, I was sitting in the same place, the NYU medical center (though a different part of the building). It was here in the NYU medical center that I heard the planes hit the WTC and wondered what those sounds were. It sounded like exactly like a semi-truck going too fast down the highway and hitting some bumps...that is what the 9/11 attacks sounded like. I looked up both times I heard that noise, looked out over the FDR highway and East River of NYC, saw nothing but the usual traffic, thought nothing more about it. It was only much later that I realized I had heard the planes hit.

My wife was under the WTC in the subway when the first plane hit. She knows this because the people who got on the next stop were in shock, in tears...they had just seen it happen. Not on TV, not hearing it second or third hand. They had just seen a jumbo jet slam into the WTC...live. My wife was among the first to know it happened because she heard about it from witnesses who were getting the hell out of there.

Six years ago today, I was trapped on Manhattan, with no route back to my home in Brooklyn. My daughter was at school back in Brooklyn. My wife and I were stuck in Manhattan all day. The streets of Manhattan pretty much shut down. Wave after wave of emergency vehicles barrelled downtown along the FDR highway...but few other cars were on any of the streets. Wave after wave of tired, shocked people walkied doggedly uptown along all the other streets. No one knew where they were going, they were just getting away from the disaster, moving uptown, wondering where was safe...wondering how to get home. We all needed to get away but didn't know where to go. We had no idea when or where the next attack would come. We were trapped on what was clearly a giant terrorist target.

I remember my co-worker never made it in that day. She had said goodbye to her husband and, uncharicteristicly, gone back to sleep. She awoke to images on TV of a plane hitting the exact spot where her husband worked. I called her repeatedly that day.

"Have you heard from him yet?"

"No."

"Don't worry. Everyone is getting out. He'll make it."

That was the first call. By the end of the day it was...

"Have you heard from him yet?"

"No..."

Then lame silence because we both knew that anyone who could get out was out. She had long ago realized that her husband was dead. Though it was a year later that they recovered a piece of him large enough to confirm his death.

Imagine kissing your husband goodbye, falling back to sleep, then waking up to that? Imagine having dinner with someone the night before, then slowly realizing the next day that he worked right where that plane hit.

People were wonderful. People handed water out to strangers. People talked to everyone, comforted everyone. We were united in adversity and tears. We already knew that most firestations had lost as many as half their numbers. We knew that the New York firefighters had just shown America and the world what true heroism was. New Yorkers were fearful, confused...but proud and united.

Six years ago today, my wife and I met up at my work. Since I worked at a medical center, we figured there would be emergency power, food, water, etc. at my work area should the worst happen. We had no idea what was coming next and it seemed like a medical center would be one of the safest places. How bad would things get? We had no idea.

Soon after we met the subways started running again. Late in the afternoon we finally escaped to our home.

It was early evening when we started walking from the train station in Brooklyn to pick up our daughter. We were directly under the smoke plume in our neighborhood. Six years ago today, the ashes of the WTC and those who died therein, fell on my skin on on my neighborhood. We realized at the time just what was hitting our skin and it was one of the strangest moments in our lives. Touching the ashes of all that...

Already America was starting to lash out at Muslims. But not in my neighborhood. My family chose that night to eat out at a Muslim owned restaurant in our neighborhood. It was full.

Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan (perhaps the only sane policy decision Bush ever made), my wife and I chose to eat at a local Afghan restaurant. It was empty. We asked the somewhat aloof owner how business was. He caught our sympathetic tone. He looked at us in despair and just said "Terrible." I am happy to say that business is still around six years later, having survived that terrible period.

I am not sure if I was a New Yorker before 9/11. I was afterwards. You can't go through that with a whole city full of people without becoming part of that city.

I write about this every year...and every year the frustration grows. Bush had been warned that it would happen but did nothing. Clinton had told him over and over again to watch out for bin Laden, and Bush did nothing. Why is Bush, the incompetent idiot who ignored direct warnings of the attacks, still in the White House?

Every year the frustration grows. Why is bin Laden still free? Why is al-Qaeda stronger than ever (according to our own government's intelligence reports)? Why is terrorism getting worse worldwide (according to Bush's own State Department)? What are we doing in Iraq? Why are we picking fights with Iran?

Every year the frustration grows. Why are firefighters who fought for America on 9/11 still dying with inadequate healthcare from the government? Why didn't mayor Giuliani, governor Pataki or Bush find some way to give the firefighters the equipment they needed so they could safely serve America? Why didn't Giuliani give the firefighters the proper equipment in the first place? Why have the Republicans cut so much funding to our first responders?

Every year the frustration grows. Why are our troops fighting the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time? Why didn't Bush give our troops the equipment they needed from the start? Why did the Republicans cut benefits to Veterans even as they started this massive war?

Every year the frustration grows, but what is worse this year than ever is the realization that Bush and Osama bin Laden are playing disgustingly similar games using disgustingly similar lies.

I recently wrote about the current march to war by belligerent and fanatical Bush and belliegerent and fanatical Iran as a crusade/jihad moment that could screw all of us. Bush and the Iranian president both view the world in a similarly extremist view where Holy War justfies all in its wake. For those of us who are just trying to get by and make the world better, this kind of fanaticism is disastrous.

But it strikes me that there is much more shared by Bush, along with his Republican supporters like McCain, Huckabee, Romney and Brownback, and fanatical Islamicists of all stripes. And the 6th anniversary of 9/11 shows clearly these similarities.

The White House is releasing its white washed report on the McCain/Bush/Lieberman surge as its memorial to 9/11.

Osama bin Laden is releasing his latest hate-video as his memorial to 9/11.

For both Osama bin Laden and the Republican Party, 9/11 is nothing but a further call to arms, a further call to Jihad or Crusade. For both Osama bin Laden and the Republican Party, the anniversary of 9/11 is little more than an opportunity to link the Iraq war with 9/11, a factually incorrect link that BOTH Bush AND Osama want you to make.

For Bush, the illegality, immorality and failure of the Iraq quagmire disappear if you make the false assumption that it has anything to do with 9/11. For Osama bin Laden, the disgusting barbarity and immorality of his 9/11 attack on the US disappear if you make the false assumption that Bush's illegal and immoral Iraq war somehow justifies in retrospect the 9/11 attacks.

For Bush's hardcore followers, mainly Fox News addicts...and Lieberman, Iraq somehow IS connected to 9/11. Even though there is not one single fact to back that assumption, many of them DO make that assumption and use it to justify a Crusade against all of Islam. Bush and the hardcore Republican Fox News addicts (and Lieberman) also link Iran to the 9/11 attacks, even though there is not one single fact to support that assumption. The TRUTH is that if you were to pick the three most mutually hostile Islamic groups around today, they would be Iraq under Hussein, Iran and al-Qaeda. The three represent vastly different Muslim ideologies that are mutually antagonistic. A true Machiavellian would have played the three off eachother to their mutual detrement. Instead, Bush has picked a fight with all three, tried to link all three, and in the process he has destroyed Iraq as a secular mililyary dictatorship and allowed it to split into two main rival factions: pro-Iranian Shi'ites, and Sunnis increasingly sympathetic to al-Qaeda. By ignoring facts and pursuing a fanatical Christian extremist agenda, Bush has in essence, as recently pointed out by Senator John Edwards, fallen into the precise trap laid for him by Osama bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden preached to Islam that the US was set on a Crusade against Islam and uses this to justify the 9/11 attacks. Of course before the 9/11 attacks this was certainly not true. When Bush invaded Afghanistan to get al-Qaeda and their ally, the Taliban, almost all of America and all of the world, including most of the Muslim world, supported it. Why? Because it was an appropriate act against a fanatical enemy that attacked us.

Then Bush attacked Iraq, one of the nations MOST antagonistic to al-Qaeda. And started picking fights with Iran (also antagonistic to BOTH al-Qaeda AND Iraq) and threw Syria in to boot. By picking fights with the Muslim groups most antagonistic to eachother, and outright calling it a crusade, Bush in essence proved Osama bin Laden right in the eyes of a majority of Muslims. Most Muslims around the world DO think Bush is on a Crusade against Islam, and thus feel sympathetic to Jihad.

Bush fell into Osama bin Laden's trap. That is why Osama bin Laden is JUST AS EAGER to perpetuate the lie that 9/11 and Iraq are linked as Bush, McCain, Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee, Brownback and Lieberman are. In all these cases, their Crusade/Jihad mentality is only justified to their supporters if this lie is believed.

Six years ago we were attacked. Six years after Pearl Harbor, America had won what was arguably the most destructive war in human history. We had won decisively. FDR led us from the horror of the attack, through the retooling for war and into the heart of war. Truman led us to the final victory.

What has Bush done?