Where were you on September 11, 2001 — 20 years ago?
I wrote on the Sunday following that day of infamy:
“I sat down at my computer at about 6 a.m., unfolded the newspaper and switched on the television. There was smoke pouring from the top of one of the unmistakable landmarks of New York City, the World Trade Center. Well, I thought, there’s a story and photo for tomorrow’s front page, and started into the morning’s routine.
“Minutes later a fireball blossomed from the other tower, and it began to dawn on the commentators and me that this was no ordinary accident and Sept. 11 would be no ordinary day.”
I started making phone calls. Reporters and photographers were dispatched to Hoover Dam, McCarran International, City Hall, Nellis Air Force Base, the Strip and elsewhere. Editors huddled. The publisher called in and said we should add 24 pages to the Wednesday newspaper. All plans were scrapped and we started from scratch, hoping to help our readers make sense of a senseless act.
Every section of the paper kicked in its resources.
The press crew rolled the presses early and cranked out thousands of extra copies.
Then I wrote that Sunday:
“I was proud of what we all had accomplished, of the concerted effort and professionalism, as I drove home at 1 a.m. … until I heard the callers on the radio. People were saying they would gladly give up some freedoms for the sake of safety.”
I wanted to reach into the radio and slap some sense into the callers.
The column proceeded to tick off some of the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights and I wondered aloud which people would willingly sacrifice. The First’s right of assembly, lest there be a bomb, and no freedom of speech and religion, especially that one? The Second’s right to bear arms? The Fourth’s prohibition against warrantless search and seizure? The Fifth’s right to due process? The Sixth’s right to a public trial?
I concluded:
“If this is the consensus of the nation, the bastards have already won, destroying our will and our principles as well as planes, buildings and lives.
“We will have surrendered without firing a shot in the first war of the 21st century.”
The column appeared sandwiched between a Jim Day cartoon and a Vin Suprynowicz column with the headline: “The passengers were all disarmed.”
In a comment to a local magazine on an anniversary of 9/11 I called it “our Pearl Harbor.”
Now, these two decades later, the Taliban, who harbored the terrorists who plotted and carried out the 9/11 attacks, are back in power in Afghanistan. Was it all for naught?
A version of this was posted on this day in 2016.
http://dlvr.it/S7Ql2F