It was the morning of my first vacation day. I had been sleeping, and we had two very young babies in the house. My second had been born just 1 month before the attack.
My wife came into our bedroom and woke me up, because I had slept in from feeding my son the during the early morning.
She turned on the TV, and there was a replay of the first plane hitting the tower.
I was now up at that point.
Not too long after, the second hit the tower.
I looked at my wife and said to her, “That’s not an accident. We are now at war.”
Then we started filling bathtubs, moving plywood, and positioning hammers and nails to cover doors and windows.
About 45 minutes after the second plane hit the tower, we could here military aircraft flying low and almost directly over our house. It was low and loud enough to shake the house.
My wife had a sort of normalcy bias going while I was running around - I was completely committed to preparation for what I though would be a serious of follow up strikes all over the US.
After the jets rattled the house, she was now fully on board and getting stuff ready.
Then we heard about the Pentagon hit, and something happening in PA.
Once we had done some basic prep stuff, we were glued to the set waiting for updates.
I hadn’t been turned on to FR at that point. I was going by what Fox was broadcasting, and back filling that with CNN stuff. CNN, in events like this, has traditionally had better live coverage, with people positioned closer to where stuff was going on at the time.
I remember, later in the very early morning of 12SEP01, thinking that the Muslims here had acted with incredible stupidity. They had made a bold opening move, and succeeded in bringing down the commercial air traffic to nothing.
But nothing happened afterward - no attacks on malls, no attacks to power infrastructure, no attacks to banking, the internet, or water supplies.
I remember thinking in the following days, “What was the point? Now we are pissed. You know what’s coming.”
I also remember thinking, “Does W need an engraved invitation to hit something at this point? Why isn’t the Middle East a sea of glass? One big Chihuly sculpture piece?”
My inlaws were on a cruise down off of Florida. A planeload of tourists from their ship went down in a sightseeing sortie over one of the islands down there. They had real trouble getting back to WA state from that trip.
Hindsight is 20/20. I remember thinking, “An asymmetrical attack by a state-sponsored terror group on a superpower deserves an asymmetrical response.”
We should have responded with nukes that day, the following couple of days, where we had a window - but didn’t.
Instead we got sucked into the doctrine of ‘appropriate response’, and here we are today.
I was fortunate. I had been on FR for a while. The first thing I did was turn off the radio and sign onto FR. There were freepers in NYC and DC who gave hair raising accounts of what they were seeing.
It was interesting that some of the events they spoke of never made it into the news. I still wonder about the explosions near the state department (verified by a family friend who was near there) and the smoke markers heading toward the Capitol.
BTW not only should Bush have retaliated immediately, he should have slammed our southern border SHUT immediately.
Now we have a “leader” who thinks we can absorb terror strikes.
I was fortunate. I had been on FR for a while. The first thing I did was turn off the radio and sign onto FR. There were freepers in NYC and DC who gave hair raising accounts of what they were seeing.
It was interesting that some of the events they spoke of never made it into the news. I still wonder about the explosions near the state department (verified by a family friend who was near there) and the smoke markers heading toward the Capitol.
BTW not only should Bush have retaliated immediately, he should have slammed our southern border SHUT immediately.
I like your thinking, but would we have known who or where to nuke?
Mecca? Right or wrong that would have gotten a whole lot of people's attention. Makes me wonder what the world would be like today if we had. I don't see how it would have been less safe and maybe we wouldn't have a mooselimb for president.
We should have responded with nukes that day, the following couple of days, where we had a window - but didn’t.
We should have.
Can you imagine the USA if we had? We’d have allies galore because no one wants to be left out of that kind of protection. Damn sure Barack Obama wouldn’t have ever been elected president. And bin laden would have lost many years of sex with young women and porn. Ha.