{"id":8822,"date":"2012-09-11T08:19:25","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T15:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8822"},"modified":"2012-09-11T08:19:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T15:19:25","slug":"reflections-eleven-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/11\/reflections-eleven-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections Eleven Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"11-911Firemen\"<\/font><\/p>\n

Eleven years ago this morning, I was getting ready for work when the first airliner hit the twin towers.  Like most Americans, I felt confused and wondered just what was going on.  The second airline hit just as I was walking out the door.  I realized then that it was a terrorist attack.  When I arrived at work, my job for that day was to talk to executives in fortune 500 companies in New York City to arrange research visits by a team from a major manufacturer of operating systems.  The account exec had not yet arrived, so I talked to his assistant and told her that I did not consider it appropriate to be calling New York companies, many of which were headquartered in the WTC, under those circumstances.  She ordered me to proceed, saying that terrorists cannot stop doing business, so I followed my orders.  As I called. most of my contact phones were out of order.  The few that I did reach were irate about me contacting them at that time.  One man answered the phone and told me that he was in one of the towers above the fire line.  He could not reach his wife, so he have me her number and asked me to call and tell her he loved her.  I did.  I don\u2019t know which of us was crying harder.  That was it.  I could not keep making calls, so I went back to the Account Exec\u2019s office and told him so.  He seemed shocked that I had been calling and asked why.  I told him I was following orders, he asked what idiot had told me to do that.  Needless to say, his assistant is a Republican.  The company cancelled all projects for the day.  Most of us gathered in the lunch room.  Because everyone knew I was an activist, they asked me what I thought would happen.  I told them that I expected the Bush Regime would use it as an excuse to do two things: crack down on civil liberties in the US and attack Iraq.  I wish I had been wrong.<\/font><\/p>\n

In years past I have always avoided issues of culpability, but this year I cannot do so in good conscience.  That is because Republicans keep presenting themselves as the party that has kept America safe and Democrats as the party that puts America at risk.  On August 6, 2001, President Bush was given a top secret Daily Brief that Osama bin Laden intended to attack the US using explosives and hijacked Airliners<\/a>.  The Bush Regime ignored the warning.  That is not the way to keep us safe.  Bush and the Republican party did not do so, nor were they able to bring Osama to justice.  It took a Democratic administration to do that.  I have no desire to politicize the day, but will do so as long as Republicans keep lying about it.  That explains the controversial \u201ccartoon\u201d I included in the Open Thread immediately preceding this article.<\/font><\/p>\n

Let me close by honoring the fire firefighters and police who gave their lives and their health to save as many as they could and ask your thoughts and prayers for them and their families.  They were the heroes of that day.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eleven years ago this morning, I was getting ready for work when the first airliner hit the twin towers.  Like most Americans, I felt confused and wondered just what was going on.  The second airline hit just as I was walking out the door.  I realized then that it was a terrorist attack.  When I […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-politics","category-19-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}