Today is September 11. Eight years ago, on a cool crisp morning in New York City, all hell broke loose. It's easy to forget for some reason, but on the same morning, a gigantic airliner dove from the sky and slammed into the Pentagon. Finally, for that day, a fourth airliner was forced down into a Pennsylvania field, by it's passengers. They gave their own lives to make sure that terrorists couldn't hit a third target, and kill yet more people. This is important stuff to remember.
On that morning, my Mom called and said to turn on CNN. I turned on our TV in our bedroom, which had an integrated VCR. The VCR was undoubtedly loaded with a Baby Einstein or similar tape for our new baby, Christine, who was five months old, and slept with us in our room. I turned on the TV and saw footage of one of the World Trade Center towers with a huge smoking gash in it's side. I was in the process of starting to evaluate the alternative reasons this could have happened when I watched a second airliner hit the second tower.
Being in California at the time, my prediction was that we would see similar attacks in a wave across the United States, roughly following the differences in time betweeen time zones. I expected to hear next that something had occurred in Chicago or Detroit.
There was huge speculation about additional planes in the air, including one headed for the White House. I don't know if anyone knows for sure where the Pennsylvania plane was headed.
I decided that I was not going to work that day. Most of my colleagues went to work. My real guess at a California target was the Golden Gate bridge.
I think that I would have laid money on these acts being led by Americans, similar to what Timothy McVeigh had done. I was also very concerned that if it turned out to be Middle Eastern terrorists, that then President Bush would unleash a ridiculously widespread and violent attack on the Middle East in general. He did not. Instead, he took his time, but in the end released a ridiculously long and violent attack on two places: Afghanistan and Iraq. We're still fighting in both places today.
So, in the end, who did the terrorists harm most? Clearly, they brought a new dimension of fear to the people of the United States; we had only been attacked on our own soil once before, and that was a military base way out in Hawaii. Today, it was New York City. They also killed thousands of Americans that day. But now, eight years later, it's clearly more people who have died in the Middle East. Taliban leaders, leaders of their own religion, Sadam Hussein, and countless innocent civilians. Maybe terrorists don't count that way, and still mark this as a great success.
