Hi, neighbor. I'm a born and bred New Yorker and have lived in this city all my life. I remember when the WTC was being built, and I've been there so many times.
My daughter was about a mile away from the WTC on 9/11 and saw the second plane hit. I knew 10 people who died there (one on the plane), although they were more acquaintances than close friends. I had to use my windshield wipers to get the dust off my car windows....a horror, because there probably were human remains mixed in. My best friend goes every year to the memorial ceremony to read her brother's name.
I was teaching in Brooklyn and we had hysterical students all day, some who had parents who worked at the Towers. Frantic parents flocked to school to take their kids home. We had staff crying all day long. In later years I showed documentaries to students who had been too young at the time to grasp what had truly happened. Some didn't even know about the two other planes that were hijacked that day.
I've never gotten over it and it was my first thought when we all saw the Taliban marauding through Afghanistan. How, how, how did we get to this place where the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS are in charge again?
I agree with you 1000% that people should refresh their memories of that ghastly day, as a reminder of what pigs those people are and how excited they are to destroy us.
I don't want to feel that we spent 20 years in Afghanistan for no reason. It is likely that the presence of the U.S. and other allied forces did protect America from that level of attack, although many Western countries suffered terror attacks anyway. It is difficult though to blink my eyes, like Rip Van Winkle, and 20 years have gone by. Twenty years ago, most of us had never heard of these terror groups. To think of them re-emerging from the pit of hell is atrocious and should put us all on guard. Particularly those of us in cities which are likely to be targeted again.
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