Another September 11th

For the moment, let's ignore the fact that many Americans (probably a majority) believe we're no safer than we were on that excruciatingly painful day 7 years ago despite the evisceration of the Constitution and the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars by a president bent on Orwellian domination of the country and a Congress too busy trying not to look "soft on terrorism" to stop him. Whew...quite a long sentence, hmm?
Almost all of us recall in great detail what we were doing on September 11th, 2001. I was on my way to work when I heard a bulletin on the radio a plane had hit the WTC. I thought it was someone in a Cessna who got lost or had mechanical problems. I popped in a CD and forgot about it....until
I walked into chaos. There are few places as busy as a radio station when "the big one" hits the fan. It took me a minute or two to get up to speed, then we broke format and started covering the story best we could.
I'll always feel guilty about this. I shouldn't admit it, but I really enjoyed the first couple of hours...I was thinking that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shine and maybe we could win some awards. About 1130 or so, it just hit me. Don't know how, but all of a sudden the whole weight of what were doing hit me at 100mph. At that point I became just one of the hundreds of millions of people watching TV and wondering not only what happened, how it could have happened, and of course, what now?
I was born after JFK was shot. I can only understand the event through the lens of history. People still remember that event in razor-sharp detail 45 years later but find it hard to explain to "the rest of us" the emotional toll of that day.
I have no doubt we will have the same problem explaining 9/11 to the next generation. Never before have we seen the entire country literally grind to a screeching halt. No planes, no sports, no comedians...nothing. Most of us didn't want those things anyway. All we wanted were answers..and Bin Laden's head. The answers we got, (even if the tin foil hat bunch disbelieve) with the added bonus of an Iraq war to ratchet up the death toll and balloon our national debt. Bin Laden's head? Even if we got it, was it worth thousands of dead and a staggering amount of money? That's for you to decide, but before you do ask yourself this...would Bin Laden's death make us safer or just fuel a sense of patriotic vengeance?