It's September 11. The day the twin towers crashed 4 years ago. The day America took up arms against the terrorists. The day George Bush got the crisis he needed to save his plummeting ratings and allowed him a second term.
I look back upon this day with sadness and shock. I still remember what I was doing that day. I was happily playing Heroes of the Lance III, a Multi-User-Dungeon(Mud) RPG based on the dragonlance world.
It was 3am. I was pretty tired and sleepy. Suddenly, the only american playing on our local SG mud messaged everyone in the channel. That the twin towers had been bombed. I remember being confused.
What twin towers?
I opened IE, and googled twin towers. As I slowly clicked on the links, a dawning horror came over me. The images and the stories of the towers burning, the plane as it hit the towers, the lone american flag flapping in the breeze, woke me up from my daze.
I told my friend that my heart was with him and his country. I went to bed with a heavy heart.
The next day brought a huge amount of coverage from every press. It was a big event. But let's not forget that in the end, it boiled down to human courage.
I'm not defending the terrorists; I condemn the bastards who did this, but it takes alot of courage to do something like this and take the lives of so many innocents to make a point. Then again it's easy to die beacuse you planned it; so maybe those bastards aren't that brave after all.
I admire the firefighters, the probationary firefighters who went in risking their lifes, whose radio failed to work due to incompetence of the adminstration. I salute you brave sirs, who went into a burning ruin knowing that each second could be your last; but not knowing whether it will come, yet doing your duty to rescue those you can.
Yet one wonders, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the USA has again showed it's ineffiency to provide support to disasters. Haven't the adminstration learnt anything since Sept 11?
George Bush is now doing damage control, but he really doesn't need to. He can't get elected for a third term anyway. He's probably doing it to avoid being known badly after his service.
The problem lies that unless you are constantly facing disasters, the "edge" the ability to keep a constant watchfulness for disaster and act to prevent it will fade. Imagine if you will, how simple it would have been for Al'Qeda to take advantage of Katrina to actually perform another terrorist attack while the USA focuses on disaster relief.
That in itself, is the scary thing my twenty-odd blog readers. Unless there is a common enemy, humankind as a race will never unite and prey among ourselves. The moon could have been ours by now if we had not been distracted after the first landing.
Yet I hope that in reading this, you'll leave me comments about your thoughts about Sept 11. I know some points in this you will think I'm crazy, especially the moon issue. :p But hey...you never know do you?
Cheers~
