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September 12, 2001
World Trade Center
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
I'm stunned.
I can't wrap my br
I'm stunned.
I can't wrap my brain around what happened. My heart and my prayers go out to anybody who has friends or family in New York. The horror of this incident has me rendered almost insensible.
That was yesterday.
Today, I drove by Dallas/Ft Worth International Airport on my way to and from school. I usually enjoy watching the planes fly overhead. Although I know how to do all the math that proves why airplanes work, it's still amazing to me the way these monstrous machines float gracefully over my head. But not today. The only thing in the sky was a military transport. I never thought the sky could be so empty.
Islamic Center of Irving got shot up by idiots. I think it's important that this attack has nothing, repeat nothing to do with the tenets of Islam. It's a terrible shame that we still have ignorant fools in this country who can't give up their habits of hate. That sort of attitude (on both sides) is what got us into this fix in the first place.
But, there's reason for hope.
Today, I hear that they're getting phone calls from people still alive in the basement. I hear that they're pulling firefighters and policemen presumed dead out of the rubble.
People are lining up outside hospitals, volunteering assistance and giving blood. New York rescue coordinators don't know what to do with all the people who are offering their aid.
And we know who did it. The FBI and CIA have their noses to the ground, and they're going to find out who did this. I can't imagine a more ignominious fate for one of these terrorists, one of these people who thinks that God wants them to shed the blood of thousands of innocents, than to be tried and sentenced like a common thug. Nothing could be more appropriate: To take savage terrorists, and subject them to civilized justice.
This thing that happened will make America stronger. A terrible price to pay, surely, but we will not succumb to despair. Despair is what these monsters want. We will not be beaten down.
I sit here listening to my radio, listening to what we're supposed to do to make this not happen again.
No more knives on planes. Tighter security at airports. More money for intelligence activities. Random searches of bags by uniformed police officers.
I believe that some measures make sense, but I also think that these measures are locking the barn after the horse has escaped. The security measures we have in airports are sufficient. There is nothing that we can do to prevent a determined terrorist from getting a weapon on an airplane. Now, if I forget to take my pocket knife out of my carry-on, I'm going to be questioned. This is not appropriate.
The problem is not pocket knives. The problem is not even really bombs, or guns. The problem is that terrorism pays off. It's safe. We need to make a decision as a society. We need to use America's military might to utterly demolish any terrorist group, and anybody who gives them succor. These barbarians shouldn't be safe anywhere. It certainly shouldn't be safer to harbor terrorists, than it is to go to work at the World Trade Center.
I think that the best thing to do, once we've concluded the rescue and justice efforts, is to rebuild the World Trade Center. I believe that we should design two new towers. I think we should make them larger than life. We should use all of our technical acumen and architectural expertise to show the world that the United States will not, under any circumstances, be intimidated.
So the terrorists want symbols? We'll give them symbols. We'll make NEW symbols. We'll make them bigger, and stronger, than the old ones. We will not be intimidated. We will not be beaten. Not by cowards hiding behind puppet regimes, not by anyone.
Now that I've got that off my chest...
I've been reading some really good alternative coverage of this tragedy.
Slant Six: Amateur newspaper. Nice format, good articles.
Slashdot: The granddaddy of all weblogs. Some really really good commentary, and some very comprehensive link libraries.
Engineering Aspects of the Collapse: An excellent engineering approach to explaining why the towers fell.
Post in the discussion section any other sites you've found useful, along with any anecdotes you may have heard about this tragedy.
Posted by Lee at 12:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack