Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center was wildly disappointing. This film could have been the defining film of our times, but it ended up being nothing more than a generic disaster film. It’s a missed opportunity, which I think was brought about because Oliver Stone lost his nerve. But can there even be a defining 9/11 film in this day and age?

I’ve experienced several historical events, but nothing quite like 9/11. I lived in D.C. when 9/11 happened and I used to drive right past the spot where the American Airlines jet crashed into the Pentagon. That particular day I passed by twenty minutes before it happened. I still remember the morning DJ joking about “some idiot who slammed a Cessna into the World Trade Center” (“how can you not see the World Trade Center?”), and I remember the horror in his voice when he learned it wasn’t a Cessna. Then there was actual panic and confusion and people talked about the Capitol being destroyed and the White House. It took me six hours to get home, fifteen minutes away, as they closed the bridges and soldiers set up road blocks.

I also remember the shock and disbelief that this was happening in our country. And I remember feeling sick upon seeing people jump to their deaths in New York. All of this is vividly etched in my brain as it is for so many of us.

When I heard that Oliver Stone would do a film about 9/11, I had high expectations. Stone is a leftist nut, but he had undeniable talent at one point. Platoon was brilliant, as was Wall Street. Platoon was so good it literally broke the Vietnam spell in our country and ended the tension between the public and the soldiers who fought in Vietnam. Wall Street (ironically) inspired an entire generation of kids to become Gordon Gekkos. Heck, even The Doors was great and turned me into a fan of the group. So I expected something pretty incredible from World Trade Center, even if it was likely to be liberal.

In fact, I expected something that would mirror the shock, the disbelief, the panic, and the horror that people felt. I expected something that highlighted the selfless bravery we saw on our televisions that day. I expected something that caught both the grand scale of what this meant to the country and also something that captured the personal effect this had on so many people and so many families.

Instead, I got a remake of The Towering Inferno.

(more…)

The Obama administration betrayed our Eastern European allies on the symbolic 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. Many in the media have chalked this up to historical ignorance, just as they claimed that “too great a workload” was responsible for his disgraceful but symbolic insult when, after receiving a pen holder fashioned from the timbers of the HMS Gannet that served for a time as an anti-slave ship, he slighted Gordon Brown with gave a gift of 25 DVDs .

 However, Obama is animated by seemingly crude gestures made powerful by his position.  He and his motivated White House staff, without explanation, used a black painted piece of plywood to cover up the letters IHS (Latin for “Jesus Savior of Men”) when he spoke at a Jesuit University (Georgetown), but while speaking abroad, our president deftly referred to the Koran as “ holy,” a descriptive primarily used by followers who believe in the Islamic faith. Why? (more…)

I remember the moment when I turned on the television that morning eight years ago and saw smoke coming out of a hole in one of the World Trade Center Towers.  I had worked briefly in that building, during my short time living in New York.  I sat in horror, wondering what horrible accident had occurred, what misfortunate pilot had wandered off-course and made such a fatal error.  What a tragedy, I thought.  What a horrible accident.  What a shame.

And then, while I sat there in my comfortable American home watching my big screen television on my recently purchased couch with my coffee in hand, in real time, I saw a second plane hit the other tower.

At that moment, I knew:  This is an attack.  And everything changed for me, utterly and completely. (more…)

I must admit to some snobbery.  My kind didn’t become cops.  My kind didn’t become fireman. We went to college as simply a rite of passage and became the “Masters of the Universe” holding meetings with others like us on the top floors of buildings like those in the World Trade Center complex.  In fact, I, at the age of twenty-three, had an office on the 106th floor of building number one with an unquestioned entitlement to it for no other reason than that was the way of the world.

The kids from the Bronx with the accents became fireman.  The kid from Queens with the gaudy chains and the girlfriend with the big hair became cops.  People who worked with their hands, people who risked their lives, I am now terribly embarrassed and ashamed to say, were thought of as just of another kind, the kind that my Leftist friends continue to deride as being from “fly-over country,” or from Kansas where the people have something “the matter” with them. (more…)

My sense that the September 11th attacks would transcend partisan politics lasted less than a few days. That may sound cynical, but after counting myself as one of them for over a decade, I know how the Left thinks and I knew what was coming.

Within days of the attacks, it began. Without a word, those who had endlessly looped the video of the beating of Rodney King stopped airing footage of Americans jumping to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center. Not long after, those who would later sear the images of a few misfits at Abu Ghraib into the hearts and minds of the enemy, began the inevitable murmurs of “being responsible” when it came to airing footage of passenger planes exploding into the towers.

Soon, and predictably, the footage all but disappeared. 

Step one at chipping away at our resolve was complete, and all in the name of a few sophisticates doing what was best for us.

What followed was also expected. (more…)

Well, it’s been eight years since that terrible morning – George Bush was as deep into his first term of office as Barack Obama is today when those awful events unfolded. 

The anniversary in the mainstream media will be muted, as always – and we’ll come back to that. And even though three thousand people died that day, I want to concentrate on two – not to exclude the others, but simply to show you that they were not some abstract number but individual lives. 

Kevin Cosgrove

One of the people who died that day, eight years ago, was a businessman working in the World Trade Center. His name was Kevin Cosgrove. Kevin Cosgrove stands out from the other three thousand because he was on the phone to 9/11 when the tower he was in collapsed around him. (Fast forward to about 4:00 if you are pressed for time) And I’m warning you, this is not for the faint hearted.  (more…)

It wasn’t a ‘disaster.’  Hurricanes, tsunami’s, earthquakes and famines are disasters.  It wasn’t a ‘tragedy.’ Accidental drownings, poisonings, SIDS, freak accidents….those are tragedies.  This was an evil, premeditated attack.  The worst, most deadly and devastating attack ever carried off against the United States.  And on our own ground – smack in the middle of the greatest city in the world, New York City. 

Nearly three thousand souls perished.  Not combatants on a battlefield, but average everyday citizens like you and me, starting their days like any other, working to earn a living to feed their families.  Along with them were hundreds of valiant firemen and policemen rushing in to the buildings to save lives. 

The images of those New Yorkers the next few days wandering the streets around Ground Zero with pictures of their missing loved ones, hoping beyond hope that perhaps it was a simple bump on the head and temporary amnesia that kept them from phoning home to tell them they were okay…  These thoughts suck the wind from my soul.  (more…)

WE REMEMBER 9-11 

Smoke billows rolled
As planes shattered glass
Concrete and steel
The trees and the grass 

An enemy attack
On the Land of the Free
How could this happen
How could this be 

Our hearts gripped with fear
In sheer disbelief
Unbearable sorrow
One hardly could speak 

As evil sought triumph
Through catastrophic strife
Towers fell and buildings crumbled
Tragically ending innocent lives  (more…)

Eight years later, and we still haven’t begun to do what needs to be done.

Declassification of the torture memos was big news a couple of weeks ago, with the glaring omission of what terror attacks were prevented by the water boarding. The news media did not seem to care though. Instead of “moving on” they enjoyed their “back to the future” moment of wallowing in the gloried past of the Bush administration’s “atrocities.” 

This week the Obama administration is going to give us another dose of the “America is evil” evidence by releasing photos and other visual evidence that shows Bush, Cheney and others allowing rogue CIA agents to do terrible things to helpless Muslims who were innocently targeted and hustled off to Guantanamo. 

This has made me think of other images of atrocity that I would actually like to see to remind me of our enemy’s brutality. 

On September 11th, 2001 numerous people plummeted 1200+ feet out of the world trade center because they determined that dying of an impact on concrete after falling about ¼ mile to earth at a speed of 32 feet per second squared (the speed of gravity for those of you who aren’t into physics) was preferable to burning to death in the stricken towers.  (more…)