Our World Changed After 9/11

It all began on such a picture-perfect day when our world, as we knew it, came crashing down. I was in the green house, snapping suckers off my tomato plants, listening to country music. My husband came to tell me what he just heard on the car radio, as he was coming home from the Twin Cities. We both ran into the house to turn on the TV and sat shocked as we watched the destruction of the twin towers. What a nightmare! I’ll never forget that day as long as I live! How something so utterly insane could come to our shores and commit such devastation was beyond our comprehension at the time. It was a wake-up call to all Americans; we had to become more alert to the things and people around us or else this could happen again.

The many people, who were working in the World Trade Center, never suspected their day would turn into a total nightmare. I can’t even imagine their shock and horror when they saw or were told of what happened. Then they soon find out that it's worse than expected and told to evacuate, because the twin towers were collapsing. What a horrific time they must have had in trying to escape, thinking, I might not make it out alive! Days later, we learn of the statistics of how many did survive and die. I weep over the senseless loss that shouldn’t have been.

The planes that were used as a weapon of mass destruction, where unsuspecting people booked seats as on any other day. I can't imagine the horror they went through when later into the flight, they find out their plane is being hijacked into another direction. A direction that will cause more chaos when they are flown into the towers. What a terrifying last flight it must have been for them!  May they all rest in peace.

How many people did lose their lives on that day? The total, 2,752 senseless killings, which took our beloved sons and daughter, aunts and uncles, grandparents, neighbors and friends. When the pentagon was hit, 184 people lost their lives, including a young 3-year old girl. When Flight 93 was hijacked, passengers fought back and saved the Capital or the White House from being hit; forty people lost their lives in a field in Pennsylvania that day. A memorial is being erected in their honor. In Manhattan, a memorial, a museum and a new skyscraper is being erected with two reflecting pools located in the footprints where the towers once stood. It took ten years, with lots of disagreement over how it should be done, but completion is finally nearing an end.

After 9/11, we find "terrorist" to be the key word that people can all relate to when they fly. Before 9/11, you could arrive at the airport minutes before your plane takes off because going through baggage check didn't take long. Now after 9/11, you have to arrive hours before your flight takes off; wait in long lines to be body searched; then go through an array of monitors. If bells and whistles go off, you are again subjected to a more thorough body search, or worse scenario, stripped down to nothing. This is today at all airports. So, if I find myself with no other options but to fly, I endure the humiliation involved. While waiting in these long lines to be checked, I see babies; old men and women; even people in wheel chairs are taken aside and subjected to a more thorough search. So, I guess no one is immune! The fear of terrorism in our world today has us all on edge.

One time a while back, as I was entering the airport, I saw the National Guard on alert to anything going on around them as they observed each passenger boarding the airplane. As I walked out to my plane, I saw fighter jets circling around trying to spot anything or anyone suspicious. At the time I wondered what happened to make them go on extra alert. This extra vigil made me a little leery about getting on that plane.

Every time a person visits Manhattan today, you are reminded of our enemy who changed New York's skyline forever. What was their reason for taking down the towers? Did they have something against world trade and the different nationalities that were represented there? Why was the Pentagon a target? It's because it is the symbol of U.S. power where wars and peacekeeping missions throughout the world are planned. So, in memory of 9/11, a ship called the USS New York, made from 15,000 pounds of steel from Ground Zero with the motto of "Never Forget" on its hull, was put to sea in 2009. The USS Somerset, named after the county where Flight 93 went down, was launched in 2010,  in memory of the heroes on Flight 93.

These changing times call for stricter rules which are now becoming an everyday occurrence, and sometimes even that is not enough! How did the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber get past all these security checks? The past administration was blamed for the shoe bomber and now President Obama is taking the heat for the underwear bomber. I love the blame game that goes on in Washington! Each party likes to do it, but nothing gets accomplished when they do this. These terrorist are smart, they try to do as much harm as they possibly can, so anything goes on ways to sneak bombs through. That’s why they are very hard to pinpoint while going through this gauntlet of security checks. So, more planning needs to be done with different methods to catch these terrorists, who really mean to do bodily harm to these United States.

So, under the guise of the war on terrorism, the U.S. government launched a massive attack on immigrants from Muslim, Arab, and South Asian countries. The legal framework for this attack is the USA Patriot Act of 2001, their main target being the suppression of dissent in the USA. It is hard to believe the Act could have been drafted, debated, and passed in only 45 days consisting of 342 pages! Shortly after passage of the Patriot Act, the government secretly arrested and jailed more than 1200 people as part of its post-September 11 investigation. Their names, numbers, countries of origin, whereabouts, reasons for their arrest, were classified information and they were forgotten about with no hope of having a trial. Now, President Obama wants to extend it! I'm at a loss of words here on this subject.

Our Navy Seals took out Osama Bin Laden on May11, 2011, but our wars are still being fought. Wasn't he the reason we went to war in the first place, to take him out? But, of course, the reasons kept changing of why we're fighting overseas. Our soldiers are fighting bravely and willingly for our freedoms we hold so dear. I really do not know how long these foreign wars will go on, but my prayers are with these young men and women that are in harm’s way so far away home.

These are some of my views and facts on what has happened after 9/11. Everything has changed since this horrible day went down in the record books. It has been a trying time for these United States; we the people, who were always so trusting, feel a lot differently now. When I think of the cost of these foreign wars, not only in money value but in the lives of our soldiers it's all very overwhelming to me. Arlington and other cemeteries hold more than 6,500 troops that fought so bravely since 9/11; they are our heroes, the brave men and women who gave their lives for our freedoms. May they all rest in peace.