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| (Source) |
American Airlines Flight 11 - 87 passengers and crew.
United Airlines Flight 175 - 60 passengers and crew.
The World Trade Center - 2,606 civilians and first responders.
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| (U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Jim Watson) |
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| (Source) |
American Airlines Flight 77 - 59 passengers and crew.
The Pentagon - 125 civilians, soldiers, and sailors.
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| (U.S. Navy Photo by Journalist 1st Class Mark D. Faram) |
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| (Source) |
United Airlines Flight 93 - 39 passengers and crew.
Shanksville, Pennsylvania - 1 police officer on the ground.
The youngest was 2 and a half, the oldest was 85.
How many years of life experience were erased that day? How many years of potential were erased? We will never know. We can only mourn the dead. Not bring them back.
I wish I could forgive those who perpetrated these heinous acts twenty years ago. But it isn't in me, God forgive me, but I cannot forgive this, ever.
I remember, I mourn.
Woe to those who would let such a thing occur ever again. That too will not be forgotten, nor forgiven.
Note: In the casualty figures above, I do not include the perpetrators. May they rot in Hell for all of eternity and may their names never be spoken again. May they be forgotten, unforgiven, and unmourned. Forever.
Shanksville, Pennsylvania - 1 police officer on the ground.
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| (U.S. Government photo) |
The youngest was 2 and a half, the oldest was 85.
How many years of life experience were erased that day? How many years of potential were erased? We will never know. We can only mourn the dead. Not bring them back.
I wish I could forgive those who perpetrated these heinous acts twenty years ago. But it isn't in me, God forgive me, but I cannot forgive this, ever.
I remember, I mourn.
Woe to those who would let such a thing occur ever again. That too will not be forgotten, nor forgiven.
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| (Source) |
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| (Source) |
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| (Source) |
Note: In the casualty figures above, I do not include the perpetrators. May they rot in Hell for all of eternity and may their names never be spoken again. May they be forgotten, unforgiven, and unmourned. Forever.
From last year's repost of the above -
Upon reflection...
I posted that four years ago. It was an election year, as is this. At the time I was not very confident in the outcome of the election. Needless to say I was surprised. Pleasantly as it turned out.
Once again I am not very confident in the outcome of an election. For many reasons which I won't go into. You have your opinions, I have mine, they probably differ. And I respect that.
I say above that things would neither be forgotten, nor forgiven. It seems though that those that remember grow smaller in number each year. Every time I drive near New York and see the skyline, I remember what it used to look like. It's a constant knife to the belly.
Many just don't care, and that grieves me.
Not all have forgotten, read this.
Those who forget the past are not necessarily doomed to repeat it, but they are certainly doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again.
I fear for my country...
11 September 2021
Upon further reflection...
All of the above was posted last year. We all know how last year's election went. The word "travesty" springs to mind.
My country is in far worse shape than it was and shows no sign of getting better any time soon. There are rumblings though, my experience with my countrymen is that they'll put up with a lot before they say, "Enough."
I think we're getting there.
But once again, never forget. Far too many already have.
#/media/File:Twin_Towers-NYC.jpg){kind=link}
Aye, too many of our countrymen have forgotten, Sarge. The everyday routine of life can push to the back of the brain those horrors seen twenty years ago, planes slamming into buildings, people jumping..... Today is a good day to clean a long gun from my last range visit, maybe Hoppe's No 9 can blot out the stench emanating from DC.
ReplyDeleteIt can't hurt.
DeleteWe know how last year's election is CLAIMED to have gone. Do you really believe that???
ReplyDeleteNot for a minute.
DeleteSarge - I pondered (in much less thoughtful prose than your own) about where we are twenty years out. Are we really better off than we were twenty years ago? Yes, we have not had another horrific attack on the United States, but our way of life has so drastically changed from twenty years ago that I wonder if in fact we have lost in ways we do not acknowledge.
ReplyDeleteWe are not the country we were twenty years ago. To be honest, that is last time - briefly - that I can remember actually feeling like all were united.
A thought, I suppose, on how far we and our consideration of this day have fallen (at the risk of actually having an opinion that appears political): three months ago this day was to be used as a "holiday" for hailing our withdrawal from Afghanistan. In order to meet that date, choices were made on how to leave which resulted in the travesty which (hopefully) history refer to as The Fall of Kabul or The Current Occupant's Folly (oh, how I desire that second one sticks). Americans died and were abandoned and Afghanis killed and left to the reign of the Orcs, just so the government could have the opportunity of a celebration glorifying itself. It has, at least in their minds, become nothing more than yet another opportunity to glorify themselves - a sort of Star Spangled ad campaign, no different than a Fourth of July sale.
(Somewhat sadly for myself, I have never felt the need or desire to forgive those that perpetrated it. Like similar forms of humanity - the unrepentant National Socialists of Hitler or the Communists of Lenin and Stalin and Mao and their successors or now the Orcs - they are simply placed in an "other" category. That, I suppose, is God's business, not my own.)
The criminal stupidity of the current administration is breathtaking.
DeleteThe last sentences of your third paragraph sound like something out of Orwell's 1984, the handbook of the Democrats.
DeleteSad, innit?
Delete(Don McCollor)...At least Biden did better leaving Kabul that the Brits did in 1842. Used an eerily similar playbook, though...
DeleteYes, put incompetents in charge. That's how the Brits did it as well.
Delete(Don McCollor)...The Wikki article noted Arrogance AND Incompetence...
DeleteTrue!
Delete20 today years ago a handful of Saudi's attacked us, so we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Have things really changed?
ReplyDeleteNot that I can see.
DeleteI have not forgotten.
ReplyDeleteI have not forgotten who treated international terrorism as a 'criminal act' and not an act of war.
I have not forgotten who openly blabbed on national tv that they were listening in on Osama Bin Laden after the first WTC bombing.
I have not forgotten who made an executive order, followed up by law, that did not allow the CIA and the FBI and other intelligence agencies to share information.
I have not forgotten who had multiple opportunities to take out OBL and other 'world class' terrorists, but didn't.
I have not forgotten a certain potatoe-headed senator who obfuscated, confused, and tried to derail every attempt to eliminate OBL after 9-11.
I have not forgotten that the intelligence agencies 'couldn't find' OBL until someone's ratings were tanking badly.
I have not forgotten that a certain potato-headed ex-senator, now VP, openly named the group that was finally allowed to whack OBL.
I have not forgotten the destruction of the Constitution in the name of 'safety kabuki theater.'
I have not forgotten all of our politicians who saw an opportunity to feather their nests during a crisis, and to change and modify any positive thing done into a negative, oh, say, like weaponizing all our intelligence agencies not against actual terrorists but against the American citizens.
But, yes, I remember the loss of all those people.
I also remember that the true toll of those attacks are still taking victims to this day, from either broken souls or due to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals that rescue workers and people near the sites were exposed to.
I remember people leaving the safety of their lives to go to New York City and help in any way they could at The Pile, meanwhile New York City residents fled.
I remember the world's largest armada of private vessels transferring people from the south tip of Manhattan Island to the opposite shores, doing it for free, just because it was the right thing to do.
I remember people, average citizens with little to no money to spare, who gave up as much as they could to fund the rescue attempts and to feed the workers and rescuers.
I remember that while our political elite where sharpening their knives and tucking up to the trough to fill themselves on the people's dime, that American citizens responded as American citizens have always done, by rising to the occasion and showing the world the exceptionalism of the American Way of Life.
I mourn for what was lost that day, the people, the way of life, the innocence, and the following continued loss of life and liberty.
I remember.
I will never forget.
Amen.
Delete(Don McCollor)...Amid the tragedy, the Boatlift was a shining example of what Americans can do. Unplanned, uncontrolled, an evacuation twice as large as Dunkirk - done in a single afternoon...
Delete👍
DeleteAnd, as always, a most poignant piece of video and music
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMBcazHj2H0&t=2s
Blue Man Group's "Exhibit 13."
Inspired by papers that fell in and around their theater in New York City on that horrid day.
The voices in the background are reading what is written on the papers.
This piece brings me to tears every time I hear it, or watch it.
I will always remember.
I will watch that some day.
DeleteBut not this day.
Peter, over at Bayou Renaissance Man, put up a video of Samuel Barber's "Agnus Dei" (otherwise known as "Adagio for Strings.") That piece never fails to bring me to tears.
DeleteNot today.
DeleteNever forget, never forgive…
ReplyDeleteCapt Larry Getzfred, Capt Jack Punches (ret), AW1 Joe Pycior. Navy Watch Center, 9/11/01.
Honor their names.
Delete@eans/ RE: "EXHIBIT 13" Same here, one of the first vids I ran across. POWERFULL!. BTW, RU familiar with or even remember the controversry/scandal/outright travesty about the Shanksville Memorial which is constructed in the form of an Islamic Crescent w. a Memorial Tower in front much akin to that of an Islamic call-to-prayer minaret? THAT little "minor" detail seems to have gone down the memory hole. IIRC anyone who initially criticized its design was branded "Islamophobic" as this idiot nation fell over backwards to insist that the perpetrators did not represent "true Islam." Still does, as a matter of fact. Beans, we are doing something as a society that I once thought anatomically impossible: Whistling past the graveyard while simultaneously exercising the Ostrich Plan..
ReplyDeleteSorry to have mangled your name Beans. (: (walks away sheepishly)
DeleteVirgil, I always thought that "controversy" was overblown. I still think so.
DeleteLooks nothing like any of that to me.
A typo, don't sweat it.
Delete"Looks nothing of any of that to me." Hows that old saying go Sarge? "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" :) Would respectively disagree. Michelle Malkin is certainly no white Euro "WASP" w. an axe to grind against "POC" & she's had the bit in her teeth about just this "narrative"/"framing" of what the Memorial in due fact represents sub rosa from the git-go..
DeletePS: Should have ended with "...i.e. the ultimate last-laugh"
DeletePPS: Now I'm certainly not claiming the design commission did this on purpose, only that they were asleep at the switches & when critics brought this to their attention said critics were tarred/"blacktopped" as "raciss," "Islamophobes" out to smear the entire "peace-full" religion (forgetting the very word "Islam" itself means "SUBMISSION") when 9-ll was perpetrated by naught but a "misguided" few. Sorry, sportsfans, IMHO the "misguided" ones were only following the basic tenents of their religion. ISLAM itself is, at bottom, TOTALLY, FUNDAMENTALY, incompatible w. Western Christian Civilization.
DeleteTrue, but how does she make her living. No controversy, no paycheck.
DeleteJust sayin'.
20 years ago we were sucker punched in an unprovoked attack, and we responded. We hit the point of origin of the attackers, and eventually got the mastermind(s). After two decades, we have left Afghanistan (a good thing) but that was more of a surrender than a victory.
ReplyDeleteThe war against western civilization continues, despite our withdrawal. We must recognize that this war is not based on our actions, but our values of freedom for the individual, freedom to worship as we see fit, and the rule of secular law applied equally. Those values are hated by a large number of people adhering to a distinctly different culture, and more or less of that group will continue to try to extinguish our civilization, and roll back modernity by imposing their culture on others by violent coercion.
Their jihad and desire for a new caliphate continue, tolerated if not nurtured by our "friends" in Pakistan, and the teetering House of Saud. We should never send them another dollar, or soldier ever again.
September 11th is more than a day of remembrance for past atrocities, and must be seen as a warning of a continuing threat. Boxcutters and aircraft achieved a major blow, but the enemy has no qualms about attacking with whatever weapon they can acquire or create, including chemical, biological or nuclear. They have the advantage of non-state actors, surprise, and total disregard of the laws of war, and civilized values.
We will be attacked again. Be alert, be proactive and be prepared for unexpected challenges to everyday life. Know the enemy, and do not be afraid to identify them out of fear of being called racist.
John Blackshoe
This "jihad" has been going on for centuries.
DeleteI will never forget.
ReplyDeleteI lost two friends when the Towers fell in NYC.
I have lost patients in the past 20 years from the side effects of working on The Pile.
I will never forgive.
In my humble opinion the most appropriate punishment is to turn extensive areas in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan into glowing molten fields of glass which will be radioactive for the next 10,000+ years. To begin with.
Then, to turn this country into the world's top energy producer, which is evidently truly possible, turning on the engines of Capitalism and grind the finances of all who would support those terrorists, into dust.
The fact that we left Afghanistan the way we did shows that the DC pols have learned absolutely nothing in the past 20 years. I have no doubt whatsoever that our military will have to go back again to fight for our freedoms and values. Because I am sure we will be attacked again. That more Americans will die needlessly because of our elitist class's complete and utter stupidity. \
To me, there is no way to forget or forgive that.
I don't watch the news today, or most of this week for that matter, because I am so beyond simple anger or madness, I am completely and totally pissed. Somewhere in the ancestry there must be Viking DNA because going Berserker on those that, to this day still, support what happened on 9/11/2001 sounds like a very good idea.
Go in, administer punishment, and get the hell right back out. No nation building, no trying to change other countries political systems...if they want to have a life of freedom, to be able to feed their children,to have their women vote and work, to pursue liberty and happiness...let them immigrate legally to this country...or, better yet...fix their own country so that they can stay where they are, and improve their own lives. No one invaded America and made us free--our forefathers worked, sweated and bled for the rights and privileges we enjoy today.
Our forefathers must be spinning in their graves.
Never forget, and never ever forgive!!!
Amen.
DeleteIf nothing else, the way the wind's blowin' I hope and pray we're a nation of flight 93 passengers. God rest their souls. Simple free Americans who fought back, knowing the potential cost. The first to engage the enemy and the saviors of who knows how many other innocents.
ReplyDeleteI pray that the wind shifts and we regain that spirit shown on Flight 93, that we're not going down without a fight.
Delete"Let's roll."
https://theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com/2021/09/todd-beamer-true-american-hero-if-ever.html
DeleteHe was the real deal.
Delete