I look at the faces of college students outside the capitol building celebrating the death of Osama; they certainly seem happy enough. I have trouble summoning the desire to chant “USA, USA” along with them. I think our difference in attitude might be because of our difference in ages when the towers came down.
PHOTO: Kate Gardiner
I remember vividly the day the towers came down. I plopped down at my desk a few minutes after the first plane struck and Cheryl contacted me about it. I looked at the photos on CNN. The evil grin hole that the plane made was centered on the tower.
“There is no way that was on accident,” I told her. Soon the second plane hit. My coworkers and I all gathered in one room and watched the TV in silence.
After the towers crumbled at last we started drifting away out into our cars and home, each of us alone and without a sound. It felt ridiculous to be driving a car in the listless streets when our country was crumbling down around us. Who were we to wear slacks and develop software in a world where our countrymen were leaping to their deaths as a last resort?
I wonder if someone who was only a teenager felt the same way. Maybe they can rejoice now because they only understand the whole affair as a good/bad dichotomy that has now been resolved.
I wonder how I would react if Christa McAuliffe was found alive somewhere, or some other salve was found to assuage the Challenger disaster. I was 12 then, around the same age as today’s college kids were on 9/11. I might very well rejoice with a smile on my face.
Who knows? I might very well be out in the streets trying to figure out the best way to hold an iPhone, a Bud Light, and an American flag all at the same time.
Not this time, though. Not this time.
Hi. I'm 
Im not sure why you’re not in a celebratory mood. This post leaves a lot of gray area. Are you saying that perhaps people in my age group are celebrating because we don’t understand the implications? Or are you just sayinhlg that you believe it to be a bad way to commemorate those who were lost? Because, whole I wasn’t out drinking and partying, the news did put me in a good mood and made me excited to know that finally we have removed this evil from the world. I am incredibly happy that my future children will never have to grow up in a world where UBL is running free. I know that he was more of a figurehead and that America is by no means “safe”, but I think this is a victory for the entire world and it should be acknowledged as such.
I’m saying that the older a person gets, the more gray area there is.
i have a really hard time celebrating the murder of another human being no matter who he or she is.
I think those kids just need any excuse to party. You may or may not say that its a good one. I too remember that day as well. However, it was a couple of days later that I still remember the most. I was living and working in Montana at the time and all of the Heads of FEMA were in the Big Sky/Bozeman area, during 9/11, for their anual conference. I had taken a couple days off and went to Bozeman to stay with a freind who lived close to the Gallatin river for some much need trout fishing and beer drinking, when all of sudden an F-16 came zooming in at tree top level. It circled the Bozeman airport and then just kinda went into a holding pattern circling the Bridger Mts. Then a big C-7 came in and landed. We then realized it was there to pick up all of the head of FEMA. When that C-7 took off and turned east out over the Bridger Mts and that F-16 joined up with it I suddenly realized I was not as far away from everything as I thought I was, because I knew that they were all headed to ground zero. This is my 9/11 memory and I will never forget it.
I to am about your age, it does not make me want to party but it sure makes me happy that Osama is not around to kill more people. I do not understand the people that consider it killing another human being. Yes he was killed but it was justice. If someone had killed him earlier in his Terrorist Career a lot more innocent people would still be alive.
Okay, but where do you draw the line? Some might say that a lot of Afghans would still be alive had the US never pulled their support for the Mujahideen.
Or do we go a step back from that and kill the Russians for trying to prop up a pro-socialist government in Afghanistan, which is who the Mujahideen had beef with?
None of us who are involved in this business are guilt-free. To rejoice as though we are is to forget history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_mujahideen#Afghanistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA-Osama_bin_Laden_controversy
I remember when the towers came down, I was in College. A friend of mine and I had some beers that night and he got a bit drunk and called his parents and told them he was joining the Army. He told them “it’s my duty as An American”. They freaked out, and told him to reconsider, and the next morning he was sober and was like, “oh yeah, I’m definitely not doing that”.