“9/11”: The name that jelled within days had a different feel here in this city, this little Manhattan-shaped island I have lived in nearly all my adult life. Here, it was even larger than the Big International Event as the wider world perceived it.
I recently learned that for many New Yorkers under 40 years old, 9/11 is a historical abstraction, like Hiroshima was to middle-aged people like me. And currently there’s some scandal from Canada about whether it was “terrorism” at all, which is stupider than the “9/11 Truthers” of 20 years ago.
It’s important to me to keep the story alive not because it is a Hometown Horror, or the impact on my own life, but rather because it was a real inflection point in the battle of civilizations that woke the entire world up as to the nature of that battle, and the stakes.
But it really happened: 19 terrorists hijacked four American planes to try to destroy our society by instigating a “mass rise-up against American hegemony” — which was mastermind fanatic Osama bin Laden’s explicit goal. We New Yorkers were happy when nearly a decade later SEAL Team 6 blew his head apart.
I worked as a young trader in the World Trade Center (WTC) until mid-2001, when I quit (in a huff!) and went to work elsewhere on Wall Street. I was a proprietary options/equities trader there until a few months before. “Timing is everything” in options trading, but I had no idea what the future held. Or I’d be a richer trader, right?
Ironically, since the previous time Islamists tried to take down the WTC Twin Towers in 1993, the buildings had incredible ground level security. Don’t forget your ID! Our enemies finally got it “right,” flying two planes into my old office.
None of my former workmates were killed: We were mainly in the low-rise WTC 7 and the New York Mercantile Exchange at ground level. You could pop out to smoke and regard the looming towers like an ant. They were huge, colossal, way larger than how they look in the media. It was the people with the longest elevator ride, the best view, who died. Like the Windows on the World restaurant waiter who came to be known as “Falling Man.”
The three things I remember most: Seeing crushed cop cars being driven up Third Avenue on flatbed trucks on my way home from work. Our blue and white NYPD cruisers were crushed like ruined toys being taken to wherever cars are interred. We’d never seen our dependable NYPD cars crushed by a building. You’d think: “Oh god no, was there a cop in that at the time?”
The smell. The Twin Towers burned in a huge, demolished heap that smoldered for six weeks. Occasionally, the wind would blow north and we’d smell the odor of burning office, paper and humans which wafted north over Manhattan. Unforgettable: “JUST PUT THE FIRE OUT ALREADY!”
Of course, that portal to hell of wrecked buildings had a much more than just a distasteful effect on city workers, many of whom died subsequently due to toxic exposure at the site, “The Pile.” Any wonder why we call these guys heroes?
Saddest were the homemade “Missing” and “Have you seen?” posters plastered around town in public places, hastily constructed with photocopied family pictures of ordinary workers from the WTC with their kids and pets. Intimate, goofy, grinning, as in your family photos and mine. Nobody took the phone number tear-offs at the bottom of the little posters. They were all dead and we all knew it, not “dazed” or “lost,” as a few posters negotiated: Your beloved was crushed under 110 stories of concrete and burning jet fuel due to Islamic terrorism.
So many little horrors: by the time Al Qaida Flight 1 zoomed low over the heads of me and four million Manhattanites to its final explosion, they’d already murdered a flight attendant with a knife.
There were minutiae: Everybody wearing flag lapel pins all at once, and for a long time, New Yorkers were even more polite and kind to each other. Non-New Yorkers think we’re rude (we’re not!), but people were noticeably more considerate to strangers.
Conversely, I noticed more fights between friends and family: more domestics on the streets, loud disputes one can hear in close living, snappy parents to kids, beefs between neighbors. Funny what a thing like that does to human dynamics.
We turned our rage on ourselves and our loved ones. People drank more, but not, I estimate, as much as during Covid, which was crazy alkie. We have many adventures here.
Islam, the reason for the whole 9/11 experience, continues apace, remaining and expanding.
While IMMEDIATELY after October 7 in Israel, there was a “River to Sea” Palestine demonstration in Times Square just north of me, I don’t remember any “WE HEART AL QAIDA” marches in 2001.
A quarter of a century later, I’m still here. I live in Chelsea, South Manhattan, and my apartment looks south to the Financial District, where the WTC’s replacement — the Liberty Tower — now stands proud. Strangely, we have a Muslim mayor, a “Third Worldism” aficionado who actually provides cover for Al Qaida types, a disheartening fact.
We still do the “Columns of Light” whereby, like two towers, every year they beam up spotlights to the clouds: silent, two towers now of light and the memory. I see it every September out my window and think: “Well, that was a Big Thing.” It is is as close as this atheist gets to spirituality and awe.
A bit like with people: If you live in a city through its worst and most terrifying moments you’ll end up loving that city… all the more. I ♥️ NY.
tgusa says
On the morning of 9-11 I was off work and my girlfriend had just walked in from the night shift. When she walked in she immediately said to me, turn on the TV. I did and I saw it happening live. No event or situation in my entire life made me feel what I felt right away. Red hot rage. I didn’t live in New York City I lived on the other side of the country but it felt like it was happening in my own backyard. No form of retribution would have made me think that’s not who I am. The worse the better the more the merrier because after that day that is exactly who I became regarding the rat bastards and the ideology that perpetrated it.
matiloli6 says
Israhell did the 9/11, irrefutable proofs in this video : https://altcensored.com/watch?v=4bG3Q3bkH_0
somehistory says
I wanted a change to a different job and had an interview scheduled. I saw the planes hitting, but I went to the meeting anyway. The woman who was supposed to see me was frantic. Her daughter was somewhere and she didn’t know whether the young woman was safe on the ground or in the air>
I read this a little while ago. I hope the lady is successful.
“I’m an NYC death investigator — still fighting the sickening lie of 9/11’s jumpers”
A little bi from the article:
“As Dr. Hirsch spoke about those who died in the impact zone where the planes hit, someone in the group made a reference to “the jumpers, the suicides.”
My boss was always calm and dignified, but at that moment I saw the strain on his face as he tried to maintain his composure.
His anger was palpable.
He put his hands flat on the table in front of him and said, “Never use those words. Never.”
They were pushed out, he explained, by flames and smoke.
Men and women were standing on the sills of the World Trade Center hoping for a miracle rescue, struggling for air to survive.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/i-m-an-nyc-death-investigator-still-fighting-the-sickening-lie-of-9-11-s-jumpers/ar-AA2bZcOX?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=6aa422d4c018455e831cb6be8c67b3d0&ei=6
Kepha says
Respect to you and your boss, somehistory. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach when I saw footage of the man juping, and knew that his fall to certain death was something other than suicide.
I was in the heartland, an overaged doctoral student (yes, I got the degree). People in the office where I was getting an exercise for my students printed were glued to a TV set, watching with utter incredulity as the airplanes slammed into the WTC. Right after the attack, the local military recruiters were besieged with applicants. I was humbly grateful to be part of a country and region where the young would line up to serve because thousands of fellow citizens a thousand miles away had been so foully murdered. I suddenly realized what my parents had felt when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
I recall the footage of Gazans dancing in the street. It was a few years after the First Gulf War, when Sadam Hussein was negotiating with every terror cell from the IRA to the Moro Liberation Front and Japanese Red Army Faction to pay $30-40K to have Western diplomats of my rank assassinated and $10K for one of our minor dependents. The inner rage came back after 10/07, when my FB suddenly showed videos of the dregs of Gaza glorying in the abduction and rape of Israeli women. And I am inwardly angry at my teaching colleagues who are all for “solidarity” with “poor, oppressed Palestine”. Even if I don’t see modern Israel as necessarily a harbinger of the Second Advent of Christ, I make it a point to call “River to Sea” ‘Eretz Yisroel.
Stay well. Be aware that a lot of us will remember.
Walter Sieruk says
Twenty –Five years after the murderous and destructive jihad affronts which occurred on September 11th, 2001, the future outlook for New York City as well as other cities across the United Sates is, or should be. continued vigilance, because to many Muslim terrorists in the US are still scheming a forthcoming Islamic terrorism attacks.
About this, there is much talk about rooting out the ideology of Islamic terrorism. What is not mentioned the future d is that the foundation of this type of terrorism is the theology of Islam’s “holy book” the Quran. For the Quran instructs in the uses of violence and killing for the advancement of Islam. As found in, for example, 2:191. 5:33. 9:5, 111.123. 47:4. Therefore Islam is a false, dangerous and deadly religion.
Furthermore, about this serious threat, nevertheless, we, as Americans, should no live in fear and be afraid to go to different places and do different things
Nevertheless, all patriotic Americans need to be aware of this and be alert to observe anything or anyone that doesn’t’ seem or look right. Then if something or someone suspicious is observed then police officer should be informed about it.
For example, a tee-shit vendor ta Times Square once was some smoke come out a parked van, so he told a police officer about. That van did have explosives in it that had been rigged to go off, yet it didn’t.
This led to the Muslim terrorist who jihad bomb -rigged van being captured and later imprisoned.
As it has been said “ If you see something, say something.” Another way to put this was written by Thomas Jefferson. For the wisdom, he wrote applies even more now than in his own time.
For Mr. Jefferson wrote, “Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.”
ploome says
The house next to mine, had been rented to Chinese, the owner was out of country and kept the property as a rental.
The Chinese occupants were all men, 4 to 6 at a time, and these men seemed to change, be replaced every few months by new men.
I live not far from a large military/Air Force base, and after a while I became concerned with the situation
I called the FBI to tell them about my concerns and I was really shocked by the reception/response I got. After taking my personal information and listening to my observations, they were dismissive, curt and almost rude.
Within months these Chinese had moved out. and the property was put on the market and sold.
so much for see something, say something
Walter Sieruk says
It’s amazingly sad that so many Americans after 25 years since those horrific happened on September 11, 2001 those Americans still don’t understand that those murderous and destructive and deadly jihad attacks by jihadist/Muslims of al Qaeda were not acting out in a hijacked form of Islam but actual Qu ‘ran based non-watered down hard core. As the Qu ‘ran teaches in 9:111, “The believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, they kill and are killed.” Likewise, this “holy book” of Islam also instructs in 47:4 “Whenever you encounter the disbeliever strike off their heads until you make a great slaughter among them…”
Let’s face it, using jets planes as missiles as those jihadists did on 9/11 do does, tragically , make a much greater “slaughter among them” than a sword can. There are the other verses the give instruction for violence and killing for the cause of Islam, as 2:191. 5:33. 8:39.9:5, 38-39.
An evil book is able make a wicked influence in those who are indoctrinated in its teaching and then creates evil men. As observed in the horrendous atrocities committed by the Muslim terrorists of al Qaeda on September 11, 2001 committed those murderous affronts .
That religious book of Islam, the Qur ‘an , which is the foundation of both Islam and its Hamas instructs in the violence and killing of what it terms “disbelievers” As found in ,for example, Surah 2:191. 4:89. 5:33. 9:5,111,123. 47:4
Furthermore, the Qur ‘an teaches that Jews are really of “apes and swine.”in human form As seen in the Qur ‘ran in 2:65; 7:166.; 5:60.
This that reason the Qu ‘ran needs to and should be exposed for that hoax that it actually is.
That has already been done, for in the book THE ISLAMIC INVASION by Robert Morey on pages 145 through 157 in which he wrote a section on the Qu‘ran with its self-contradictions. Just two of the many he cited are the following “The Qu’ran differs on whether a day is a thousand years or fifty thousand years in God’s sight’ and “Who was first to believe? Abraham or Moses [Sura 6:14 versus 7:143]? The above is inconsistent and illogical. Further, Morey wrote about “The fact that Judaism and Christianity broke up into different sects was used in the Qu ‘ran to prove that they are not of God [Suras 30:20-32. 42:13, 14]. Yet Islam has broken up into many warring sects and therefore cannot be true if the Quran is right.”
Moreover, Morey in his book shows many more contradictions and absurdities in the Qur ‘an, there are and how Muhammad incorporated extra Biblical and Jewish folklore along with pre-Islamic Arabian myth and parts of Zoroastrian and Hindu stories into the Quran.
Furthermore, the Muslims claim that “the Quran is the direct, literal word of God unmodified in any way by the Prophet who uttered them at the bidding of God.” In addition , in the book UNVEILING ISLAM by Ergun Mehmet Caner and Eethi Caner has shown that the Qu ‘ran was modified in the following account on pages 45. “Muhammad felt the need to improve on the words of Allah, since he changed Allah’s wisdom for his own on several occasions. A hadith tells of the nonchalant emendations of Muhammad:’ On a number of occasions he [a scribe] had, with the Prophet’s consent changed the closing words of verses. For example, when the prophet had said ‘God is mighty and wise ‘ Adbollah b. Abi Sarh suggested writing down ‘Knowing and wise’ and the Prophet answered that there was no objection. Having observed a succession of changes of this type, Adbollah renounced Islam on the grounds that revelations, if from God could not be changed at the prompting of a scribe such as himself. After his apostasy he went to Mecca and joined the Qorayshites.’ Other writers reveal that later Muhammad and his people did go war with the Qorayshites and he personally killed Abdollah. Obviously Abdollah knew too much and Muhammad wanted Abdollah’s knowledge to die with him.”
In conclusion, the Qu ‘ran is not only a fiction, it’s also a hoax.