9/11 Five Years Later

Been awhile with the blogging, I know. Hope to get back into it in October sometime, but until then here's the latest installment:

I guess on the 5 year anniversary of Sep. 11, 2001 a lot of people have written about what it all means and where things stand. Frankly I'm not sure I know the answer to either one of those questions. Instead I'll just write about what I remember of that day, because I can still remember it quite clearly and I don't know if those memories will remain as sharp as the years pass.

The sky was blue. I remember that much. Barely a cloud in the sky -- a perfect late summer day. Low humidity, high temps in the 70s. I walked to work across the Key Bridge like any other day, got to the office right around 9 a.m. and booted up my computer. After checking my email I went over to washingtonpost.com and noticed at the top of the page there was a red colored headline that said "Breaking News: Plane Flies into World Trade Center."

My initial reaction was not one of shock or horror. I simply thought, "That's odd." My immediate thought was that some idiot who wanted to go out with a bang had flown his Piper Cub into the World Trade Center. I mean, the weather was so beautiful out -- and I couldn't imagine that the weather was much different in NYC than DC -- that I figured it could only be deliberate and that it could only be a tiny plane because how would a large plane be flown into a building like that? I mean, it would have to be hijacked, and the hijackers would have to know how to fly, and too many other unlikely scenarios.

I wandered out of my office and said to the office secretary, "Hey, a plane apparently flew into the World Trade Center." We talked for a few minutes about how that could have happened, again figuring it must have been some idiot, and I went back to my desk. Within a few minutes it became apparent that this was much more significant than a loner with a small prop plane -- a second plane had hit.

We didn't have a TV at my office so I called my mom in upstate New York to see what was going on. She said that planes had hit the World Trade Center towers. I asked what kind of planes and she said she didn't know the exact model, but she confirmed that they were jet planes, passenger planes. This was serious. A completely fanciful scenario was coming true -- hijacked planes were being used as missiles. Unreal.

I then hung up and started instant messaging with friends and reading all I could on the internet. Can't remember a specific timeline but things got progressively crazier. News came that the Pentagon had been hit -- a secretary on the other side of the office building facing the Pentagon saw it happen. Rumors on the internet -- I believe at National Review's The Corner -- of a car bomb at the State Department. My chief of staff said that he was told the Capitol had been hit. A plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. What was fact and what was fiction? In any case I knew the Pentagon was a definite. I could hear the sirens of vehicles racing through the streets around me.

On instant messenger some Dutch friends of mine were asking what things were like.

Eventually our secretary located an old TV that pulled in broadcast signals. I watched the towers burning, and then one of them fell down. And then the other. And you knew that right before your very eyes that hundreds of people had just perished, but it didn't really register. It was just a building that had become a smoking pile of rubble. For some reason it seemed to serve as an end to that chapter. I no longer wondered about what was to happen to the people inside those burning buildings because their fate was now obvious.

It was plain that I wasn't going to get any work done today. I walked out of the office building and turned the corner and saw this huge plume of white smoke coming from the direction of the Pentagon. It seemed so close.

Walked back inside and everyone in the office was told to go home.

So I started walking back across the Key Bridge and was confronted with this river of people flowing out of DC. Everyone was going home and apparently the Metro rail system had been shut down. Of course most were going in the opposite direction as me, out of DC. As I walked I recognized David Asher, who I remembered from briefings at the American Enterprise Institute. Even amidst the grim circumstances he still looked like he was about to break into one of his goofy grins. Weird. Then I noticed a pair of F-16s flying above. Guess it made people feel better but I remember thinking how it was like closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out.

I did some reflecting on that bridge. It was the first time that I wasn't actively engaged comparing notes or talking with someone else, the first chance I really had to stop and consider the enormity of what had just occurred. I realized that this was going to be a major, if not the defining point in my life. Until that point I always figured that it would have been the fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred while I was living in Germany. I figured that after communism was vanquished that we could all concentrate on the business of getting rich. Our holiday from history had coming to a jarring conclusion. I realized that we were in a new era. But that doesn't exactly earn me a place in the pantheon of great thinkers, everyone realized it. Everything changed -- whatever that means.

I paused to look over at the Pentagon but it was hard to see any detail, just a mass of smoke and some helicopters. I wanted to take it all in and give myself an enduring image of that day, but to be honest I don't remember it particularly well.

After crossing the bridge I was back in Georgetown walking to my house. Georgetown was empty. No one around, no one driving, no signs of life. And for some reason as a I walked along I had that Lemonheads cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song "Mrs. Robinson" playing in my head. Especially the line "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, Our nation turns it's lonely eyes to you." It seemed profound for some reason. REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know it" might have been more appropriate but I think it was ruined by its use in Independence Day.

I arrived at the house to find that my two housemates, Mike and Steve, had already made it home ahead of me. Mike was relieved to see me, saying that they had gotten a little worried. Mike and Steve were both from Nothern Jersey, and Steve worked for a New Jersey Congressman. He knew the days ahead would be busy trying to help constituents.

The phone was tied up the rest of the day. Mike was on the line constantly with his parents. New Jersey sounded chaotic. Kids at schools not knowing if their parents were still alive. Mike and Steve both figured out that their families were safe, but what about friends? And it wasn't only them, it seems almost everyone knows someone who works in NYC. Were they safe? What had they seen?

I was able to get online a few times that day and whenever I did I was bombarded with instant messenges, mostly from high school friends in Richmond wandering what things were like.

I flipped on the TV but really, what was there for them to tell us? The towers had collapsed. The Pentagon was smoking. A plane crashed in Pennsylvania. We all knew this. I guess the only questions I could think of at that point was "Who did this?" and "What are we going to do about it?"

I figured all along it was Osama. Saddam wouldn't be that dumb. The Palestinians never seemed to show the inclination. And, oh yeah, Al Qaeda had done it before. But what would we do about it? Declare war on Afghanistan? It wasn't all that obvious. But there would definitely be hell to pay.

I didn't see the point in watching TV all day since they weren't telling us anything new so I grabbed a disposable camera and walked back down to the Key Bridge to take some pictures. There was smoke still billowing from the Pentagon and a few helicopters buzzing around it. I still have those pics, although you can't see much.

The rest of the day became a blur. Mike left to go to his girlfriend's house. The news showed explosions in downtown Kabul and everyone wondered if it was courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. Nope, turned out it was just one militant faction taking on another.

The last thing I remember is taking a call from my Dutch friend Arthur who called from Amsterdam. He basically just wanted to know my reaction and express his sympathy. He said something to the effect of, "I want you to know that the whole of the Netherlands stands with the U.S." And I very distinctly remember saying "Thank you" while thinking all the while "But what will you and the rest of Europe say when the s*** hits the fan and we hit back? Will you still be with us?"