Yep, it’s true, I forgot 9/11. Not that I forgot that it happened, or where I was that day. I was at 16 & M NW in downtown DC, about five blocks from the White House. I was working, of course, same thing I did today, in fact. What I mean is I woke up this Wednesday morning perfectly oblivious that today was September 11th. My agenda for the day included no plans for any memorialization. I do not begin my mornings tuning in to any news cycle, so I didn’t get any extraneous information on the way to work.
The first thing I noticed when I approached the customer’s facility this morning, was that the flags were at half staff. Which struck me as odd, because I hadn’t heard of any mass shootings lately. So I thought maybe some aged denizen of the public sphere had uploaded to the great cloud storage in the sky. It wasn’t until I walked inside, and asked my co-workers several work-related things did I bother to ask, “does anybody know why the flags are at half staff?”
What did I do after that? I worked; it was a very busy day. I don’t know what, if anything, any of this means. But on this day in 2019, I forgot it was September 11th.
3 replies on “#iforgot”
I can’t ever forget. I woke up to start my day and turned on the TV to see the pictures of the planes flying into the towers, watched in horror as people jumped from the building trying to escape the certain death that awaited them. I even have pictures of my kittens (the ones that I had in 2001) that showed sorrow in their eyes at what had just happened, imagine an animal that had clearly displayed their own sorrow. And the world has NEVER been the same since. For a short time, we all banded together to help one another in our sorrow for what had just happened to these innocent people in our nation, see the after affects on the survivors and first responders.
Then in 2012, we had yet another attack on 9/11, the one in Benghazi. In many ways this attack was so much worse than the one in 2001. I know fewer men and women died, but we lost our honor during that attack, as much as we lost our fallen heroes. We did not try to save our men who under threat of death, risked their lives to go and try and save the Ambassador. Instead we as a nation weighed the lives of these brave men and women against the Politics surrounding our even being there. Then to top it off we LIED to the families of those who perished. As much as it might hurt, it must have hurt even worse when they found out they’d been lied to. And NO ONE has paid the price for this dereliction of duty on the part of the then President Obama AND Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Just a pointing of fingers and cover up, barely even a hand slap. But we left our men behind, that is something we NEVER do.
We can only be thankful for our allies in the area and on the ground that got the survivors out of Benghazi and to safety. We had a plane on the ready, part of the F.A.S.T team that was suppose to be available to rescue anyone in the region in danger. It never left the ground.
I live to “hate” the date 9/11. And I wish we could rescue the innocents, but at some point we have to say enough is enough.
One thing’s for sure, the world, and America were changed for ever.
Well stated on 9/11/2001 and Benghazi, Jo Ann. Your description of Benghazi was great. I am not naive enough to think our government has never done bad things that have never been exposed, but as the Benghazi lie unraveled and the whole situation, with the lies and deception, cover up, level of treachery and motive became clear. As you point out, the country lost a lot more than 4 brave unselfish men Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Chris Stevens.