September 11: Do not forget the sorrow…And do not forget the anger

The events of seven years ago are still a shock. They’re still horrifying and heartbreaking.

That said…they…well, though frightening, there is no fear for me, or many Americans, I’m sure. I don’t remember much at all about September 10, or that feeling of…well, impenetrability, I guess. That security that we’d always be safer than the rest of the world. That was all burned away when the second plane slammed into the World Trade Center.

On the other hand, everything about September 11, I do remember, and so do you, I’m sure. From the gorgeous, warm dawn, the crispness of fall in the air; one could not have prayed for a more beautiful, perfect day. Remember? Do you remember the beauty before the taint? What was a perfect day became a sickeningly incongruous one at 9:03 that morning. Illusions were disintegrated as if they’d never existed. By At 9:43, a deep, quivering fear took hold. In every city Americans began to pray that the landmarks in their own towns would be spared, that their neighbors would not die in the way those trapped in the World Trade Center buildings had died — and were dying.

Toby Forage, Creative Commons license>

But even in the midst of our fear, our frightened prayers to God for the dead, the dying, the grieving — the latter including every single one of us
— there were uplifts. Firemen and policemen racing into burning buildings in danger of collapse, intent on saving anyone and everyone who could be saved. We say they didn’t consider themselves, but I’m sure they did; I’m sure they, too, were stunned and perhaps even afraid. What makes those men and women so outstanding is that they ran in to save regardless.

On United Flight 93, a group of brave Americans stormed the cabin in an attempt to bring the plane down before it reached its target. They succeeded, winning a battle for our side in a very old war.

For just a moment, even politics stopped breathing along with the rest of the world. It didn’t last, but it was there. Odd, that on a day of such horror and grief and tears and not knowing what was next and where it would come from, we had a sort of…well, peace. A good thing, a blessing, that; who doesn’t need a stop to dissension and the petty in the shadow of evil?

And such awful evil it is.

Duane Romanell, Creative Commons license

Don’t forget. It is perhaps useless trying to remember how we felt prior to September 11, 2001; it is not useless remembering every emotion we felt on that awful day, the longing for a turned back clock, desperately hoping that every soul-wrenching story we heard from a husband, wife, parent, or child whose loved one was still missing would find their beloved alive, the fear, the not knowing, the anger.

The anger.

That is perhaps the most important and vital emotion we can draw from September 11 other than faith. Crying and sadness and wishing do not protect, do not defend, do not do much of anything in the face of evil. For that is what we face, today every bit as much as we did September 11. Sorrow, while cathartic for a while, leaves one as useful as a soggy tissue when overindulged, and not tempered with common sense, with courage, with determination, with the willingness to move on despite the pain.

Muslims, bent on our destruction, slaughtered Americans in cold blood on airplanes using box cutters. They then crashed passenger planes into buildings filled with civilians. It is widely suspected that more hijackings were planned, but thanks to a quick grounding of all air traffic in our airspace, were averted; indeed, box cutters were found on planes after they’d landed.

We don’t fight them because they are Muslim, but they want to kill us because we aren’t. Don’t forget that. People will tell you that Islam has nothing to do with September 11, or the USS Cole bombing, or the Barbary Pirates, or the Achille Lauro or the all-too frequent crowds of angry Muslims marching in the streets, burning our flag and our presidents in effigy and shouting “Death to America!”, but they’re wrong; it has just about everything to do with this sorrowful anniversary and this war. There is something wrong with either this entire “religion” or a dangerously active faction thereof. To deny this is to pull the wool over one’s own eyes, to ignore reality and history itself. It’s also very foolish.

There are around 3,000 souls who don’t give a flip about their grocery bills or the housing bubble. They’d love to give a flip, I’m sure, but they’re unable to, thanks to others who didn’t give a flip about the rising threat of islamic fundamentalism. Instead, they’re left wondering how many more souls must join them in Heaven before their countrymen left on Earth start taking the threat seriously.

You see, the thing about wars is that, unless you start them, you don’t get to pick which ones you want to participate in, no matter how inconvenient for your scheduled mall trips they may be. They pick you. “What would happen if there was a war and nobody showed up?” The ones who stayed at home would be massacred in their beds, in their living rooms or in their offices, that’s what would happen.

One would think that we’d learned that lesson on 9/11, and for a while it seemed like we had.

Today, we go about our business unable to forget the events of this date seven years ago. We are no longer unsuspecting, most of us, at least. We are, I hope, no longer afraid, because our faith isn’t and cannot be in anything but God.

Pray for the grieving; pray for our soldiers; pray for those in authority over us, that they be wise, discerning, and have hearts yearning to follow the One who is our Shield, Protector, and the Father who embraces the humble, the crying, the lost who seek for Him.

But don’t forget, as we remember the heartbreak, to remember and hang onto that anger.

We need it. It gives steel to the backbone, courage and a reason to fight, nay, to defend. There’s such a thing as righteous anger, and September 11 is a day that birthed a lot of it.

Don’t forget that, either. This fight is going to be hard, it’s going to be long, and it’s going to be painful. And you’re either fighting for us or against us. Yes, it is that simple.

I’ll finish with more from blogfather Misha, and updates may come throughout the day.

Not only will the dead of 9/11 and every one of our men and women who have fallen on the field of honor since that day have died in vain, so will the dead of the Ardennes, Omaha beach, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Belleau Wood, Gettysburg, Yorktown and every single other battle in which Americans have fought and died throughout the history of our nation.

Those are the stakes, that is the choice that we’re facing.

All of us, not just those overseas fighting right now. All of us. Because we’re all Americans, we all have a role to play, we all have a responsibility to see this through to the victorious end or, failing that, to die trying.

…This war will not be over until islamic fundamentalism has been crushed, the way we crushed Japanese imperialism and Nazism. Tall order? You betcha. Don’t think that the Greatest Generation weren’t overwhelmed by the amount on their plate either, but that didn’t stop them. They didn’t have a choice if they wanted there to be an America for their children and grandchildren to inherit, and neither do we.

What we need to concern ourselves with right now is not the magnitude of the task ahead of us, the seemingly impossible odds that we’re up against and the sheer amount of fighting that we must yet do to see this through to victory. It is what it is, and it’s not going to change. What we need to concern ourselves with is this:

Do we fight, no matter what the duration and the cost, and thus leave an America for our children and grandchildren to inherit, do we pick up that torch that generations of Americans before us have passed on to us, do we accept that responsibility, no matter how many tears we must shed and how much blood we must spill?

Or do we refuse to accept that burden and thus declare ourselves unworthy and undeserving of the gift we have been given?

We are no different than, we no better than, and we have no more of a “right” to a life free of struggle and sacrifice than the generation who woke up on December 7th, 1941 to the realization that times were going to be tough for a while.

And if we, as a nation, have come to the point where we think that we are, then we deserve what we’ll inevitably get, and none will shed a tear over our passing. Nor should they. Such tears would be wasted on the unworthy curs who threw away two centuries of sacrifice and history because they couldn’t be bothered to rise up and accept their responsibilities as heirs to the greatest nation that ever existed.

It would be better, and certainly more fitting, if we were forgotten entirely, should we shame ourselves and our ancestors in that way.