A place to post your thoughts about 9/11.
I remember learning about Rick Rescorla a few months after the attack. He was a true hero. Rescorla was VP of Security for Morgan Stanley / Dean Witter, and he foresaw how vulnerable top attack the World Trade Center was. He made all the MS/DW employees practice emergency evacuation drills every three months. On 9/11 he ordered everyone out of the Morgan Stanley offices after the first plane hit, making them sing out loud as they walked down flight after flight of stairs.
He got all 2,700 of his co-workers out of the WTC before the buildings collapsed. After securing their safety he went back into a building just as it as it was collapsing to help bring out more people. He died in the collapse. He saved 2,700 lives.
A New Yorker essay here. It is an excellent read.
21 comments:
As the Manchurian President said last night, Islam has nothing to do with the bad stuff that Islamists do.
Our nation was defeated that day by some rag headed muzzies on 4 planes.
Seems silly, I know, but we were. Since then we have spent ourselves into bankruptcy, allowed PC to trump common sense, regarded with contempt the very people who built this country and elected a muslim president who has proceeded to wage war on the American people.
We are done. Enjoy the decline and be sure to name and shame everyone who voted for that metrosexual traitor. They need to be reminded, today and every day.
I remember that people stopped being assholes to each other for a few days.
Fear.
To all those who ran back into the jaws of death to save others - that is the definition of pure courage, pure love & pure devotion.
My office was only blocks from the WTC.
The pile of debris burned for weeks after the attack. I smelled burning flesh on the way to work every day.
An event of Biblical scope.
Sentiment lifted from a commenter on Insty:
'Every Sept 11th we vow to find and kill 3000 Islamofascists.'
What a fantastic idea.
ST- yeah. Read any article about that day and the smell of death and carnage, even months after, is often mentioned. I can only imagine.
ISIS may be our salvation. Unlike Al Qaeda, ISIS is an army that we can see. This war on terrorism has been asymmetrical and many couldn't grasp the concept. ISIS is a savage army taking land. I am an even keeled person but I would consider tactical nukes. If you could put one on a drone Obama just might buy it. We don't need to jab these motherfuckers. We need a quick knockout punch. Just dreamin', I know.
You are dreaming - keep in mind the basic fact that he is on their side, not ours.
Islam could be reduced to the bunch of backwards goat fuckers they long to be by next week, but there is no will, anywhere in the West, to take action against the forces of darkness.
Our best and brightest are a bunch of binky-sucking law prof types who voted for that traitorous bastard currently "leading" us and until we are willing to clean our own back yard of scum, there is no way in hell that we can deal with the muzzie rot that is gnawing away at civilization.
So yeah, I am pessimistic. America is toast.
I was working at Akamai Technologies at the time. The founder, and multi-millionaire, was on the plane-Danny Lewin. He was in the Israel Army and a MIT Grad. He would of been flying first class and likely was one of the first killed.
Many Boston folks died.
My recollections of 9/11/2001. Epistle warning here.
First, I was in my US Army office in the federal McNamara Building in Detroit. We kept a small television tuned to news feeds as a matter of habit. (We later set up televised news feeds on a network shown on both of our floors' lobbies via cable TV) That morning we saw, one by one of us as we were notified by the set's operator, and all of us saw the second plane hit...just about the time our secure alert messaging system came alive with a volume not seen before. It was ominous. And it became more so as the plane hit the Pentagon.
I sent everyone who worked for me home by 10:30 AM because I saw fear in their eyes, intense fear, and heard it in their voices. I stayed and helped other chiefs send their personnel out of the building. At that moment, we didn't know if we weren't next given out building was coincidently on a clear path from Detroit Metro Airport....e.g., nothing would impede a big airplane from just coming down Michigan Avenue at about 500+ feet or so and hitting us. Nothing. I doubted we were important enough to be attacked, but I did not know for sure, and I was not leaving until my commanding officer left the building.
By Noon I went outside and sat in the plaza smoking multiple cigarettes trying to make sense of all this while talking with others still around .... all the while surrounded by a couple thousand armed federal officers from various federal police agencies in the building. Most were carrying sub-machine guns. It seemed serious and no one was taking it as de rigueur.
At 1:00 PM the building was ordered closed and all but FBI and other police agencies' officers to leave immediately. We did....we'd cleared all of our offices by then, it was a simple matter for a dozen of us to just go home.
When I arrived home, I just got my dog "Zoya" and went in to the back yard to just sit and wonder WTF?! My Lebanese neighbor's wife (an observant Muslim) came to the fence and asked me to to talk to her. Everyone around my place knew where I worked and knew I was impacted by the events of that day. I went to the fence and she began crying. Paraphrasing, she said; they were so sorry, and that what they had fled as refugees had followed them here now...and they were trapped as I was. Where could anyone go that was safe now? She was in a great state of despair. I was in a state of cold calm, a thing that happens to me under stress, where I lose my humanity completely for a short time.
But I did not treat the crying woman with disdain, I tried to comfort her...damnit, she and her family came her to be safe and that image had just been shattered. And she had come to me in grief. I had seen that look of despair in her eyes before, long ago and far away. Oddly, I felt guilty that we'd not been able to stop that day. 9/11/2001.
By 9/12/2001 we were sending personnel to NYC for emergency response. By the end of that initial period we had people inspecting the slurry wall underpinnings of the WTC. I'd been willing to go with my dog "Zoya" for the purpose of searching the WTC site, but "Zoya" was not certified for S&R, regardless of her Schutzhund qualifications and capabilities. She had experience searching and policing several buildings every week, at night, but not certified S&R. So be it. Many other dogs were certified and they did a great job. A dog knows how to find fear and death....and life....in inverse order.
On 9/21/2001 one of my neighbors, named Ron Sheffield, a Federal Protective Service police officer, was shot dead in the McNamara Building lobby by a nut case who had no connection to 9/11, but still had a some grievance against the federal government and shot a guy I knew well dead because he was able to shoot through the armpit, by-passing the vest, of the man reaching over a table to grab his gun. The bastard was shot down by other officers, but he lived...which I find regrettable....Ron died on the floor that day.
Back in the days of 'Nam, I remember all the little protesters proclaiming if anyone came over here and attacked us, they'd fight.
Well, they did and they didn't. Nice to know who's on your side.
As for the day, we're all on the front lines since then, like it or not, and a lot of people are still trying to tell themselves it's all on the other side of the world.
Now we get to watch the current occupant of the White House publicly dither and fidget as he searches for a way to avoid being held accountable; as he hopes in earnest to kick this problem down the road for the next administration to solve.
If only we could see the splendour of the land
To which our loved ones are called from you and me
We'd understand
If only we could hear the welcome they receive
From old familiar voices all so dear
We would not grieve
If only we could know the reason why they went
We'd smile and wipe away the tears that flow
And wait content.
Anonymous
Aridog, Great anecdote. Thanks.
Very few of us involved, certainly not me, on that grim day had the raw courage of men like Rick Rescorla, or the men and women of NYPD and especially FDNY. When you go up that down staircase you know you might not be coming back. Yet up they went.
I think I speak for all of us - The courage on display that day will never be forgotten. That level of courage takes my breathe away, still. A quality that gives me hope for the future. Sad that the best among us had to die that day.
The Dogs of 9-11 and beyond
Are you guys ready? Let's Roll.
Flight 93. I still tear up over it.
Time and time again, the dogs and their lives have show that watchful, determined, alert, fearless, loyal and obedient are not mere words; they are the difference between life and death.
Thank you, Aridog, for the link and the reminder the difference watchful, determined, alert, fearless, loyal and obediant makes.
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