A Sunny Morning with Bright Blue Skies . . . 18 Years Later

On that fateful morning of September 11, 2001 I was at my desk just three short blocks from the White House as my colleagues and I followed the unfolding of those tragic events in New York City. And while we and much of America watched in horror as two commercial airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 carrying 59 passengers and crew, was hijacked by five terrorists after its departure from Washington’s Dulles International Airport and deliberately crashed into the west side of the Pentagon at 9:37am. The plane struck the building at the first-floor level while traveling at 345 mph, and debris and fires penetrated the three outermost rings of the building. The building was severely damaged, and one section at the impact site collapsed. In the meantime a third plane crashed into the rural hills of western Pennsylvania as it flew toward another unsuspecting target in Washington.  In the aftermath, I joined thousands of others crowding the streets and sidewalks of downtown Washington as we made our way out of the city on foot, the smoke of the burning Pentagon rising into an otherwise cloudless blue sky.
 
Who can ever forget?  September 11, 2001 was a day when everything changed in the United States, if not the entire world.   Since then we have been bogged down in a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan in which more Americans have sacrificed their lives.   Osama Bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities is dead and his organization in shamble yet we still live on the brink, awaiting what surely will come next.

We need to stop living in fear.  A year ago I said it was seventeen years later it was time we finally put our best face forward again as a country.  Another year has gone by and I fear we have yet to do that.  And as I look around me I see no real effort to do so in the foreseeable future.  On September 11, 2001 it seemed as if time stood still.   We tried to catch our breath and understand what was happening and why.  It’s time to start breathing again.  It’s time to take our fate in our own hands again.   It’s time we regain our moral compass and start acting like the great nation we were before that sunny morning with bright blue skies.  It really is up to us.