Fifteen years ago, on September 11th at around 9AM, a plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, precipitating a series of events that changed the world and its impact continues to this day.
I love the City. I was born in Manhattan in 1945 and grew up in the borough of Queens. I went to Queens College. I worked in the broadcast advertising business for twenty years and even did a stint at 30 Rockefeller Plaza for the NBC Television Network. I remember going to the Twin Towers for an industry event, held at Windows on the World, a high up restaurant, sitting on a slowly revolving stage. I took my two boys to the Observation Deck when they were quite young. I could see the boundaries of Central Park, a lush island in the middle of a rock. I still remember how gigantic the lobby was. The elevator doors were at least three stories high and you rocketed up to somewhere over 100 stories in a few breaths.
My friend, Michael, called me and told me to turn on the television. At the time, I was living in an old adobe house, off a dirt road, which was off a dirt road. It was in between Pojoaque and Espanola, in northern N.M. I instantly became part of the global audience, looking on in utter shock and disbelief at the inflamed and quickly collapsing skyscrapers. In those early, unfolding moments, it reminded me how I inhaled the news of John F. Kennedy’s murder, smothered by uncertainty, afraid to exhale.
The world came to a stand still and stared at those awful images, repeated too many times. The scars of conflict have maimed most countries far more than our own and they understood our violation and could feel our unbearable suffering. In those few days, we were not a super power, aloof from their pain, we joined the rest of the world.
In that moment of true compassion, we might have been able to change the course of events. We could have asked ourselves why would anyone do this to our country? Instead, blinded by our rage and manipulated by power and money, we lied our way into an undeclared war with our former friend, Saddam Hussein. Nearly all the hijackers were Saudis, so we decided to destroy Iraq. There was no time allowed for introspection or healing, only revenge.
I am not sure how many of us have thought about the devastation visited on innocent people when their country becomes a pawn in the global power game. They were just images on the screen and most of us had no frame of reference, until that day when it became personal. This kind of destruction occurs today, while not necessarily on the magnitude of the Twin Towers, villages and towns and cities are bombed and burned on a daily basis. I can’t imagine what it must do to the people living in hell.
Close to 4,000 people had their lives stopped, engulfed by flames, choked by the air of chemical assassins, crushed by urban boulders, with some choosing to escape into death by leaping from way too many stories. Many were on their cellphones with loved ones until there was no more. First Responders are suffering right now. I have talked with plenty of people about that day and it is amazing how many have some kind of connection to the event(s). I will bet you it is in the millions. You try it and see what happens and be prepared for stories.
I am not in the mood to get off on a series of diatribes about how personal freedoms have been sacrificed, the creation of an industry called Homeland Security, the epidemic of global refugees or a too long list of what has been sacrificed in the memory of those innocent people.
I think we should try and relive those days, now having the advantage of perspectives that come with time. 250,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003. 5,000 of our soldiers died there and over 32,000 were wounded, without even addressing the psychological traumas visited on so many. All the undeclared wars since Nine Eleven have cost us $4 Trillion Dollars, which feels like trying to understand time in Lights Years when you think about how much a Thousand Thousand Million Dollars actually is.
All of this is definitely too big for me, but after fifteen years, I still wonder about what our response could have been.