In the last few days I”ve seen, heard and read much concerning the tragedy of 9/11.
Most has dealt with the reflections and memories in terms of personal feelings. Quite appropriate, true, and heartfelt, but very little on the effect 9/11 has had on our country.
To me there is no question as to the many, many examples of heroism on that day.
The police and firefighters of New York City were magnificent. But this was their job, they were trained and they knew this could happen, but no one could have imagined the scale of the towers” collapse.
Beyond that my choice of real heroes are the passengers of flight 93 who bravely tried to prevent another catastrophe at the cost of their lives and recall three other flights of passengers who chose not to?and the two F16 pilots who took off without armament and with the understanding that their only option was to use their aircraft (and lives) as missiles.
In both cases, flight 93 and F16s, I would hope I would have had the required courage.
I consider the incident as a terrorist attack, certainly not an act of war, by definition.
It was so unexpectedly successful in destroying the towers that it must have come as a shock.
Had the plane aimed at the Pentagon been flown at perhaps 10 degrees less down slope, it might have wiped out the center ring to much greater effect.
But the greatest effect of the incident was not the loss of lives and buildings. It has been the cost of getting even.
Somehow I cannot conceive that the people who died in the incident would have felt that another 7,500 dead and 75,000 wounded and an impoverished United States is/was justified, much less the degradation of the U.S. image since the incident, were justified as their remembrance.
I think that the greatest tribute we Americans can give the victims is to start, long-overdue, to make some sacrifices, both social and financial, to try to restore our country to the proud state it enjoyed on the day before 9/11.
Heroism gives short shrift to ideology when it gets in the way of progress and national restoration.
One very simply sacrifices and does what needs to be done. I think the victims would heartily agree.
A closing thought has to do with the motivation for terrorism.
We seem to have gone out of our way to alienate much of the world that is envious of our lifestyle.
On the other hand, I think we have not considered the tragedy of the Oklahoma City bombing nearly seriously enough.
This was done by “one of us,” a product of the America we think so highly of. Actually, I feel this was a more serious comment on our way of life than was 9/11.
And it is one that we should be working far harder on mitigating the feelings that led to the Oklahoma City incident.
Guthrie “Guff” Worth
Lakeport
