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Sometimes things happen in our lives that are real game changers. It seems that nothing after the event will ever be the same as it was before. Twenty-three years ago, today something else happened that took us off guard, and forced us to see who the enemies are. What they did changed our lives forever, and not in a good way. Many of us are old enough to remember the horror of that morning, and the devastation it did to our country. When those 19 terrorists from Al-Qaeda invaded the U.S. and murdered over 3,000 people in a matter of hours, the pulse of the nation stopped! We were dead for three hours as we watched live television of the planes taking down the Twin Towers, slamming into the west wall of the Pentagon, and then hearing reports of a fourth plane crashing in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
When it was over and the noise stopped, the dust that reeled through the streets of Manhattan made an eerie screaming sound filled with the voices of those who had lost their lives, as it enveloped the neighborhoods all around the towers. Then, when our hearts began beating again, we heard the screams, the crying, and the agony of millions of people across the country. Three hours that changed our lives forever. Nothing, nothing was going to be the same again. The other side of that day, September 10, would not come back.
Twenty-three years later, why can we not hear their voices anymore as we did on that morning starting at 8:46 and lasting until 10:28? The unnerving sound of heavy steel and concrete crashing to the ground, the dust covering the world, and the screams piercing our ears seem to have faded in those years. Still, nothing is the same, damn straight nothing is the same. Someone says a speech at ground zero, some one says how terrible all this was, ands some one says how we owe our freedom to all of the men and women who died that day and in the twenty years of fighting terrorism that followed. There is a saying that we have heard as a kid growing up, ‘actions speak louder than words’.
There is another saying, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ Since the twenty years of going after terrorists all over the world has ended, how have we as a nation shown our respect, not just our appreciation for all those men, women, and children who have said, ‘yes’ to the call of sacrifice and honor? We put up plaques, given out medals and presented untold folded flags to those Americans who we never knew. But look around. Look at the absolute mess we, who were left behind, made of the country they died for. We have a government compiled of people who have no idea what it means to be an American, and who would rather give what dignity we have left to the enemy! The general idea, the mantra was, ‘America does not negotiate with terrorists!’ That is still true today in the dirtiest sense of the words. We do not negotiate…we surrender. We abandon not only the memory of those of 9/11, but we dishonor the American people by giving them a government that no longer holds to the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, or to the notion that America is the strongest, most valiant, and most just nation on earth.
Burying the past has become the thing to do in the 21st Century. We turn a blind eye to where we came from and who we once were, as we watch our great nation fall internally and decay from within. It shouldn’t matter what color, what religion, or even what political party you are affiliated with. What matters is that we need to fight just as hard as if we were on the battlefield. We need to remember we are all Americans and we are in a fight for not just freedom, but for the prevention of the possibility of extinction for our country! The people of 9/11 must be remembered to recall our sense of duty to them and to The United States. Their lives are our inspiration to make America what it was before 19 evil men interrupted our lives. It was September 10, 2001!
God Bless America, please!
