The Silence 2
Perhaps what I remember most about this date 20 years ago is the silence.
Someone heard the news of the bombing in New York and a number of persons watched bits and pieces of the coverage on the lunch room television if their duties allowed. My workplace at the time was in New Jersey across the river from Philadelphia International Airport.
The main runway at Philadelphia International Airport runs generally in a west-south-west/east-north-east orientation. In easterly winds, airliners from the west would commonly fly by Philly to the north, turn right, fly south over New Jersey, then make a sweeping U-turn back across the Delaware river for their final approach to the main runway; otherwise, airliners headed north would take the reverse course, taking off in a generally WSW direction, then swinging back over New Jersey to head north or to take the great circle route to Europe. They didn’t fly right over my work place, but we could hear them and see them in the east, especially if we were outside in the smoking area.
We heard no airliners that day.
And then America lurched its way into twenty years of pointless, misdirected war.
September 11, 2021 at 7:52 pm
I wouldn’t say pointless. Lots of captains made major, lots of majors made light colonel, some of light colonels made bird colonel, some bird colonels got a star, a few one stars got a second one, a few of the two stars got a third, and some two, three, and four stars got slots on Fox Noise to tell us all how important it was to stay the course in Afganistan. Oh, and orders came down from somewhere to kill Sgt. Pat Tillman with “friendly fire” because he was a nuisance.
September 11, 2021 at 8:59 pm
You have a point, though a rather bitter one.
Some individuals did indeed benefit, though the polity did not. Indeed, the polity has been poisoned.
(Later) Oh, yeah, I forgot about defen$e contractor$ and mercenarie$.