!@#$
A rant
By Draxel Bethlehem
draxel@hotmail.com
Needless to say, I'm pissed.
Last year on my visit to Canada, I had to resist the urge to knock the teeth out of a certain
whorehopper, who will go unnamed, who said that America sucks and that it should be
bombed. When I asked why it should be bombed, he replied simply, and rather idioticly,
"Cause it sucks."
Right now, if he has any love for his own body, he better not be saying a word.
At first I didn't belief it. One idiot running into the World Trade Center you can believe.
Even if the sky is crystal clear, there are people that stupid. Two planes, one for each of
the Towers ticked me off.
It's no secret I love New York. Hell, I say it with pride that I should have been born there
just so I could say that I was born, raised, and died there. Unfortunatly, I can only say that
I was born in Pensacola, Florida and hopefully I'll die a long time from now in New
York, the city I love.
So, hearing that somebody ran a pair of planes into the buildings really pissed me off.
I heard about it when I got out of my early morning class and headed to work. Turning
into rush hour, I heard the news that a pair of planes crashed into each of the World Trade
Towers. I pulled my MP3 player out of my bag and turned it
to the only radio station I could pick up on it and listened to Howard Stern report on it as
I walked into work.
The second surprise came when I heard that the planes had been passenger planes; a
Boeing 647 at least that can hold at least 60 people in it. That had to mean a hijaking.
I imagined all the people on the plane at the hands of some crazed madman and watching
the buildings grow larger in their view as they ran into them until there was only fire,
heat, and death.
I listened intently as I walked about work, one hand getting the store ready to open while
the other pressed the headphone speaker against my ear. I heard Stern and Robin cursing
these men, telling their co-workers to leave if they want
to be with their loved ones, and emploring the listeners not to go around beating the
heads in of anyone of Arabian or Perisan descent because of their ethniticity.
Even then, I'm sure everyone had some dark twitch in their stomach that told them it
could have been a Middle Eastern terrorist. None of us wanted to listen to it. I sure didn't.
Many of my co-workers, including two of my managers who have been collectively the
inspiration for one of the characters I'm writing about for the PSDF, are Muslims, great
guys, and good friends.
The real kick in the balls came when the noise of the radio said that a third plane had
crashed into the Pentagon. My mother works at the Pentagon. At that point, I was
immediately on the phones listening to automated voices telling me that all circuits were
busy. For the next several hours, I sat in the back room of our store, listening to the radio,
and hoping I wasn't going to get a phone call telling my mom was still in the building or
worse. My co-workers came by to check on me, to make sure I was alright and if I had
heard from my mother.
Then my heart broke. The Towers fell. The buildings that had defined the skyline and the
heartbeat of the city I love had fallen down in a roar of shrapnel and dust. And I realized
that years from now, kids in school will only be able to picture in their mind what the
buildings who look like before their own eyes, the way that I can only imagine what the
original London bridge looked like spanning the Rhymes or how the Colossus of Rhodes
appeared towering the city's harbor.
I did finally get a phone message from another worker, telling me that my mother had
called and said she was okay. I breathed a sigh of relief but felt the need to be home.
We closed the store early that day. None of us felt like being there. The manager heard
something about the governor calling up a state of emergency in order to call up the
National Guard for relief efforts. We used that as an excuse to close shop; a shop that
usually does over fifty thousand dollars in business on a slow day.
When I got home my brothers were already home. My older younger brother spent the
afternoon lying on the couch, sick to his stomach. My youngest brother just folded
laundry and watched Ace Ventura. Though I usually give him a hard case about watching
too much TV, I let him watch his show and instead cleaned the kitchen.
While I washed dishes, I turned on the TV and caught up. I heard about a fourth plan
having crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside. I heard the eyewitness accounts of
people leaping to their deaths out of the burning buildings to avoid the heat and flames.
People lining up at blood drives. Highened security all over DC and all airports closed.
Not a single plane was flying over the entire US while all planes that were halfway to
anywhere were sent to Canada.
My parents finally got home about five. My father took care of the dogs, excitied to see
them while my mother took her time hugging each of her three sons, weeping and
shaken.
I found out later what happened from her. She had heard and felt the blast and she and
her co-workers quickly left the building. When they saw the smoke and realized what
happened, my mom hurried the five to six blocks down to the building where my father
works only to find he had run down to the Pentagon to find her.
They meet halfway, I presume, and headed to a friend of a co-worker's house. They
couldn't even get the family van out of the enormous Pentagon parking lot. They spent
hours there, watching the news, gathering their wits. Finally, once traffic died down, they
borrowed a car from the co-worker's friend and headed home.
We ate hot dogs that night and watched the news. Stories of the primary suspect of the
bombing, Usama Bin Ladin, and how he had been a part of other bombings, including the
first WTC bombing in '93, the explosion of two US embassies in Africa, and the attack
on the USS Cole last year.
The president came on and reassured us that there would be retribution and dispite all the
harsh words and demeaning jokes that have been said about the new president, his words
brought reassurance and comfort to people, no matter what their political opinion may
have been.
Despite how I felt, I slept like a rock.
Now, a full day later, I still can't imagine the scene of the WTC gone. I can just now
imagine the blast sight in the side of the Pentagon, dispite how many times I have seen it
on the news. I still remember driving past the very helipad the plane had crashed into on
my lunch breaks. It's hard to believe that they are gone.
Still, more and more news arrives.
Pictures of the hospital caring for victims in New York telling how a 29 year-old
employee of a Wall Street firm had come in with unstoppable bleeding and a fractured
pelvis and had died dispite hours of effort to save his life.
Pictures of New Yorkers cheering on rescue workers
and firefighters as they return to the scene to relieve National Guard members who had
been trying to save those still buried and put out the still burning fires.
How the people on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania had fought the hijackers and
crashed the plane rather then let the terrorists make it to Camp David and the President's
bunker nearby.
A woman wandering from one Northern Virginia hospital to another, looking for her still
missing fianc‚e who she was supposed to marry on December 1st.
People in the buildings and planes calling their loved ones of cellphones, declaring their
love for their families before the lines went dead.
A fire chief who watched, horrified, the Towers come down, the men of his company still
inside. All the men of his company.
Linda Rhoanhurst whose been standing in the street outside the Pentagon since 1 am last
night, waiting for her husband to walk out of the rubble.
A call from my friend Brian, a US Marine in Japan, who spent hours trying to contact his
own mother and ask how my own mother was doing. Telling me how every serviceman
there had been lining up to call home and contact worried and horrified relatives and
reassure them that they were there.
Of a class of 11 year olds and their teachers on Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.
People still buried in the rubble, calling the rescuers on their cellphones, helping to guide
them to their salvation.
Some people have claimed that this was just as bad as Pearl Harbor. Some say it's worse.
Truthfully, this is nowhere near Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor was a military operation. Dispite it's own tragedy, it was an honorable
attack by an enemy who had the good grace to attack only the military base, thus
allowing us to fight back.
What happened yesterday was a terrible act of a coward. Men who hide behind innocent
civilians in order to strike out. Men who are so afraid of dealing with the results of their
own actions that they kill themselves in the act. Of a man, a
petty little rich boy in the Middle East who wants to blame all of his troubles on the US.
A man who doesn't even have the courage to take credit for this attack. This was an act
of terrorism and an act of war.
And this didn't effect just America. The WTC was an economical center of the entire
world's economy. It's destruction has already dropped stocks around the world along
with the value of currencies of many different countries. The people inside who died
were from around the world, not just the US, or even just Europe and Japan.
Most importantly, people died. Over 2,000 people are dead. 200 on planes. Somewhere
between 100 to 800 in the Pentagon. There were around 20,000 to 40,000 people in the
World Trade Center at any given time. Innocent civilians, everyday citizens who were
just going about their lives and were cut down for no good reason.
This screwed everyone, everywhere. Our friends. Our enemies. Our co-workers. Our
classmates. Our families and our fellow citizens around the world.
But people are celebrating. In the Middle East, people are waving flags, cheering, and
celebrating. Not because of politics. Not because of economics. Not for any rational
reason but because we're Americans. We're the guys over there who are so rich and
powerful that they must be the cause of other's problems. That and "America sucks."
I want to shoot something.
I need a cigarette.
Later,
D
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