This essay was written by my son, Mike, who is in the Air Force getting ready for his second deployment.
I was at work, caulking cracks around baseboard so we could paint the new house the next day.
Mike,
my boss, always insisted on the radio being tuned to an oldies station
-- something that made me wear this ridiculous headphone-radio
contraption so I wouldn't have to listen to it. But, as luck would have
it, I was out of caulk in the tube I was using, so I came out of the
master bedroom with my headphones around my neck, looking for wherever
the guys had stashed the rest of the case. Walking by the radio, I
realized that the deejay sounded...weird. Like his dog had gotten shot,
or something. I was 16, that was the worst thing I could imagine
happening. So I listened for a second. He said that a second plane had
just hit the World Trade Center, and that nobody really knew what was
going on.
So he played a Beatles song, or rather a Paul McCartney song -- Yesterday. It sounded more sad than I remembered.
I
remember calling home and finding out my dad was already at the Navy
base (he was supposed to be off that day, I think). At that point, the
news was starting to speculate that it was a terrorist attack by some
guy I'd never heard of, Osama bin Laden. He lives in Afghanistan?
You're kidding me, some yokel in Afghanistan attacked the World Trade
Center?
And now they're crumbling...with people still
inside...deejay is crying on the radio. I still don't get the magnitude
of what's going on, I never had anybody close to me die, and now I
remember my uncle Tommy works in New York City. Is he okay? I can't
even remember if he worked in Manhattan...
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I didn't understand, didn't feel the sadness and rage that most
of you felt, for eight years. On September 11, 2009, mere months
before I joined the Air Force, I rode the VRE train from Fredericksburg
to Alexandria, to work at the Media Reseach Center. My job was to watch
the news for political bias, you see. I didn't think much about what
day it was -- there was a little joking around the office regarding how
the media would present the news of the day around the anniversary of
the attacks, and still remain as hopelessly in the tank for the left as
they possibly could. We wondered how they would do that, and not
further destroy whatever shreds of credibility they had left.
I
got off the train at roughly 8:30AM -- thankfully, no delays. I walked
the ten or so blocks down to South Patrick Street, picked up my
bi-weekly bag of Mischa's Ethiopian Harrar (still the best coffee I've
ever had, by far), went upstairs, started the coffeemakers, and settled
into my chair by about 8:55AM.
The news came back from a
commercial, and my first thought was that they must be using a terrible
camera -- the picture was awful. Then, I realized that NBC was playing
their complete coverage of that morning from 2001. It was the first
time I had ever seen the video, believe it or not. Youtube was not as
ubiquitous then, in 2001, as it is now.
They broke into
their normal morning-show pablum to report that the World Trade Center
appeared to have been struck by an aircraft of some sort. NBC had some
kind of roof camera on a building nearby, so they showed that angle for
the next few minutes while the hosts dithered about what to call it.
Then,
I saw the wingtip of the second plane come into view. I have never,
not in any horror movie or on any roller coaster, been more crushed to
know what was coming next. I wanted to scream at them to run...but it
was eight years ago, how would that do any good? No feeling is more
terrible than being completely unable to do anything to save someone
from disaster.
That was the first time I cried. My boss walked in and saw me
weeping into my coffee, stopped to watch with me, and told me that it
never got easier for him to watch, either.
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Fast
forward to May 1, 2011. I had just completed SERE training -- which,
for people who experience it, is especially entertaining (read: painful)
-- and was coming home from dinner in Spokane with my friends. I check
the news on my phone habitually -- one of the side effects of having
worked at NewsBusters is that I can't stop reading the news. I just
NEED to know what's happening, all the time. Anyway, there was a
short-notice drop on a network-televised, very important Presidential
speech, due for 10-ish that night.
Everything I know about
politics and media says that this just DOES NOT HAPPEN. You don't save
earth-shattering news, requiring a Presidential speech on all networks
at once, for Sunday NIGHT. You leak Thursday night, drop a couple
details on Friday, negotiate Sunday show appearances on Saturday, and
break the big news on Sunday MORNING, when everyone reads the papers and
watches TV. So I knew that whatever it was, it was big, and it just
happened.
I ran up to the dayroom, and told the guys that
their crappy movie had to wait an hour. They weren't too happy...until I
started explaining to them WHY this speech was different. The timing
was all wrong -- so it had to be something that the White House didn't
completely control. It wasn't another budget speech.
The
speech was delayed, at first. We were all speculating, hey maybe this
is why we upped the security stance. Has anyone seen the pizza guy
yet? Hey throw me my Gatorade, willya? until, just after ten our time,
Chuck Todd confirmed that a team of Navy SEALs had fast-roped into Osama
bin Laden's front freaking yard, kicked the door in, and shot him twice
in the face.
It was bedlam. These kids, most of whom were in middle school
when 9/11 happened, went completely banana sandwich. One guy fired the
Oreo he was holding across the room so hard, it shattered into dust on
the wall. Left a dent there too, if I remember correctly. Between the
smiles and high-fives, there was a feeling...one, of grim satisfaction,
and two, that somewhat ridiculous frustration that we weren't the guys
who got to kill him. But most of all, I remember one of the older guys
(okay, he was my age) in the group muttering something under his breath
as he left the room to catch some sleep before the next day's
punishment. This was the way he said it:
"I pledge
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the
Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, with liberty.
And justice, for all."
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These
are the things I remember when I'm about to deploy. I think about why
I'm going, about what that yokel in Afghanistan did to my country --
what effects he still has, every day that we live here, and we don't
even realize it. This is the new normal, after all. But most of all, I
remind myself of this: Justice, sometimes, is disproportionate. If
some kid is getting bullied, gets hit once in the face, nobody complains
when he body-slams the bully. Heck, nobody would complain if he kicked
the bully while he was down -- it's a bully, you're supposed to crush
them. That's justice.
And I know that some people would disagree with me on that. So
for those people, let me remind you of the best way to not get crushed:
Don't bully the weak son of a biker-gang chief on the playground.
He'll hit you with brass knuckles, and you'll deserve it because you're
stupid for trying to bully the son of a biker-gang chief.
And
especially, don't pick on Manhattan. They'll just sic the Brooklyn
rats on you. And no, I'm not talking about the actual animals.
'Murica.
God bless you and your teammates, Mike. Thank you for your service to our country.
Be thankful ~