9/11

You’ve heard many news stories, memorials, and speeches today about the September 11th massacre. Instead of going over the same things, I will keep my comments brief and deal only with my experiences.

If you as an American have any doubt as to what our policy should be on terror, I encourage you to visit New York City (lower Manhattan specifically), and take a gaze at the massacre site. Then, take a look at the pictures and memorials to the 3,000 plus innocent souls that were murdered that day. I guarantee it ain't quite like what y'all have seen on CNN. When I first visited the site in August, 2002, I was shocked, horrified and cried like a little kid. Seeing that hole in the ground and feeling the lingering death was surreal. It even surpassed the weird feeling I get when I travel through the part of Oakland where the Cypress Freeway used to be (it collapsed in the 1989 earthquake killing many people). Wandering around the memorials people had created to honor those lost in the massacre I had one of the saddest experiences in my life. I will never forget looking at a picture of a man about the same age as I and the handwritten note from his young daughter. She wrote that she missed her daddy and couldn’t wait to join him in heaven. Reading that, I lost it. Standing there amongst other sobbing tourists. This is an experience that I will never forget and is something that added a level of clarity for me regarding the massacre that FoxNews and CNN just cannot provide. Later, as I rounded the corner and saw the dusty, boarded up subway entrances, I was appalled to see street vendors hawking 9/11 commemorative knock-off t-shirts, cups, etc. I’m a capitalist at heart, but this blew my mind. If you’ve ever seen Denis Leary’s TV show “Rescue Me” about a firehouse in lower Manhattan, I completely understand his rage in the scene where he demolished a similar street vendor’s display.

I’ve returned to New York City a number of times since 9-11-2001 and am still amazed at how things are no longer the way they were. The last company I worked for was based in lower Manhattan and on my first trip there in July, 2005 I was stunned to find that, in addition to the usual assortment of pens, staplers, and post-it notes, the company included radiation pills and gas masks as part of every desk’s standard contents.

If you still don't think we need to crank things up with our pals in Afghanistan, I'll let you speak with my buddy Josh. He lives in lower Manhattan and after being woken up by the sound of the first plane colliding with the building, he sat on his balcony with a view of the second tower and later told me he came unglued as he watched the second plane hit. That same morning, I watched it from 3,000 miles away in sunny California and still think it was the single most disturbing and horrific thing I've ever seen, live or otherwise — and I only saw it on TV! Now, Josh is a hard-ass, street-savvy night club owner in New York and isn't someone that you would want to mess with. He knows everybody. But, that August afternoon in 2002 after I saw the massacre site, I visited Josh at his apartment. As he and I sat on that balcony, his eyes welled up as he recalled watching the impact. He also relayed to me the horror of having to step around body parts to get home the day after the massacre. Then, he pointed to the small grocery on the corner and said, "Does that look familiar? It was the place they were bringing the wounded and dead." I suddenly recalled the building facade from images I saw on CNN. He drove the point home when he said that the "debris" falling from the buildings that we saw on CNN wasn't part of the building. Instead, it was bodies. Human beings, the death of each that broke the hearts of 3,000 mothers.

This, my friends is why we as a country need to grow some balls and take back control of our land. And, regardless of your opinion on President Bush (am disappointed in him), on the war in Iraq (originally supported, but now am wondering what we’re doing), or wars in general, I ask that the next time you see a serviceman or servicewoman, go up to them, shake their hand and thank them for everything they do. These people, along with parents and family, not some jackass athlete or rock star are the true heroes. Finally, I encourage you to learn about another true hero that saved over 2,700 Morgan Stanley Dean Witter employees, and gave his life in the process.