On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I was headed out of town on a business trip in a rented car. I live in a small rural town in Central California.
I heard the news on the radio after I rented the car and pulled out of the parking lot. Strange that the car rental place didn't alert me to what had happened. The girl who did the paperwork for me was very friendly as usual and so I never suspected anything. Once in the car and headed out toward the freeway, I couldn't quite understand what had happened, listening to the calm, even voice of the ABC Network's anchor man, Peter Jennings, on the station that the FM radio was tuned. I headed back home and turned on the television set, there to behold the twin towers on fire and to find out that terrorists had struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Their weapons, three passenger aircrafts with passengers and fuel for the cross-continental flight to the West Coast of the United States of America.
It took a while for the news to sink in, for the playback of the picture to reveal the catastrophe that it portended, the loss of life, the murderous act of destroying the lives of innocent passengers and the terror of the city that was attacked. The picture was replayed hundreds of times, if not thousands on all TV channels, from all angles, the twin towers being struck by the two aircrafts, the impact and explosion of gasoline, the imploding buildings, finally the collapse of each building as the steel reached the melting temperature and the weight of the building could not be supported and the towers came tumbling down in millions of pieces, as concrete turned to dust. Then the people were seen running with unbelieving eyes at the sight of the cloud of debris billowing behind them, some taking shelter in nearby buildings, others further along trying to beat it out of the area of the doomed buildings.
It was agonizing to see the suffering of the people who worked in the twin towers and the neighborhood. There were untold numbers of stories of firemen and police that risked and even sacrificed their lives by the hundreds, trying to do the impossible, to rescue people out of collapsing one hundred and sixteen story structures. Yet they went on climbing into the buildings that were on fire, while thousands of people managed to make it out of the buildings and into safety. Thousands were suspected to be dead, but presumed missing until all the rescue efforts would be exhausted. All over the country and around the world, people were calling in and expressing their feelings of sympathy and outrage about the tragedy that was occurring before their eyes.
However, as the news unfolded, it became clear that it wasn't only the city that was attacked, but the whole country, its capitol and ultimately, the nation.
As the anchormen of the three networks, NBC, CBS and ABC, tried to make sense of what had happened, gradually the President of the United States, George W. Bush, attempted to calm the nation and pledged his government to do everything possible to alleviate the suffering of his people and punish the perpetrators, the terrorists.
As the different functionaries of the government were interviewed by the news media, a more detailed picture began to emerge. This attack against civilians in America was not just a terrorist action, but a declaration of war against the United States. But who would have done such a thing and for what purpose?
Soon the news media had a label attached to this story, "Attack on America," and the nation coalesced in its support for the President's plan to hunt down and eradicate the enemy. By the following day, the unknown enemy became known as the fanatical and barbaric leader of Islam, a supporter of many terrorist acts against America, Osama Bin Laden.
Bin Laden was known to the American government as the former leader of the Afghan rebels that fought against the Soviet Union in their last war as a Communist country. A wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman, who had turned to politics and become a fanatical maniac for the cause of old Islam, Bin Laden was the perfect example for the US to teach every evil dictator in the world a lesson about democracy and freedom.
The US Congress quickly passed a resolution in both houses to call for a war on terrorism.
Meanwhile, the heroic efforts of the people of New York City continued as they began to clean the city of the rubble, find the victims buried under the shattered structures of the buildings and treat the injured and wounded. The whole nation sent their experts to help and NATO pledged its support to stand shoulder to shoulder with the US in its battle against terrorism.