FMS hosts local 9/11 commemoration
Photo by Kevin Blackburn
Tuesday, Sept. 11. It was a beautiful late-summer morning on the East Coast. The sun was out, shining bright, barely a cloud in the sky.
The weather forecast for the Mid-Atlantic stretching from Virginia to New York City called for temperatures in the 80s.
As millions of Americans prepared for work and school, their world was about to change.
“People were going on with their daily lives just as they did every other day, not knowing that just a mere one minute later, their lives and the lives of millions of Americans and others around the world would be changed forever,” said Gary Critzer, the director of emergency services in Waynesboro.
Several hundred local residents gathered with Critzer and other city leaders at Fishburne Military School on Sunday for a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
It was a morning reminiscent of the one 10 year prior. The sun was out, barely a cloud in the sky, with a forecast for more of the same.
“The events of Sept. 11, 2001, touched all Americans in some manner. For those who do not live in the impacted communities, did not have a family member, friend or colleague perish or injured in the attacks, we were all touched through the unity that binds us as a nation and forms our common identity as Americans,” Waynesboro City Councilman Tim Williams said.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, were “intended to break our unity, our identity and our spirit as Americans,” Williams said. But the result of what was done that day only strengthened our unity “and revealed our best attributes as Americans and our patriotism.”
Photos by Kevin Blackburn/Video by Chris Graham
It has been a long 10 years. Two wars, an economic meltdown, continued economic uncertainy, ongoing political discord – it’s as if we’ve forgotten the unity that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
“While I understand the need for our nation to move past 9/11, as part of the healing process, I suppose I’m afraid that while we say we’ll never forget, that has already started to happen,” Waynesboro Fire Chief Charlie Scott said.
With dozens of members of the local police force, fire department and EMS services looking on, Waynesboro Police Chief Michael Wilhelm vowed to never forget the sacrifices made by so many front-line first-responders.
“Because of those heroes, the anniversary that we observe every Sept. 11 will always be about far more than the buildings that our enemies brought down or the damage they inflicted on our fellow citizens. It is about honoring the heroism that we witnessed on that fateful day, and the resilience that the American people have continued to show ever since,” Wilhelm said.
Video by Chris Graham
Sanford D. Horn: Clergy, first responders more important than politicians
In continuing efforts to sanitize and extinguish all legitimate meaning behind the upcoming 10th anniversary of the worst attack perpetrated against the United States on its soil, the so-called powers that be announced there will be no clergy invited to participate in what doubtless will be a solemn event. For this, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg must be castigated for this deplorable decision.
Initially, first responders were denied a role in the memorial events, and now with the absence of clergy, one must wonder if survivors and families of the victims will be welcome or will this simply be a dog and pony show for the politicians and the so-called powers that be.
This is disgraceful and an affront to the memories of the victims, among them, numerous first responders. The last thing that should be done, but it comes as no surprise, is for such an occasion to be politicized.
This is not for the politicians. It’s already bad enough that politicians have commandeered the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site to ignore and eradicate the names of the victims and to not denote what really happened on September 11, 2001. The so-called powers that be have no conscience, no soul and no guts to tell the facts of that fateful Tuesday morning.
Has the United States become so politically correct, so afraid of its own shadow as to not be able to tell facts without worrying about who might get offended? Apparently so. And it’s just wrong – on so many levels. History must be taught and never forgotten.
The beautiful clear sunny morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was permeated by the depraved evil of 19 radical Muslim extremists, mostly from Saudi Arabia, a so-called ally to the United States. The havoc and mayhem they perpetrated took the lives of approximately 3,000 innocent people by hijacking four airplanes and intentionally flying them into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane appeared headed toward the US Capitol but the efforts of the terrorists were thwarted by the 40 passengers and crew who managed to prevent the plot from reaching fruition as it crashed into the Shanksville, Penn. field.
Whether events are being held at the site of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or the field in Shanksville, they should most certainly include clergy and first responders as well as survivors and victims’ families first and foremost. No one else matters during this solemn memorial. Not the politicians, not the voyeurs, not Code Pink or any other potentially disruptive organization with an ax to grind, or even the media for that matter.
Although the media does play an important role in bringing the events into the homes of the world viewership, they should do so from a distance – in an unobtrusive manner. And I say this as a writer who on September 11, 2001 was a working newspaper reporter in Northern Virginia, just miles from the Pentagon. The media should not transcend the news, but instead silently present the news as it unfolds.
What I am presenting here is editorial content, not unbiased, news – the difference too many in the business are not able to properly discern.
There are those who said that clergy were not invited to participate in the upcoming 9-11 events because they did not play a role in the prior years’ activities at the Ground Zero locales. That simply means that for nine years the so-called powers that be were wrong. That wrong should not be compounded with a bigger, more egregious wrong on such a powerful day of memorial when prayer is needed more than ever.
Is there anyone who truly believes the passengers on Flight 93 were not praying prior to crashing into the field in Shanksville? How about the firefighters who went into the buildings in New York City and the Pentagon? Anyone think they didn’t say a prayer before their life threatening endeavors? How about those employees who were absent from, or late to work that sunny Tuesday morning? Anyone think they don’t say an extra dose of prayers to this day?
If not having clergy participate in the memorial activities on the 10th anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks of 9-11 is a means of placating certain atheist groups, we the people should be ashamed. What other possible explanation could there be for not having rabbis, priests, reverends and pastors participating in event that are taking place on what is referred to as “hallowed ground” be so many.
The United States of America was founded on religious freedom. The First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion. We are a society created on the basis of Judeo-Christian values. If ever there were events crying out for the participation of clergy it is those that will take place in a couple weeks.
This year September 11 falls on a Sunday. I defy any reader to find a rabbi who won’t deliver a sermon the day before on Saturday or a priest or reverend who won’t deliver sermons that morning about the importance of faith, prayer and the remembrance of the events of September 11, 2001.
Clergy along with the first responders should not just be in attendance at the September 11, 2011 events but they should be front and center. They, combined, held this nation together – in terms of the spiritual and the physical by their presence and their deeds. They are too humble to make such a declaration, but it needs to be made, heeded and honored along with those who gave their lives and their families in what became the inaugural shot fired in the current global war.
May the memories of the victims of September 11, 2001 always be for a Blessing.
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, Ind. On September 11, 2001 he was working for a local newspaper in Northern Virginia.
Chris Graham: A new day dawning
The first feeling: dread. That’s what went through me as I was getting ready to go to bed early Sunday night before hearing that the president had a major announcement to make at 10:30 p.m., literally minutes away from when I heard the bulletin.
Funny how we’ve been conditioned to the bad news anymore, isn’t it? Maybe somebody was threatening us with nuclear blackmail. That was actually the first thought that went through my head. God forbid we find ourselves in another war.
A major announcement late on a Sunday night – it couldn’t be good.
Then one of the cable-news talking heads put something out there that I hadn’t considered: What if it had to do with Osama Bin Laden?
Turns out, of course, that it did – Bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2011 terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 Americans and changed our way of life forever, had been killed in a raid on a compound in Pakistan in which he had apparently been hiding for several years.
Among the next thoughts through my mind – should I feel guilty about being happy at the news of his death? I posted a message to Facebook to this effect, wondering aloud how pictures of Americans celebrating the news in Washington and New York would look in the Muslim world, in the context of how I remember feeling at the images of mass celebrations in parts of the Muslim world at the news of the 9/11 attacks.
Then it hit me – OK, yeah, there are twinges of guilt at being happy at someone else’s demise, but hey, this isn’t just any someone else. Bin Laden put in motion a terrorist action that he hoped would foment worldwide war that would result in a global Muslim fundamentalist caliphate. That he fundamentally misread how the U.S. would respond – he thought we would retreat as we pulled out of Beirut following the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks there in 1983 – and that he fundamentally misread the reaction of the Muslim world – he assumed the world’s 1 billion Muslims would unite as one with the terrorist attacks as a key flashpoint – is of little consequence.
The first layer of impact was directly on the 3,000 people who were killed and their families and friends. As President Obama said in his speech to the nation last night, “(T)he worst images (from 9/11) are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.”
The second layer – our military sector, including the families and friends of those serving their country in the post-9/11 era. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in deaths and injuries to tens of thousands, and the emotional strain on those who had to serve multiple tours and emerged unscathed in terms of physical injuries will be with us for generations.
The third layer – the rest of us. The strain of paying for multitrillion-dollar wars no doubt had an impact on our economy, which finally tanked in 2007. We’ve given up a good bit in terms of our civil liberties. We’ve seen our political system become almost hopelessly divided at times with shots being fired across the bow from the right and the left.
We were a people desperately waiting for some sliver of good news to heap on this pile of bad and worse news that had marked the past 10 years. Two wars not going well. An economy in recession now in a jobless recovery.
I was an elementary-school student in the Jimmy Carter years, but from what I remember, and have been able to gather about the time in retrospect, I think we were about as low as a nation as we’d been since the end of the Carter era, with Iranians holding our U.S. embassy workers hostage, the Soviet Union thumbing its nose at us in Afghanistan, our economy in malaise and the rest.
So here it is – the guy who engineered it all has finally been dealt his justice. He won’t continue living in relative luxury in a mansion in Pakistan as families in America who were his 9/11 victims wake up and go about their days without their fathers and mothers and sons and daughters. He won’t taunt us on the upcoming 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks or the walkup to the November 2012 presidential election with another YouTube video.
It’s hard to think that the world is that much better a place today than it was yesterday with Bin Laden gone. Al Qaeda was not a one-man organization, and had increased its decentralization and unit-by-unit autonomy in the aftermath of 9/11, so it’s not as if the threat from political terrorism inspired by Bin Laden is forever gone. Nor does his death bring back the men, women and children who lost their lives on 9/11, and those lost in the wars since 9/11.
We can’t turn back the clock to Sept. 10, 2001, basically.
What we can do is come to terms with who we are as a people, as Americans. As much as we disagree on things like how to deal with economic calamities or run our health-care delivery system or abortion or gun rights or civil rights for gays, lesbians, minorities, immigrants, there’s so much more that we agree on – the freedom to pursue whatever religious beliefs we hold dear, the freedom to choose for ourselves how we want to go about providing for ourselves and our families, even the very freedom to disagree with each other on anything and everything under the sun.
One other thing – working together, we can do the impossible.
Maybe next time we get one of those breaking-news bulletins, I won’t assume the worst.
Bin Laden dead
International terrorist Osama Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. military operation in Pakistan on Sunday.
Four others were killed in the operation, including a woman used by Bin Laden as a human shield. No U.S. personnel were hurt in the operation.
Bin Laden was the mastermind of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania.
“The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory – hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction. And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts,” President Barack Obama said in an address to the nation late Sunday night.
Obama told the nation that he was briefed in August 2010 on a possible lead to Bin Laden’s whereabouts. The president and his national-security team worked on a plan of action over the course of the next several months that finally came to a head last week with authorization from Obama on the operation that was undertaken on Sunday.
The death of Bin Laden “marks the most significant achievement to date” in the nearly 10-year effort to defeat Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organization, Obama said, but “his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt,” the president said, “that Al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must – and we will – remain vigilant at home and abroad.”
Sanford D. Horn: Whitewashing 9/11
Posted by afp on September 5, 2011 · 2 Comments
George Orwell would be proud and disturbed all at once. This administration, coupled with the cow-towing of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are assuming Americans have short memories and will be able to whitewash the heinous evils of the 9-11 terrorist attacks to something they were not.
On September 11, 2001 four airplanes were hijacked. By whom? Redheaded Irishmen? Orthodox Jews? Wait – how about 75 year old nuns? The cast of House? The starting five of the Boston Celtics? No; none of the above. The four planes were hijacked by 19 Muslim extremists hell bent on the greatest possible amount of destruction they could muster on a clear, beautiful sunny Tuesday morning.
No amount of downplaying or ignoring the facts by the conciliator in chief will ever be able to alter the facts and reality of what happened on that horrible day. This country, the United States of America, not Canada, not Belgium, not Laos, was attacked by 19 Muslim extremists on a specific day and date – September 11, 2001.
But according to Obama administration edict and “guidelines” that is not the manner in which September 11, 2011 is to be observed.
“The important theme is to show the world how much we realize that 9-11 – the attacks themselves and violent extremism… is not just about us,” said an anonymous White House source in an August 29, 2011 New York Times article.
As usual, the Obama administration, either Obama or his people by fiat, are just plain obtuse. Yes, 9-11 IS exactly about us. The attacks being commemorated and memorialized were perpetrated on American soil – the first two planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the third plane hit the Pentagon in Arlington, VA and the fourth plane, on a flight path to the Capitol Building was diverted by the 40 passengers and crew who heroically inexorably altered the route of that plane causing it to crash in an open field in Shanksville, Pa.
The Obama administration stated that public commemorations “should not cast the United States as the sole victim of terrorism,” added the Times article.
Administration “guidelines” state: “We honor all victims of terrorism in every nation around the world…. Whether in New York or Nairobi, Bali or Belfast, Mumbai or Manila or Lahore or London.”
Notice the omission of Madrid? How about the glaring omission of Israel as a whole – a nation leading the league in terror attacks against her.
While the United States clearly is not the sole victim of terror, we the people are observing and memorializing the specific attacks that occurred on a specific date. And how we the people choose to remember the victims – be they the passengers on the four airplanes, the people who worked at the World Trade Center, the people employed at the Pentagon, the bystanders or the first responders and volunteers – is up to the individual.
Each individual or group will conduct their ceremonies, services and remembrances as they choose – not according to some sanitized government guidelines. This isn’t Communist China – we do not tap dance according to the government’s tune. But apparently the Obama administration is worried about how the huddled masses will conduct themselves while, according to the Times article, “the world’s attention will be on… Obama.”
Could the New York Times be more sycophantic? Could Obama be more egomaniacal to think the attention of the world won’t be focused upon the survivors and the families of the victims? The Times and the Obama administration are two obsequious peas in the same pod. Their mutual love-fest is simply nauseating.
Additionally, the guidelines call for events that “minimize references to Al Qaeda.” Why do we care what Al Qaeda thinks? They are the enemy like the Taliban and every other terrorist outfit attempting to destroy the fabric of American life.
It is not Islamophobia to speak the truth when remembering the brutal attacks on American soil. Nor is it Islamophobia to remind people that the Muslim extremist terrorists were operating under the guise of so-called Koranic values in an effort to destroy the Judeo-Christian society in the United States of America.
A religion of peace does not hide behind children and strap bombs onto women and mentally retarded people. Remember the words of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Americans should commemorate the terrorist attacks on the United States in whatever meaningful way they determine appropriate. Special services in churches and synagogues, remembering specific friends and loved ones who were murdered on September 11, 2001, visiting a cemetery or museum, or even being angry and resentful if one chooses as the way to get through the day.
We the people will make those decisions, not the government. We still live in a semi-free nation where free will still rules the day.
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