September 11, 2001

I remember everything.

On September 11, 2001, I was sitting in my office in Boston, across the harbor from Logan Airport.

My colleague Debra and I were discussing the policy implications and technical intricacies of providing microwave telephony to some islands off of Cape Cod. Our colleague Peter began pacing forth a few feet away, trying to catch my eye.

Let him wait, I thought. The building isn't on fire.

Finally, he interrupted us. A plane has hit the World Trade Center.

The very first picture on CNN didn't look that bad. But then we huddled into Alicia's office, because she had cable TV, and we watched it unfold. When the second plane hit the second tower, we all agreed it was deliberate, terrorism, and act of war. Everyone knew someone in New York, but the telephone network was overwhelmed, so we sat in Alicia's office and watched first CNN, then the Fox News Channel.

I remember seeing people waving from the upper floors. Can't they get something up there to rescue them, I asked. Barely finished with my question, we watched the South Tower collapse. I went back to my desk for a private moment, and my phone rang. It was my Mother; people heard me yell "the Pentagon?" and that was it. We all went home, and the sea of red white & blue began to bloom the next day.

September 11, 2001, was the day that I stopped relying on the mainstream media for news, and started watching the Fox News Channel. September 11, 2001, was the day I wished Judaism had a more vengefully satisfying concept of Hell. September 11, 2001, is the day I stopped thinking it was excessive to fly the American flag on days other than Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Veterans Day. September 11, 2001, was the day I threw off the moral relativism of my college years and accepted the reality that there is evil in the world, and there is good in the world, and the good is worth defending with my life.

On September 11, 2001, 2,996 people were killed for being American. They weren't casualties of a declared war, they weren't killed because there was a Republican in the White House or because Israel built a new settlement; they were killed by radical Muslims who see a free America as an impediment to global Islamism and the spread of Sharia. A handful of these evil zealots died on September 11, but this will be a long war requiring the sustained attention of adults.

Thanks to the adults who decided to bring the war to the evildoers, and to the rough men ready to do violence on our behalf, we have not had another September 11 in this country. But we must not forget that there are still those in the world who would relish the opportunity to murder innocent American men, women, and children for the crime of living in the freest country the world has ever known.