Everyone remembers where they were eight years ago today. On that clear September morning terrorists hijacked four planes and created human missiles, killing nearly 3,000 Americans in less than three hours. One plane flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, a second flew into the South Tower, a third was directed toward Washington, DC and exploded into the west side of the Pentagon, while the fourth and final plane was driven into an abandoned field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
I can remember that morning like it was yesterday. I was on my bike, finishing an early morning training ride. At that point, I was two weeks into my first year of law school, but more significantly, my father--a retired Colonel and career Army officer--had died three days earlier on September 8th, after a valiant battle with a brain tumor. My world was already upside down and the ride was intended to be cathartic. As I got home, I turned on the television to pick up live coverage of the attacks. I immediately thought it was a prank in the vein of an Orson Wells, War of the Worlds broadcast. Every channel was running coverage. The first plane had just hit the North Tower. At that point, commentators were openly debating whether or not it was an errant plane that had flown off course. No sooner did they say that, then I saw the second plane fly into the South Tower on live television. It was surreal.
Time stopped. I was already in a fog that morning and the two days prior to that, but when you see events unfolding before your very eyes that look like a scene from a Hollywood film, it takes your breath away. Forty minutes later, Flight 77 hit the side of the Pentagon, less than two miles from my law school. It was an all-out attack. Twenty seven minutes after the Pentagon explosion, the news commentators reported that a fourth plane had just crashed in a Pennsylvania field. It was sometime later that we discovered that American passengers had valiantly stormed the hijackers and forced the plane into the ground, sealing their own fate, but saving the lives of everyone in Congress, the White House, or both--each was the presumed final target of the militant terrorists.
The objective? Crumble our financial markets, destroy our elected political leaders, and drive a plane into our center of national defense, all while striking fear and terror into the hearts of a captive American television audience that numbered in the hundreds of millions.
Those images ran over and over on television and yet despite the repetition, they never became real. Families huddled around their set, entire offices gathered in a single cubicle, by-passers stopped in stunned amazement outside of electronics stores--each group was paralyzed with disbelief at the acts which they had just witnessed, all the while wondering about the untold number of American lives that were lost in the process.
Like so many things, it seems more recent than eight years ago. At some point time loses meaning, or at the very least, it loses perspective. In this case, no period can pass where this day will be meaningless. No event can transpire where this will not evoke tears, anger, nausea, and that fleeting sense of helplessness that we all experienced eight short years ago.
News stations are no longer supposed to run the footage. We are supposed to be in a "time of healing" and some have claimed that by replaying the footage we are rehashing and reopening a wound that we otherwise want so desperately to heal. As the smoke hung over Ground Zero, we were a bruised and battered nation, and yet within hours, we rose from the rubble with a resolute determination, a heightened sense of patriotism and commitment to our fellow man, and a clear sense and consciousness that our liberty, democracy, and freedom are an intimidating threat to many people around the world.
Today, eight years later, our armed forces and intelligence community have captured and/or killed many if not most of the alleged masterminds behind the brutal attacks that killed so many helpless Americans on September 11th. As we move forward, these actions provide comfort, if not some sense of revenge, and yet some things will never be forgotten, some things can never fully be made whole.
To our troops abroad that continue to hunt down, capture and bring to justice all those that would do similar harm to our country--we thank you. For without your dedication to our continued protection, we would continuously fall victim to any and all such attacks upon our citizenry.
For those of you who have forgotten the initial nature of their deployment, or the necessity of their mission, I remind you of the following:
First plane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iGYVh7HZo8
Second plane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3iKLz4oatY&NR=1&feature=fvwp
People jumping to avoid being burned to death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh2ee2Vciwk&NR=1
Collapse of South Tower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sRi5stG10
Collapse of North Tower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8JG7vMQYqA
This campaign has been--and will continue to be--completely apolitical. I have avoided partisan politics, which might derail an otherwise bipartisan issue and endeavor: the continued treatment and care for those American soldiers who are injured in the line of duty...injured while protecting not only their fellow citizens, but those abroad, who might be harmed by the coward, reckless acts of extremists, just as we were eight short years ago.
Today is not a day of mourning. Today is a day of remembrance. Today is a day of affirmation of purpose.
And in that, we salute those who have fallen and we salute those who continue to stand watch for our protection.
Doug Eldridge
President
DLE Sports
