Varifrank: United 93 and Our "Survivors Guilt"

« "Iron Mike" Defies Terrorists; Demonstrates what 'freedom of speech" really means | Main | Spin to victory »

United 93 and Our "Survivors Guilt"

One year during Easter break, I learned a valuable lesson about how long fear and guilt can stain a man and his soul. Every year during Easter, my cousins and I would go to my Grandparents house in San Simeon for the break in the school year. My cousins and I were practically the only kids in the area as it was a very small coastal town, populated almost exclusively by retirees like my grandparents. It was a great time to spend with my cousins and my grandparents. Rock hunting along the shore or rabbit hunting in the hills, it was a great place to be a kid and the company we shared was as good as it gets. My grandfather was a walking encyclopedia. Every rock had a story, every plant a potential use. Glass floats found on the beach were given a sense of reality as he told us how they were made and where they came from and how long they had probably been floating before we found them. “The chief” is what my dad and uncles called him, but he was always just “granddad” to us kids. He was a hero in the world during a time and in a culture that was without the virtue of heroes.

One day I came back from the beach and came into the house, I slammed the screen door behind me. My grandfather was asleep on the sofa in "mid afternoon nap", but when the bang of the screen door reverberated through the house he leapt up off the sofa exactly the way that 70 year old men don’t and electrified cats often do.

I will never forget the look of stark terror that was on his face, and although he was looking right at me, it was as if I wasn’t there. In just one moment he had gone from snoring and sleeping away the afternoon on the sofa to standing in a cold sweat, looking confused and terrified.

That metallic sound of the screen door as it slapped the inside of the doorframe had just the right timbre, just the right pitch to send a nightmare loose in the mind of my sleeping grandfather. In one moment it was 1968 and he was sleeping on the sofa. The next, he was years in the past on the little “tin can” of the USS Fletcher, on watch below decks as she was being shelled by the battleships of Imperial Japanese Navy as they steamed through “the slot”. Of course at the time I knew none of this history and the minor role he played in it, all I knew is that I was probably going to catch hell for waking my grandfather in the middle of his afternoon nap.

“You have to be careful honey, that screen door does something horrible to your grandfather. So promise me you’ll be more careful with it, ok?” My grandmother said into my ear in a quiet whisper as she leaned down to guide me out of the room. My grandfather tried to compose himself as he sat there, his head in his hands and somewhat embarrassed to have been caught so emotionally exposed. I nodded a slight "yes" to her in return all the while wondering when the punishment for my innocent act would come. But there was to be no punishment. It was a simple accident and she knew it. It was one that she herself had caused several times over the years. She had witnessed his struggle with the past. She recognized their sound but never knew the cause for the sudden involuntary screams in the night of a man who had survived what so many others had not. It wasnt just the stress of the event, but the guilt that comes from survival that had left a mark on his soul.

That sound, that sudden sharp metallic clang that was made in the afternoon of the happy years in soft retirement along the California shore during the 1960’s was just enough of a trigger to transport a man back into a creosote, sweat and black coffee soaked moonless night that that was long over on the calendar, but never more than a moment away in his resting mind. A dark night in the uncertain summer in the South Pacific when all that stood between life and death for those below decks was the all too thin grey bulkheads of a very small ship. An inch of steel and the roll of the dice of fate is all that anyone below decks on that ship had to protect them from the strike of the deadly “long lance” torpedo. He and his crew were in the enemy’s backyard, and they didn’t call it “Iron bottom sound” because of the minerals found there. It was because so much of our Navy had already been sunk there and the floor of the sea was littered with our ships that were far bigger, far more capable than the little USS Fletcher.

That night of slow monotony mixed with the quick mechanical terror of warfare at sea as well as the whole war itself were long since over and well in the past, but they had really never left the mind of the man who had witnessed it first hand. The watch he stood that night had never really ended.

The screen door I slammed that day rang like the dinner bell for the beast that ate into his soul.

He had lived through that night and the war,and yet so many others with him that night had not. The guilt of survival was far more punishing to him than what the enemies aim had brought. It ate at his soul like spilled acid on a metal plate.

You see, time does not heal all wounds; it merely schedules them for surgery and forgets to provide the anesthesia.

Yesterday, I thought about my grandfather and the incident with the screen door when I grappled with the question of whether or not to go this weekend to see United 93. I don’t for one second believe that my life is anything at all like my grandfathers, yet I too suffer from a bit of survivor’s guilt.

Once upon a time, I was a “road warrior” and I have on occasion flown out of Boston on Tuesday mornings. I have over 500,000 miles on United Airlines and therefore the world of “air travel perks decision making” would have put me on a United Airlines flight before all the other possible choices. I believe that in the past, I probably have flown that same flight, on a different day and a different year.

I stopped living the “road warrior” life in 2000. In my time in the air as a "road warrior", I have witnessed many,many things. I once saw a passenger on a flight in the midst of a psychotic episode. I was horrified as the person tried to open the door of the aircraft while we were in flight. I watched as he was subdued by the crew, and after that flight I never again used the term "Stewardess".

I've just missed catching flights that went on to crash and killed co-workers, but nothing has effected me like the story of United 93. To me, United 93 is not just the story of other peoples suffering that bothers me the most. It is the nagging sense of guilt that has come from surviving these "near misses" that eats at my soul. The story of United 93 triggers those emotions in me like the screen door of my grandfathers house triggered his.

United Flight 93 claimed the lives of several of my company’s employees. They were people just like me, who were doing business one day and returning home the next and doing by air what most people do with the crosstown bus. But for a small change in my career decisions and personal desires during the preceding 12 months before 9/11/01 one of the flights of that day might very well have been a flight that I too would have been on and most certainly would have died like all the others. I cannot look at any pictures from that day without thinking, “it could have been me on that plane”. Its very unsettling to see your potential death scene replayed over and over. It is a small step from the reflective thought of "could have been" to the guilt that comes from the speculation of "should have been".

As I said, I once just missed catching a flight that a co-worker managed to catch. It crashed, and he was killed. That event bothers me too, but events of September 11th were something else altogether. It wasn’t just an "accident of icing" that caused the deaths on that September day; it was a deliberate murder. On that day, people were trying to kill us. The acts of that day represented something far more deliberate than that of a "regular" plane crash. "Acccidents happen" and we can rationally accept that they do, but we simply cannot accept the idea that there are people in the world who hate so much that they will set out to kill us by any means necessary.

Like most people who fly commercial and maintain some form of private pilot rating, I often find myself on long flights daydreaming about the “what ifs”. People who are pilots like myself often ask ourselves “if there’s a problem with the pilot, could I get in the cockpit and fly this plane?”. This is absurd, but we ask it to ourselves as if it was a real possibility. We ask ourselves if we know the location of the flaps and landing gear on a 737 like it might be important to know that sort of thing, as if holding a private pilots license holds you responsible in some way to the airline.

We ask ourselves what would we do first and what would we do to be sure, to be certain that the plan would land, even though we never flew anything bigger than a Cessna 172. Before September 11th, it was just a way to kill time, a harmless “Walter Mitty-ish” daydream to help kill the choking tedium that comes with long distance flights in coach while pressed up against the fuselage with a kid kicking the seat back, wishing we were anywhere but 30,000 feet in the dry air over Kansas with another 3 hours to go before we are released from our imprisonment..

We all know the plot to the movie “Airport” and we all think we are the Dean Martin character in the movie. Life however, is not a movie plot, life is often cruel and unforgiving and things in the world often fall right to hell, even for very good people and innocent children.

It is because of these mid-flight “Walter Mitty” adventures that I knew the morning of the massacre that the hijackers had used the Hudson River as a visual reference to guide them to Manhattan. I knew it before noon on that very day. I knew it, because I had seen it outside my window on many flights, and I too knew that as long as I followed that clearly defined river, that I could find the fabled island of Manhattan. There was no need to practice using navigation aids like GPS. Just look out the window, follow the river, and look out for the big buildings and dive when the time is right. It was as simple as that. I knew the moment I saw the attack that they had planned with ruthless efficiency to attack on just the right day – a clear autumn day with both ceiling and visibility unlimited, and using just the perfect visual landmark, a wide straight river that crossed right in front of the path of the aircraft to ensure that they could get to their target on their limited skill set. I knew that they had planned it well enough to know that it really doesn’t take a whole lot of training to steer and commercial airliner in mid flight. It takes training to land and takeoff, and they had no intention of doing either one. I fully recognized the cleverness of the attack. No bombs to be sniffed, to guns to be detected, just raw muscle and simple, supposedly harmless, box cutters tied to the applied use of terror physical against the passengers. I knew, that even though there were many hijackers on a flight that only the ones who took over the cockpit and actually flew the plane knew the full intentions of their mission. The “bully boys” that kept the crew and passengers at bay outside the cockpit were as surprised as anyone that they were actually on a suicide mission.

Until September 11th, all hijackings were just bad TV drama. You land somewhere, make faces at the camera, express grievances, and they may kill a passenger or two, only to be let off the hook by the well meaning folks at the UN. On September 11th., the “bully boys” thought they were getting their name in lights but only the hijackers cockpit crews knew they were to be the “New Divine Wind”.

After United 93, that all stopped. Admit it. Every time you get on an airline today, you check out the passengers as potential threats. You size them up. Is that guy a cop or a whackjob? What kind of shoes are those? Is that person acting in any way that might give away their actual intent? You are polite to all, but inwardly suspicious of everyone at the same time. There’s not as much small talk on airlines these days. You don’t offer to play a game of cards with the person sitting next to you anymore. You sit, you scan, you watch. You glance at the crew, and you nod to them in acknowledgement of what you both know but dare not express out loud.

I know the story of United 93, but the written word doesn’t tell the story like a movie does. Movies are just a step away from dreams, or in this case, a nightmare. Movies imprint on the mind in a different way that the written word. For weeks after September 11th I don’t think I was able to sleep more than a few hours at a time. I always snapped bolt upright in the night in a sweat at the scene in my mind of the aircraft hitting the towers and knowing, really knowing what that scene represented. It wasn’t a machine crashing; it was people in the act of dying, of people being killed. They were dying and being killed deliberately and by the design of a group of madmen. In those months of no sleep and nightmares, it always felt to me that in my dreams, the planes weren’t hitting the WTC - they were hitting me for my crime of “not being there”.

The worst thing that the massacre of that day has left me with is a nagging sense of guilt that lingers in the back of my mind. I have been left somewhat hollow by the experience. After the day the massacre occurred and dice of fate had been thrown I had gone on to see more sunrises and sunsets, while others in my company had not. I do not know how to explain it or account for it; I just know that it is simply the way it is and over time I will learn to accept it for what it is.

I have done nothing in my life that should rationally cause a case of "survivors guilt" over the events of September 11th, but I cannot shake the horrible sense that I have let those people down in some cosmic way. I recognize that it’s not rational to feel this way but I can’t shake the feeling that in our day-to-day luxury of life that we have lived since that September 11th, that we’ve missed the point of what those people on United 93 so clearly understood in moments before it all ended.

While we stand by and debate the truth of the war that is being waged against us, the people of United 93 understood that we are under attack by madmen who want nothing more than to simply kill us all. Some of us even debate if there is an "enemy" at all. We as the living have that luxury while the people on United 93 looked into the eyes of the madmen and witnessed first hand their acts of perverted hate and saw the 'heart of darkness' for themselves.

There was no debate about the true nature of the madmen on Flight 93 by the people who were there. That debate only exists in our world.

They wish not to negotiate territory, trade disputes or borders. They simply wish to kill us all. It is not our “support of the Jews” which has caused their grievance, it is our very existence. Their God has forsaken them, and rather than face up to the shame generated by that fact, they choose instead to seek vengeance against those that appear to them to have found Gods favor. They hate happiness and freedom in every form, and wish only the worst conditions on all mankind. We can no more accept the Jihadi conditions for our surrender than the people of United 93 could just sit in their seats.

The United 93 movie represents something else besides a just a movie. It’s the ugly and cold metric of commerce. There are a number of people in the business of producing movies who are betting that Americans won’t go to see this movie. They believe that people do not wish to be reminded of that day. They do not think that Americans will go to see what happened. If United 93 were to fail, it would give rise to the myth that “Americans do not support the war”, which is becoming less a call for “leaving Iraq”, and more often than not is now a call to return to the days of the 1990s, when threats were ignored and allowed to fester into the embolism of 9/11.

They find it very easy to make a movie that drives a wedge into the country and destroys the morale of free people while it gives comfort to our enemies, like “Fahrenheit 9/11”, or creates a series of unsustainable paranoid theories like “Syriana”. But to make a movie about the first battle in the war against terror and show citizens as heroes, that is simply beyond the people who run Hollywood. Its extremely important to me that United 93 does well at the marketplace, because if it were to fail, it would give comfort to those who say there is no heroism in fighting back, that there is only heroism in defeat and dissention.

If United 93 fails at the box office, the war on terror will be re-written in our popular culture the way that returning Vietnam vets were re-written from normal people into murdering psychopaths let loose on the general population. Like it or not, what passes for popular culture very often serves as the basis of history. Popular culture is often the lens by which historical events are later interpreted.

If we are not careful to support this movie because of our collective sense of “survivors guilt”, then the failure of United 93 will serve as a springboard for furthering the cause defeatism that permeates most of modern era popular culture. No matter our victories in this war of which United 93 represents just the first, popular culture is already working to marginalize them as inconsequential. A ‘defeat at the marketplace” of United 93, will further make the case for those who think we must “lose to win” in their perverted logic in the worship of failure.

I do not know yet if I can go into a theater this weekend and watch a movie like United 93, but I do know that whether I choose at this point to see the movie or not, I will be buying a ticket to ensure that the legacy of that story is given the respect that it deserves by popular culture.

Hollywood knows nothing and cares not what tale is that is actually being told on the screen, but it does respect what happens at the box office. It will notice either a success or a failure and will react accordingly.

Like the sound of the screen door was eventually to be accepted as “just a noise” by my grandfather, I will also learn to look at movies about 9/11 as “just a movie” without an overwhelming sense of survivors guilt. Someday I will look at pictures of the 9/11 massacres and I wont feel that somehow that I failed the people on those planes.

UPDATE: Reviews for 'United 93' can be found here.

Posted @ April 28, 2006 02:10 AM | Current Affairs

Jan 21, 1981 I separated from the US Air Force after 12 years and 3 months+ of active duty. It was time for a change.

Three and one-half months later, May 6, 1981 ARIA 328 crashed over Walkersville, MD.

See www.ariamemorial.com and www.flyaria.com to see what a great group of folks flew the ARIA missions.

My replacement was on board as was my best friend and another dozen that I knew and admired among the 21 who perished.

I too am a road warrior.

It was 2005 before I was able to sleep the night before flying the next day. It did not matter if it was the first time to that destination, or the twenty-fifth, I would not be able to sleep through the night. On a good night I got 2-3 hours of sleep. There were not that many good nights.

I too will see FLIGHT 93. Probably more than once. Even if it means not sleeping throught the night once again.

RileyD, nwJ
Riley D. Driver
"Only the humble are sane." anon

Posted by: RileyD, nwJ at April 28, 2006 04:47 AM

One of my good friends worked in the WTC. She took the day off and was on the phone with her friends when they came down.
She doesn't sleep too well either.

My plan is the same as yours, for the same reason.

Posted by: _Jon at April 28, 2006 03:56 PM

They also serve who only buy a ticket.

Posted by: Kerry at April 29, 2006 06:05 AM

“It’s impossible not to think of the image of George W. Bush reading the pet goat story in
Michael Moore’s ‘Farenheit 9/11.”

This idiot's review fired Robert Godwin up and "Envy is the word"! "Spoiling it the tactic"!is his insight.

Please read Robert Godwin's post and link.

United 93: No Heroic Deed Goes Unspoiled by the Left

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I know how to completely eliminate the left. Well, maybe not completely. But at least 75% of them.

SNIP
If we could somehow eliminate envy from the human genome, there would be almost no reason for the left to exist. They would instantly lose that which animates them, for example, envy masquerading as justice or economic theory.
Particularly envious individuals cannot tolerate the pain of not possessing and controlling the "good object," so they preemptively spoil it so that they don't have to bear the pain.

SNIP
Although he liked the movie, in seeing it, “It’s impossible not to think of the image of George W. Bush reading the pet goat story in Michael Moore’s ‘Farenheit 9/11.” This same idiot would never review Farenheit 9/11 and write, “it’s impossible to look at this shrill leftist propaganda without thinking of the image of a stewardess having her throat slashed with a box cutter by a Muslim barbarian that Moore would call a freedom fighter.”

In fact, be on the lookout for envious attacks on United 93, that is, “spoiling.” The envy campaign started early, with the “too soon” meme, but that is simply a case of disguised spoiling.

I’ll be right back. I’m going to go over to Huffingtonpissed right now and prove to you what I mean......"

You'll want to read it all.

http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2006/04/united-93-no-heroic-deed-goes.html

Posted by: Larwyn at April 29, 2006 01:36 PM

Saw United 93 today. What got me was how "there" I felt by the way it way filmed, especially inside the plane as passengers are stowing things, ordering drinks...all the usual stuff. And when the leaders emerged quickly in the group of passengers I was just so into it I was rooting for them on the edge of my seat. I knew how it would end, of course, but it was so close and powerful I almost thought they could pull it off. The whole theater was trying to help pull that plane up. If only we can pull together to defeat the evil that caused 9/11.

Posted by: teri at April 29, 2006 02:36 PM

I don't fly often, but I am flying into Boston tomorrow, and will come back Friday night. Maybe if I weren't flying into and out of Logan... Naah. It wouldn't matter. Intellectually I have to figure that they probably have the best security in the country right now, because there are people there who take personally the fact that two of the groups of hijackers got through on their watch.

It's totally psychological for me. In my case it literally is 'too soon', but only a by a week. When I'm back home a week from today, I can think about such things. I'm sure the box-office stats for the second week will be important to the beancounters in Hollywood, too.

Posted by: The Monster at April 29, 2006 05:34 PM

I've been flying at least 3 times a month for the past two years. I do size up my fellow passengers and I ask myself, if not me, who will step up if the wrong people are on my flight?

Posted by: Pete at April 29, 2006 05:59 PM

When will the rest of the America public wake up to the new nature of the worldwide war we are in?

Terrorists conduct attacks against us that are asymmetrical i.e. terrorists use small numbers of people and money to damage us to a much larger magnitude.

But we have ways of conducting asymmetrical warfare against them too. But we don't realize it yet.

Posted by: Twok at April 29, 2006 06:23 PM

I was prepared to cry

Posted by: Gordo Muskegon at April 29, 2006 07:03 PM

"I have witnessed passengers in the midst of a psychotic episode being subdued by the crew as the person tried to open the door in flight. I’ve missed other flights that have crashed, killing other co-workers".

Good post, but please review your writing style re plurals. The mistakes are jarring, and detract from the subject.

Posted by: B at April 29, 2006 09:12 PM

Thanks B - corrected.

I dont pretent for one second to be an actual "writer". I blog only in the hope that I may improve my skills enough by practice to one day consider it an option.

Posted by: Frank Martin at April 29, 2006 09:53 PM

Frank, thank you so much for this post - it is outstanding.

We saw the movie yesterday and were deeply moved and inspired by the heroics and bravery. The "you are there" feeling of not only the cabin, but the traffic control towers and NORAD, is stunningly done as well, and I love that quite a number of real people portrayed themselves. Nothing would have ruined this movie faster than being populated by self-worshipping, America-hating Hollywood stars, and nothing would have been more guaranteed to keep me away. I will not be seeing Oliver Stone's movie.

One of the things you wrote struck me the strongest: that the passengers looked into the heart of darkness and knew exactly what they were dealing with and what they had to fight. They knew in an instant what so many of us have yet to (and stubbornly will refuse to) understand. THEY WANT TO KILL US ALL.

I am convinced many more of us will have to die before the idiots start to comprehend...or they are truly the greatest cowards and just refuse to see and deal with what is right in front of them. The face of evil itself.

Posted by: Peg C. at April 30, 2006 06:26 AM

Frank- I'm with you on more than one point. I live in Boston, and grew up in the Manhattan orbit. My father took the train home from work that day and a lot of the people were covered in dust and ashes. A salesguy I worked with a lot had a meeting on the 100th floor at 9am that got cancelled the day before- he has the entry in his planner with a "Shit!" written beside it because he had been trying to get in there for a year. All things considered I'm thankful for how few people I knew were lost. Most of them worked on the lower floors and got out.

I'm also an ex-road warrior and pilot. I flew out to SFO on 9/20/01 to go to a conference, and remember discussing with my boss in the bar before the flight that we were going to keep our laptops below our seat instead of in the overheads so we could use them as shields if necessary. When we got on the plane and looked round the FC cabin, it was a relief to see all pasty white guys and one black guy, and it seemed like we all just kind of looked at each other and gave a little nod. On other flights I remember the usual road-warrior machismo making an awkward joke or two about it, but for a good 6-12 months there was always this unspoken understanding.

About the worst thing I ever missed was being on a plane that blew a tire on landing and had to sit on the runway for two hours in Denver before they got their act together. But I've gotten on so many flights, walked down every jetway in Boston, that when I sent the "I wasn't traveling today" email to my entire address book I got back a lot of "Thank God" messages from people who don't normally worry. I lived in South Boston, with jets taking off over my house every day, and I just remember thinking how close, how close to me it all was. Considering how little I lost I feel guilty for feeling guilty, too.

Anyway, I don't go to the movies often anymore- so little time and so many better ways to spend it. And I don't really want to see this film, but I feel like it's my responsibility for all the reasons you give. I think it will defy a lot of expectations. One of the local alt-weeklies here sent their stark raving commie music editor to review it, and he gave it a positive review without once mentioning Bush or Iraq, and he usually finds time to bash Bush when writing a restaraunt review.

Posted by: the snob at April 30, 2006 10:01 AM

Thanks for your post. I found my way here via
an link at American Digest. I used to think the same thing about taking over the plane in an emergency and all I ever flew, was off the handle.
Your grandfather was aboard the night the Fletcher DD-445 got a couple of nicknames. The "Fighting Fletcher" and "Lucky 13". 4+4+5 and the only ship to come out of the fight that night unscathed, physically. If you would like reading about it, check out this web site
http://www.ussfletcher.org/ maintained by another Fletcher sailor named Earl. I might have been aboard her when you let that door slam, '63 and '64.
Speaking of the islamofacists that knew they were going to die and the ones that most likely didn't. I don't hear much discussion about two them being the drivers of the vehicles on the way to perpetrate their idiocy, that they both managed to get pulled over for traffic infractions. Maybe they were looking for an excuse to miss their connections.

I think there is a Chief Petty Officer somewhere that is damn proud of you.

Posted by: Dennis at April 30, 2006 05:00 PM

The chief in white seated at the far right of the bottom row of this picture is my grandfather:

http://varifrank.com/archives/2006/01/a_day_in_the_li.php

Posted by: frank martin at April 30, 2006 05:17 PM

That picture is on our web site. I think he's in one of the WWII group shots also. I sent a link to this post to our historian. Top photo, back row, third from left in the work jacket, me.
http://www.ussfletcher.org/6428.jpg

Posted by: Dennis at April 30, 2006 08:36 PM

I just don't know if I can go see "United 93".

And no, I don't think it is because of survivor's guilt (I was and still am an office drone in Sacto, with no hopes of frequent flights), or squeamishness. Instead, I fear for my own actions after viewing this film. I fear for the heart-hardening it will do.

In my mind's eye, I cannot separate seeing the planes going into 1 WTC and 2 WTC without also calling up the images of "individuals of a certain religion which shall remain unstated" broadcast from Gaza, from Jenin, from Baghdad, from Damascus, etc., etc., etc.

And I'm still pissed, folks. Deeply, truly, eternally pissed. It is probably well that the networks have decided to embargo the 9/11 images, although I still watch the stuff on Discovery about what actually happened to the buildings and their failures, if only on a dry, architectural basis - I seem to be able to separate that in my mind.

But were I to see "United 93", it may reopen for me a scar that runs deep to my soul, never to be properly and truly healed until all "individuals of a certain religion which shall remain unstated" are held to account for the actions of their acolytes on that grim Tuesday morning.

I will see and synthesize the heroism and marvel at the fact that people hatched a plan for doing something affirmative to defend this nation without a bunch of focus groups and meetings.

But mainly, I will be furious. And it is on that basis that I probably cannot see the movie, for I cannot know what I am going to feel at the end outside of white-hot anger.

And at this time, in my life, that is not a place I really need to visit right now.

Posted by: JD at April 30, 2006 09:35 PM

Dennis - Small world, aint it?

Desmond - go to www.fandango.com, eat the cost and buy a ticket today and then go have a beer to make it even. You dont have to see it till your ready, but dont let your silence be interpreted as something you are not saying.

When Osama is finally found hanging upside down from a lamppost, then go to netflix and rent the movie, (thats my plan anyway).

Posted by: Frank Martin at April 30, 2006 09:51 PM

I don't go to movies. I will attend this one. By myself. During the day. In my own privacy. This is one of those movies that must be watched, but not with friends or relatives. The emotions are too real; the reaction, too strong. I don't want to sully my thoughts and feelings by having to make insane and inane chitchat after a movie like this. Better to go to the gym to work off a little aggression or to stay in shape for when I am called to the warrior's cause.

Survivor’s guilt - yea I have that, too. But not because I could have been on the plane. One of these creatures actually worked in a conv. store near my house. I spoke with him several times. Inane pleasantries masking his unbelievably perverse ideas about me. For my part, I thought him nice, pleasant and somewhat of a flirt.

Until that day. No, not 9/11. About a week or two before. I went in for some milk and a coke and the atmosphere was evil. He was there, but not. No pleasantries, no personality. And then I saw them. About four to six sinister looking middle-easterners in robes and beards. Coming out of the back of the store. I had interrupted something, I know not what. He stared. They stared. The stare said "get out." It was condescending and then I remembered. A woman had interrupted a male meeting in an Arab-owned store. But it seemed much more than that. I tried to get him to snap out of it. I chatted insanely, but he was stone. I gave up. I paid and left. I lost that round in this war, but I didn’t know I was at war. I do now.

I wonder to this day what was really going on. I replay scenarios over and over again. The store is only a few miles from a CDC center that researches God knows what. I don't really want to know. But I do know. They do bioresearch on some pretty nasty things. This used to be the hinterlands of exurbia. Now it is suburbia. Surrounded by schools and homes and Americans they want to kill.

I contacted the FBI. I never heard from them, but the local news reported that he was one of the hijackers and that he had taken flying lessons at the airport nearby. So, they know. Maybe that was all he was here for, maybe not. I still can't bring myself to go into that store again. We refer to it as the "terrorist Texaco."

I wonder. I wait. And my television has never been off again. 24 hours, seven days a week. Always Fox News. If I watch another show, I change channels back during commercials. Just in case. I am gripped by the fact that my life has changed. By them. By him.

I don't go out as often as I used to. I am uncomfortable. I watch people now. Not "people watch," "watch people." There is a difference.

I wait, I watch, and I know. It will happen again. These creatures have changed me alright. They say "h--- hath no fury like a woman scorned" and they are right. I was scorned that day in that store by creatures that saw me as "dhimmi." H--- will be wrought, by me, without remorse or guilt. Neither I, nor my family, nor my kids, nor my kids kids will submit to their nightmare. The h--- that will be wrought will be my tribute to the first warriors in this war, WWIII, and I will not fail them. The first warriors on that flight did not fail me or mine.

Posted by: Stephanie at April 30, 2006 11:00 PM

Nice post.

Don't see the movie. People drinking sodas, eating popcorn, watching an account of real people being massacred. Getting thrills, even if guilty ones. No thanks.

Posted by: slickdpdx at May 4, 2006 01:03 PM

This movie is important. America has forgotten. When we him-haw about securing our own border, and say that the war on terror is a waste of money and life as we fill our SUVs with foreign oil thinking "if we were only nicer to people".
On September 11, 2001 my own sacrifice started and persists to this day having returned home only 5 months ago from my third deployment to the middle east. Yes, I've been there doing it seeing it while able bodied men put magnets on their SUVs to ease their guilt and so they can say they've "done something". I am a light Infantryman, and left a promising career in Law Enforcement at age 27 just after 9/11 with the express intent to go to Afghanistan to kill those who defacate in their front yard but seek to kill me and mine because my way of life is "un-clean". I have been responsible for the deaths of many of this countries enemies and have been awarded a Bronze Star Medal for Valor for my actions during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and upon my return made my pilgrimage to the "towers" to award my medal to the memory of the heroism that I stand in awe of to this day. I tell you of this not seeking recognition but as a rememberance to the sacrifice of so many that gave their lives selflessly. Either on that day, or inspired by the sacrifice made by so many others who answered the same call I did, and like this film to remind you, all of you, that your daily lives were purchased with the blood of heroes. Remember their sacrifice, go see this movie and remember so you never forget.

Posted by: Tim O'Reilly at May 8, 2006 10:16 AM