A few thoughts on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11.
I heard the report on my car radio at 5:48 MST of a plane crashing into the North Tower. It wasn’t clear what was happening and I thought of the B-25 that became disoriented by the fog and crashed into the Empire State Building.
Just as I was entering the gym that morning, I saw on the TV in the lobby the plane hit the South Tower and I had a strange reaction which remains crystalline to this day. It wasn’t shock or horror, it was merely the thought, eerie in its calmness, of “They have come.”
A year-and-a-half before then I was in the DC area on business. I had hauled out a friend of mine as an advisor, he had a very creative and detailed mind when it came to operations.
We were standing on the platform of a Metro stop, waiting for the next train to arrive, when my friend turned to me and out-of-the-blue said “How long until someone drops a biological down here?” I thought of the Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway and the Oklahoma City Bombing, both in 1995. Then there was the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center where a bunch of Islamists tried to topple one tower into another. Mass casualty attacks done by amateurs. We hadn’t even heard from the professionals yet.
When I caught up with my friend a few months after 9/11, he said that when he saw the plane hit the South Tower the first thing he thought of was our conversation in DC.
The thing is that you really have to believe that you are on the side of good in order to perform that much evil.
I spent some time in New Jersey growing up, way out in the sticks. We were fascinated by New York City and as you drove toward it, from many miles away, the first you saw of it was the World Trade Center. A distant yet towering fixture, a welcoming beacon on the horizon that spoke of a larger, wondrous world underneath it.
Then a bunch of barbarians blew a hole in the sky.
Scott Johnson at Powerline has made it a tradition every September 11 to link to James Stewart’s 2002 New Yorker article, “The Real Heroes are Dead”, which depicts the life of Rick Rescorla from his battlefield exploits in Vietnam, to his later marriage, to his efforts on 9/11 where his foresight led to the saving of thousands of lives and ended with his death in the South Tower when he went back looking for stragglers.
Rescorla is not just a heroic figure, but a man who through his character gave hope to his comrades, his fellow man, and most importantly to his wife. An exemplar of what the Greeks would call “Andreia.”
The article formed the basis of Stewart’s book, Heart of a Solider. I have given copies of it to the young men in my family because he was the type of man that the young should aspire to emulate. The most fitting tribute in the article comes from Rescorla’s life-long friend and comrade Dan Hill, who when interviewed by Stewart and said:
There are certain men born in this world, and they’re supposed to die setting an example for the rest of the weak bastards we’re surrounded with.
However the most haunting quote comes from the book when Hill laments:
Somebody cautioned that if a person or thing means the world to you, and you lose that person or thing, then you have lost the world. I lost the world when Rick died.
I follow a certain custom on 9/11. I read Stewart’s article, meditate, and go to 6:30 Mass. I pray for the people who died on that day and especially those who felt the terror as the towers collapsed on top of them. I give thanks for those like the first responders, Rescorla, and the people on Flight 93 who possessed the courage to do what needed to be done.
I say an extra prayer for the “Jumpers”, those who were trapped in the World Trade Center by the flames and smoke and at the end could only choose how they were to die.
It’s a sin of course to think this way, especially in a church, but even now after so many years I cannot help but be possessed of rage.