i'm going to piss people off with this post, i am certain,
but i need to say it: i'm not convinced our government was not at least
indirectly responsible for what happened on 9/11.
i know i'm about nine years late to this subject, and my
reasons for feeling the way i do a decade later are based on nothing other than
gut feelings and perhaps raging cynicism. and i mean absolutely no disrespect
to any victims or their families—the victims are the victims, regardless of the
tragedy's back story—and i do not want to incur the wrath of, well, anyone. but
i have to say i have a weird feeling.
i read about the 9/11 conspiracy theories years ago. i was
slightly swayed by some of the material out there, but then again the internet
is (in my opinion) ninety percent bullshit. anyone can post anything (hi—i'm
doing it now) and it'll show up in a Google search. anyone can proclaim
themselves an expert and theorize on anything. still, the fact that there were
conspiracy theories at all sort of blew my naive little mind. until then i
hadn't a doubt that Bin Laden was behind the whole thing. i remember asking
Michael about the conspiracies a few years ago and discussing their validity
(or lack thereof). it seems strange to consider the possibility and
yet—considering the country we live in—strange not to.
i think it's fair to say Michael and i are both a little
fixated on the details of 9/11, considering we were elsewhere that day and that
Michael might have been in the North Tower that day if we weren't. to me the
feeling is similar to waking up after a disturbing dream that you can't really
remember—you feel the uneasiness, but without access to the details, you can't
move on. you keep trying to put together the pieces, to no avail. (i reflected
on my feelings about the day four years ago here.)
anyway, we went to Washington, D.C. Thursday night, a
last-minute family getaway, partly because it was a drive-able distance and
neither of us had been there in years, and partly to see the (very temporary)
9/11 exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. again,
our tenuous connection to the tragedy was our motivation.
we arrived at our hotel around 7 o'clock and as Matthew and
i were waiting in the lobby for Michael to empty the car's contents onto a luggage
cart, i saw a text alert on my phone from CNN—a fresh terror threat for New
York and D.C. tied to the tenth anniversary of 9/11. being tirelessly naive, my
stomach twisted a little. what was the phrase they used to describe the threat?
"specific, credible but unconfirmed." right. just scary enough to put
everyone on edge, yet not terrifying enough to create hysteria.
we went up to our room and turned on the TV—CNN was the
hotel's default channel, of course—and saw Mayor Bloomberg giving a press conference.
we heard about the Penske and Budget trucks and the three men who had possibly
entered the U.S. with plans to do serious damage in the city we call home
and/or the city we'd just arrived in with our baby boy. we shrugged it off—we
had to—and went to dinner. but we also took note of every commercial rental
truck we spotted in the city the next two days, saw the rooftop snipers and K-9
cops and armed-to-the-hilt officers positioned everywhere from the tippy-top of
the Capitol Building to the large grassy area next to the Eisenhower Executive
building. at the Library of Congress we had to go through metal detectors
twice. the security guards bordered on rude—as if it were our fault that their
services were required.
on our drive home Saturday night, Michael asked me if there
were any updates to the story. i read him the latest from my CNN app—details on
trucks that were stolen from locations in Jersey City and Kansas City, the news
that two of the "suspects" were American-born, but that their Muslim
names were too common to track down.
yesterday morning Michael went to work—through the Lincoln
Tunnel, safely—and the baby and i stayed put at home. i found myself watching,
bright and early, 102 Minutes that
Changed America. it began airing at 8:46 a.m. and ended at 10:28, for
obvious reasons. i'd seen it before and really hadn't wanted to watch it again,
yet i couldn't change the channel.
something isn't right,
i kept thinking as i watched. something about the emergency operators' tone
with people trapped on the higher floors, something about the way the buildings
came down, something.... after the
movie ended, i flipped between CNN and our local NBC affiliate's coverage of
the name-reading at the memorial. everywhere you looked or listened, you were instructed
to remember, remember, remember. i
found myself wondering: what,
exactly, are we supposed to remember? that three-thousand people died
tragically that day? that terrorists are still out to get us? that it's best to
wear slip-on shoes when you're flying somewhere? and are we supposed to
remember 9/11 every single day, to the point that we're constantly depressed
and terrified, or just once a year when the ghostly towers of light gleam up
from Ground Zero?
this morning on the news there was no mention of the stolen
trucks or the three suspicious characters planning an anniversary attack. there
was only brief mention of a few domestic in-flight incidents that proved
unrelated to either 9/11 or terrorism. i've searched for updates on the story
throughout the day—nothing. what happened to those stolen trucks? where are
those three guys now? are we still supposed to be on alert, or has the scare
expired? i find it all incredibly frustrating.
on Saturday morning i wanted to see the White House (really,
i wanted to tour the White House, but in this post-9/11 world you can only
arrange a tour months in advance through your local congressperson). if i
couldn't see inside, i at least wanted the view from the North Side, the money
shot. but we couldn't get anywhere close. the barricades were up, cops cars and
SWAT guys strategically scattered. we stood with a crowd of people who, like
us, had been told that maybe the barricades were come down soon. it was unclear
why they were up in the first place—was it the terror threat? was the President
on the move? were there dignitaries arriving for the 9/11 anniversary ceremony?
we stood there waiting for maybe 15 minutes and during that time a cavalcade
passed by—a few cop cars, an emergency vehicle and several black SUVs—one with
its the windows rolled up, the rest with the windows rolled down and men with
machine guns visible inside.
even several minutes after the procession passed—clearly
driving away from the White House—we still weren't allowed the close-up view.
and i just felt mad. we pay our taxes, we do our part to keep the economy
humming (however lamely) and we're not allowed to see where our leader lives?
everything just seems off. and i'm wondering how we're
actually safer since 9/11. is the world really a better place since we waged war
on Iraq and Afghanistan? has anything improved since Bin Laden was murdered?
it's not like the other extremists in the Middle East suddenly quit being
extreme once their leader was taken out. they're not the flying monkeys, for
pete's sake. (please note: i do not believe Osama deserved to keep living. just
questioning the impact of his death on our day-to-day lives.) we still get hit
with terror alerts. we're still not allowed to keep tweezers in our carry-on
bags. we still have to go through metal detectors just to take a ferry boat to
Ellis Island. when does that stop? when are we safe again? never?
i just feel that something sinister is at work, in our own
country. i don't like feeling that way and, as i said earlier, i have
absolutely nothing other than a gut feeling leading me here. but something is amiss,
and has been—possibly for 10 years, possibly since the day those planes went
into those buildings.
if you disagree with me, please tell me. i'll be more than
happy to hear it.
mbm
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