Where were you...

I was just waking up. My girlfriend was in the washroom, drying her hair, and she said, "The World Trade Center is on fire."

I believe my exact response was, "Get the f*ck out of here."

I was thinking about the fire, not the cause. I sat up in bed. The local (Sacramento, California) news station had nothing, so I clicked over to FoxNews. Voila, burning tower. The fire was waaaaay up there. That was going to be a bitch to handle, if it could be handled at all. Firefighters loathe and fear high-rise fires for the simple reason that their equipment can't get to it. A firefighter must strap on all their gear and walk up to a point where they can assault the fire, and not very effectively because they are relying on the building's fire-fighting capabilities (water stand pipes and the like). In effect, the building has to be able to handle the fire.

And you could see that Tower One wasn't handling it at all.

I can't remember who the news anchor was. I remember fragments of the conversation they were having with another off-camera voice, an "expert" of one stripe or another. They were already reporting that witnesses saw a large aircraft hit the building. The babbling "expert" was saying that we can't assume this was some sort of deliberate act. It was early morning, bright sun, tall buildings, lots of air traffic, blah blah blah.

I'm shaking my head. If this was an aircraft strike, how do you explain on a bright, clear, beautiful day that the pilot didn't see this nice, huge building in front of him?

That internal debate became moot as a huge fireball rose into the screen. You almost heard the news anchors gasp.

Fox was holding too tight an image. I cut over to CNN. Their angle was wider and they replayed what had just occurred. A second airliner coming in fast from the right side of the screen. Disappearing behind the one burning tower, a huge explosion and fireball erupting out behind. Tower Two was now hit and on fire.

And now there was no doubt. This was deliberate, this was not an accident. This was an attack. I told my girlfriend and said, "This is brilliant."

Really, I had to admire the sheer audacity of the attack, the coordination and effort that had gone into it. This was brilliant work. The results were horrific, beyond the pale, because I knew that 50,000+ people worked in and around those buildings. My assumption was that the death toll would be staggering.

That it turned out to be "only" 2700 (3000 total for the day, including Pentagon and Flight 93) was a miracle and a credit to the Port Authority's planning following the 1993 WTC bombing. Really, those people have not gotten a fraction of the credit they deserve. They literally saved tens of thousands of lives on 9/11.

The first tower fell while I was driving to work. I heard the word as I parked at Starbucks. I told the barista inside, Tracy, and I thought she was going to faint. The second tower fell shortly after I got to work, and I watched that live on television. On that day I learned that the state considered me "essential personnel" because most California state offices were closed, staff sent home. Mine shifted into high gear. I work for the California Highway Patrol (don't ask me about tickets, I'm not an officer).

I didn't expect much of a response from the government. Really, I didn't. For how long was that the case? The last time we, the US, actively responded to an act of terror was when Reagan tried to blow up The Libyan Madman, Mummar Ghadafi. It certainly seemed to shut him up. I guess realizing that a 2000 pound bomb has your name on it will do that.

That it worked should have been a lesson for his successors to follow, but for the most part they didn't. Clinton launched a few hundred million dollars worth of cruise missiles at a Sudan aspirin factory and some hits of rock in Afghanistan, but that was all. Nice light show, not much substance. Stamped his feet and pouted. Ooh, the terrorists must have thought, I am soooooo scared.

And now we see that Dubya is of a different character. Oh my, he says we're going to hunt the bastards down and wump 'em. And voila, that's what we're doing.

In the two years since 9/11/01, we have liberated two oppressed countries. We have made it loud and clear that we shall respond to acts of aggression with a level of aggression that begs the imagination. (Who would have dreamed that you could tell a bomb, "That building, on that floor, through this window, so you blow up in this direction," and the bomb would do precisely that? It almost begs the question, who needs nukes?)

In the two years since 9/11/01, this country has demonstrated a resolve it hasn't shown in decades (if not generations). The naysayers are the usual gang of idiots, driven by their hatred of (in rough order): Bush, conservatives, Republicans, capitalism, the free market, and the United States. Their hatred blinds their reasoning. You doubt that? Read some of the drivel at AlterNet. No facts, no substance, just hate and loathing.

In the two years since 9/11/01, two old allies have demonstrated their inability to adapt to a modern world. This is sad. I find it striking that a nation that helped foster the very notion of a democratic society (and yes, I'm speaking about France) is being shoved to the back burner of relevance by a group of nations that until very recently lived under a totalitarian dictatorship. It would seem that those free nations of Eastern Europe understand how you must respond to oppression. I find their response to 9/11, and their willingness to aid the US, inspirational.

In the two years since 9/11/01, we have learned just how large the threat is, and hopefully people understand just how long the campaign to eradicate it must be. The United States has been called a "hyperpower," the last and only superpower on Earth. Some have complained that we're throwing our weight around, acting like the bully on the block.

The neighborhood bully was not interested in freedom. He was interested in oppression.

Anyone who says the same of the United States hasn't been studying history, or insists on focusing on narrow little bits of it, ignoring the rest. Reminds me of an observation I read (can't remember who, sorry). It had to do with how certain Arab states compared themselves to the Western world (i.e., the United States). When describing themselves, the Arab states, they would invariably described them in terms of their ideals ("Islam is a religion of peace."). When describing the US, they invariably pointed to abnormalities that they said defined the US. But the ideals they would describe don't exist, and the abnormalities they identified don't define.

And I think that's that for now. This is written off the cuff and on the fly.