A couple days ago, coupled with Paul Couturier's article "Where Were You That Day", I asked folks on Political Pistachio about their memories of 9/11. The response was fantastic. However, on that day, I did not relay my story about my own memories of 9/11.
In this post tonight I was considering writing about my anger regarding the U Visa, and how it is just another loophole to be taken advantage of by the criminals that jump our borders. The intention is noble, but the ramifications will be disastrous.
.
I also considered writing about an article titled "Operation Phantom Strike" that goes over, a lot, about the surge and the successes associated with current operations (successes the leftwing media, of course, will never tell you about).
.
John Stossel taking on Michael Moore regarding socialized medicine, and the disaster that would ensue in regards to our health system if socialized medicine were implemented, also buzzed around in my mind as a possible topic for tonight's post.
.
Chuck Schumer's remarks about the inability of American soldiers has had me pretty mad of late, so I thought about talking about that as well, tonight. Chuck's remarks were brought up last Saturday on my Political Pistachio Radio Show, by the way, by my guest, Andrea Shea King. One of my callers was Paul Couturier, an Iraq War Veteran, and his input added to an already tense conversation. Hugh Hewitt asked Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman about Chuck's remarks, and the exchange was interesting, indeed.
.
The ex-ACLU chief getting seven years for child porn was an option to write about, as was the Colorado man who is at risk for losing his job for these words: "Lawn Services Done With Pride! By an English Speaking American!" and how his battle is still raging on over a year after his troubles began.
.
A man in South Florida being ordered to remove his business from a particular location because he speaks English rather than Spanish, the recent Osama bin Ladin video, Al Qaeda expanding into North Africa, the Mexican Truckers on our roads, Move America Forward's road tour, Updates on the New York Islamic Academy (paid for with taxpayer funds), Hillary's ability to block release of a DVD that may hurt her campaign (well, the ability of those trying to protect her candidacy, should I say), a symbol of the coming Global One-World Government (or at least the North American Union, which will lead us in that direction) appearing on North Carolina Driver's Licenses, and a host of numerous other stories also caught my attention and cried out for me to write a nice long post about them.
.
Instead, I decided to share my experiences regarding the attack on the United States of America on September 11, 2001.
-------------
As many of you who have been longtime readers of Political Pistachio may know, I am a United States Navy veteran, the son of a United States Marine, and currently labor in the construction industry while I wait for my writing to blossom into more than my blogs. Don't get me wrong, I value my blogs greatly. However, sometime in the future, I am hoping to branch out into the printed word.
.
A few days prior to September 11th, 2001 my work truck was involved in an auto accident. I wasn't in the truck, I was driving a big rig, and one of my co-workers was following in my work truck. As a result, on the morning of 9/11, I was driving a rental truck, rather than my work truck, which at that moment was in pieces somewhere in some auto-body shop. The rental truck had a CD player in it, so rather than listen to my usual mix of either talk-radio, or Christian Music Radio, I chose to bring some CDs. So, when the tragedy of 9/11 occurred, I was not aware of it.
.
Here on the West Coast we are disconnected from the east. It's a different world out here, and anything that happens back in New York and its vicinity is normally just something that sometimes pops up on the nightly news broadcast. So, even after we arrived on the job site that morning, word of the attack did not reach us.
.
A couple hours into the morning my trenching machine encountered a particularly nasty vein of rock, and I snapped an axle. I called into the office and the mechanic from "the yard" was dispatched with the appropriate parts for repair. A little while later, the yard dog arrived, and as he brought me the new axle, he says, "Hey, did you hear about what happened in New York
City?"
.
"No," I replied. "What happened?"
.
"I guess an airplane flew into some tall buildings, there. Something called the World Trade Center."
.
I was vaguely familiar with the World Trade Center, as it had been attacked by terrorists in 1993 under President Clinton's watch, after which he did nothing but proclaim the attack to be nothing more than a criminal act by radicals. But the idea of terrorists being the ones that flew the plane into the tower never occurred to me. I figured it was a horrible airline screw-up.
During my lunchtime I was in the rental truck listening to news reports to find out more. I don't recall the details of the reports at that time, but later while on my way home I remember learning that there was a second plane that flew into the World Trade Center as well, and that it was most likely a terrorist attack by Islamic terrorists.
.
I couldn't believe it. Why would anyone do such a thing? Was this an act of war like I was beginning to believe? What would President Bush do in response?
.
When I parked the truck in front of my house I grabbed my stuff and rushed to the front door. It was a hot day, so my wife had the front door open. I stood in the doorway and caught an image on the television on the opposite side of my living room. The image was of the second plane striking the tower.
.
Immediately tears formed in my eyes, and I wasn't even sure why. My fingers released my lunchbox, and it fell to the porch, dumping its innards across the concrete. I stepped into my house and looked over at my wife as she watched the television. She wasn't crying. She had a confused look on her face, as if the information was not processing, and she didn't know what to think.
.
"They think it was terrorists," she said to me.
.
"I know," I replied.
.
As news unfolded, and I learned about the attack on the Pentagon and United 93, my anger became fear. What was next? Was Los Angeles next on the list?
.
A year later my wife and I visited the northeast United States. Thirteen months after the attack I stood on the edge of ground-zero gazing through a hole in the green tarp covering a chain linked fence over the big hole that was once the base of the World Trade Center. I never got to see the towers. I didn't understand how important they were to the New York City skyline. And as I stood there a man came to stand beside me, glancing through the hole as I was.
.
Down below the subway tracks were still twisted. Crews were working trying to eliminate the debris. The man says, more to himself than to anyone else I think, "I used to work there."
.
"In the towers?" I asked.
.
"Yes."
.
"You weren't there when the attacks happened?"
.
"I should have been," he said. "I was late to work. Watched the attack from the roadway in my car. I haven't been back since that day. This is my first time to return to this place since the attack. I lost a lot of friends that day. Friends and co-workers."
.
"I never saw the towers before the attack," I said.
.
"They were so tall. The skyline isn't right without them. The towers dominated the skyline. They were the tallest by quite a bit. Without them New York isn't the same. I'm not the same. New York will never forget what those bastards did."
.
I said, "America will never forget."
.
Unfortunately, it seems like many Americans have forgotten. They don't understand that when we invaded Afghanistan, and then later Iraq, we weren't attacking those countries individually, just like we weren't attacking the Germans during World War II. We were attacking Nazism back then, and we were going after the sponsors of those that attacked us on 9/11 when we moved into Iraq.
.
They forget that Islam is not simply a religion. And it is hardly the religion of peace. Bush was wrong when he called Islam that. Islam is an ideology designed for world domination, not much differently than Nazism was. But Islam learned from the past. They have realized that violence alone is not enough to defeat and convert their enemies. Now they are using our freedoms against us as well. Europe is falling. Britain is under attack right now as the hardline radicals of Islam is slowly taking over British mosques. America is next. And what are we doing to protect ourselves from this slow takeover by Islamism? We open our borders to them, we allow activist judges to diminish the all important Patriot Act, and our Hollywood elitists rub elbows with dictators that hate America and support Islamo-fascism. The American mainstream media ignores reports that support reports such as that Bin Laden had al-Qaeda camps in Iraq under Saddam's Regime, proof of WMD in Iraq, and news of Mexico supporting the illegal crossings of their people into the United States.
.
Honestly, when it comes down to it, the Moral Retardation of the Left and the rise of Islam seriously stumps me. I cannot understand how anybody, when faced with an enemy that tells us straight out that they wish to destroy Israel, America, and the Western Culture as a whole, calls us the enemy because America has taken action to protect her National Security.
.
Insane.
No comments:
Post a Comment