| |
This country has been blessed by good fortune in that we fight our wars in other countries. Our ability to handle war born devastation at a comfortable distance has been changed forever.
I thought I had seen just about everything including armed conflict, and there was nothing left that could shock my senses. September 11th proved I was totally wrong.
The sight of a super jet airliner carrying terrorized passengers, plunging through the center of a one hundred and ten-story building is etched in my mind forever. This live action was only possible because the video cameras were already aimed at the World Trade Center because it had been struck some twenty minutes earlier in similar fashion by another modern jet aircraft.
The horror was compounded by crumbling buildings that fell into themselves like they were a house of cards. I was numb by the time the third, forty-seven story building collapsed hours later. Thousands of people fortunate enough to survive the original blast, ran for their lives as the cloud of debris from the falling structures chased them down the streets. These escapees where unrecognizable because they were all covered with heavy layers of white residue that made one running form indistinguishable from the other.
This would have been enough to permanently scar our senses, but it was not over.
In the same time frame, a high-jacked jet liner was crashing into the Pentagon and another was on its way to an unknown Washington location. Apparently the passengers on the fourth aircraft heroically thwarted this attempt and somehow prevented the last attack on our freedom.
An act of terrorism? Hardly. This was a large scale military operation that took at least a year to organize, required sophisticated training for pilot surrogates and significant financial funding to support all of the complex entities of the enterprise. It is an act of war and will be treated as such. The death toll in New York alone will be two times the human loses at Pearl Harbor.
It was not really a surprise. We were expecting something, but nothing of this magnitude and sophistication.
Now we will hear many voices around the world asking us to exercise restraint. We have not forgotten our restraint when our marines were blown up in Lebanon, our military barracks blown up in Saudi Arabia, our Embassies in Africa, and a modern war ship in Yemen.
Now, these terrorist have stepped over the line. Now they are on our soil, threatening the lives of our families and love ones. Right after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, a leading Japanese military figure warned his nation, “You have wakened a sleeping giant.” It seems that the one constant in history is that it repeats itself.
As a country we will do what we have to do. The events of September 11th have defined who are enemy is. In the near future we will also determine who our friends really are.
If the enemies plan was to instill fear in us, they have failed miserably. They have only galvanized our dedication to support freedom, where ever that takes us. If they attempted to show us how vulnerable we are in a free society. We already knew that, but it is also the reason we defend freedom so passionately.
As it will appear in Asian American Times 10,01
|
Help Us Stop Plagiarism -
Nearly all works at PnP are original. However a few people choose to plagiarize.
To check, choose a phrase from the work, then either drag and drop to the search box or copy and paste.
click on search and works at Google will be shown which match. Just to be sure, please do this before
you recommend or rate the work highly...
|
 |
|
|
|
Select a Random Work
from Stories
|
|
Welcome !
