September 11, 2001 - A Personal Remembrance

The following is an adaptation of a piece from last year.

On the morning of Sunday, September 9, 2001, my wife and I were awakened early by very strange sounds coming from our younger son's room. Our son, who was 2 1/2 at the time, had developed a high fever the previous evening, but seemed better as the night wore on. But at 8:00 on Sunday morning, September 9, strange sounds were coming from our son's bedroom - these turned out to be the sounds of an epileptic seizure.

We called an ambulance in a hurry, called friends to take our other son, and proceeded in the ambulance with our son to the hospital. By noontime, our son was much better. He was released from the hospital in the early afternoon.

While he was feeling much better, our son was not in shape to go to day care. My wife stayed with him on Monday, September 10. It was my turn on Tuesday, September 11.

The morning started uneventfully. I got breakfast for my son and me and then did some work - including a call to a client. At about 8:45, I turned on my computer - at the time, I used AOL - and the first thing that I saw was a picture of the World Trade Center on fire. I quickly turned off my computer and turned on my television - where I stayed mostly until late afternoon.

I worried as the day went on about my younger brother. He worked at the time in lower Manhattan, but not at the World Trade Center. He and his wife were expecting their first child. It was also his 35th birthday. We didn't hear from him for several hours. Fortunately, he was all right - he needed to walk, however, from Lower Manhattan to his apartment on the Upper East Side. He did watch the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center - an experience that he will unfortunately never forget.

On September 11, 2001, the Islamic fundamentalist war on the West landed full-force on our shores. Many Americans were affected far more profoundly than I, losing loved ones or friends. I did not know anyone well who died that day. Nevertheless, I felt - as virtually every American did - the insult and the pain brought by this act. This was personal for all of us.

The criminals of Al-Qaeda need to know that they will, in the end, go down to defeat. They believe America to be a weak, self-indulgent nation, unwilling to do what is necessary to prevail in the long run. They should know that this is also what Hitler thought of America. They should know that America - and Americans - can and will make the necessary sacrifices. If the works of Bruce Catton or Shelby Foote on the American Civil War have been translated into Arabic, one could hope that these would find their way into the tents of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri - they should read these and consider them well - their confidence in their own final victory might be shaken.

Our nation has been led unwisely over the past six years. The world's sympathy was with us just a little under six years ago, but this sympathy has been grossly squandered. Incompetent policies and inane posturing by President Bush and the members of his administration have damaged this nation. However, the struggle with al-Qaeda terrorism is far from lost. It will be a long struggle, but we in the West will prevail. History is on our side.

A great evil landed on our shore on September 11, 2001. If I were to take a mystical view, I might venture that my son - with the epileptic seizure that coursed through his body - was sensing and channeling the great evil that was abroad in the land during that early September of 2001. He is fine now - a growing and strong 8 1/2 year old. We will be fine, too.