9/11 - forgotten

It's been six years since the day that I woke up at 8am in my dorm room, the clock radio blaring loudly, my roommate, Kara, stirring in the bunk above mine. On the radio was a calm sense of pandemonium, if such a thing can exist, as the announcers were trying to remain calm. "We're under attack, people, New York City is under attack!" I shot up, Kara said, "I think it's a commercial..." But I had already turned on the television. Every channel showed the same thing, a shot of the twin towers of the WTC, and smoke billowing from a large hole in the one on the left. Panic. Kara started crying, while I ran to the window in a brilliant move of selfish motivation to see if anything was going on in downtown Dallas. No, to the world outside our dorm it was a day like any other, but our television told a story of a world that would never again be quite the same as it once was.

Ya'll all know how that went down: the second tower was hit, we all sat glued to the television and watched as the building smoked and smoldered, people jumped to their death from 80 stories in the air, and, finally, the building collapsed under the weight and a white cloud of smoke, ash, and building fragments covered the city like a sheet being spread over a corpse after she drew her final breath. But it was all of our hearts that stopped. As I left the dorm that morning and stepped out onto the pavement in the Texas September heat wave, the first thing that hit me was the silence. Dallas Baptist University is on the direct flight path for DFW airport, and there was never a moment where the distant sounds of flights coming and going wasn't echoing through the sky. Yet this day would forever be known to the students of DBU not only as 9/11 but as the day without planes. It was the silence and stillness of death out there.

What followed was just like everybody else experienced on that day. Grief, stricken faces, students wandering around calling all the loved ones they knew to ascertain the impact of the attack in NYC. Special chapels, classes cancelled, etc, etc, etc.

But now, 6 years later, I woke this morning and stumbled groggily out of bed, clothed my body and kissed my sleeping husband goodbye as I headed off to work, and on the radio I heard a DJ mention the memory of 9/11 briefly while he's transitioning between songs. So it's just 6 years. How short our memories are, how quickly we return to living in confidence that the Lord has given us tomorrow, and that we and our loved ones will be safe.

I'm not advocating that we live in fear, I just wanted to spark thought. In this current time of politicians vying for next year's presidential election, the war in Iraq has become a hot topic. It's been proclaimed stale, we're not gaining anything from that war... etc. But who on the campaign trail this year is proclaiming, "I will avenge the lives lost and the humiliation to our country that was suffered on 9/11." Where is the leader who is willing to lead the people into a place of remembrance, and place where they are able to recognize what this country has been through, and how close we are, daily, to going through that again? Osama just sent us a tape. He's scoffing in our faces and spitting at us in disgust. But as long as he keeps it from directly affecting us, we're ok. If he attacks again, it will be "bring out the big guns and hunt him down, we'll kick his turban-headed ass." (pardon the language). But give it six years, and America will be shown, again, for what she truly is. A country full of selfish whiners who take interest only in what directly affects them and their loved ones.

Ok. I'm rambling now. But the truth here that I'm driving at is that we call the war a hot button issue and a huge topic for the next election, but we have forgotten. The war is not the issue; it's what started the war that should be the focal point of where we are desiring to go as a country. We were threatened, we were penetrated. And the guy that did it hasn't been caught, yet. That would never fly in next week's episode of CSI, would it? Let's just not be so quick to forget six years ago, because it holds the context for the decisions we make next year as we select the next leader of our country. Is the guy going to be concerned with pleasing a whining, forgetful people, or is he concerned with protecting their safety from a parasite who will not be finished sucking out our blood and resources until he is finally eradicated? Perhaps our next president should not be elected solely on the basis of his vision for the future of our country, but also for his memory of her past.