By Dan McDermott
Publisher
Warren County Report and The Sherando Times are interested in your thoughts as we reflect on an awful Sept. day almost a decade ago and the news of the death of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in Pakistan.
Where were you when you heard about the 9-11 attacks? And what went through your mind as you learned last night or this morning that the man responsible had finally met his fate?
Please leave your comments below. All will be considered for publication. Your real name and town are encouraged.
Please keep it clean.
Note: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and members of the President’s National Security team will hold a press briefing scheduled for 1:45 p.m. today. It will be streamed live at LynchburgTimes.com.
Justice has been served. However I do not think it will make much of a difference, take one out there are others to take his place, which is a shame. In NYC that day we lost 343 Brother’s and Sister’s of the Fire Service. I was teaching a Paramedic class at DCFD on 9/11, it was the second day of the class. I was a Pentagon responder that day. When I arrived all I could see was the large hole in the building with the smell of death and destruction. I cannot begin to imagine how they were feeling in NYC or PA. Each site had it’s own victims, heroes and stories.
Like any other American over the age of ten or twelve, I remember the morning of 9/11 vividly. I was working in DC and could see a pillar of smoke rising from the direction of the Pentagon. I walked outside and sat on a bench, watching the sky. I would rather be able to see what’s coming, I reasoned, than join my co-workers crowded around television sets in windowless conference rooms. We lost a colleague in the crash in Pennsylvania.
Nevertheless, I believe that we’ve devoted more than enough emotion, energy and attention to 9/11 and its unfortunate aftermath in the intervening decade. As long as we are afraid, they win. I hope that Bin Laden’s death will close this chapter in our history, and lessen our obsessive fixation on the specter of terrorism. But I doubt it.
I applaud the mission that finally brought Bin Laden to a semblance of justice. I congratulate all involved on achieving success where others have failed. But I was disturbed and disappointed by scenes of raucous Americans, my countrymen, chanting and cheering in the streets in celebration of the death of an ideological enemy. This makes us better than the extremists in what way, precisely?