10 Years.

For the past three days in class, we watched a documentary on 9/11 that showed extremely rare footage of the attack and what the firefighters had to go through inside the burning buildings.  In any fictitious movie, you sometimes are desensitized by violence and explosions, but 9/11 was the real deal, and it's terrifying to watch real destruction.  I cannot imagine the extent of terror the workers had in those moments.  At the end of the documentary was a slide show of a seemingly endless amount of photos of firemen that died on 9/11.  Those deaths were the product of pure evil; it is truly a tragedy.


After browsing through some 9/11 articles, I found an intriguing piece of writing by Jeffrey Goldberg titled, "The Real Meaning of 9/11."  In his essay, Goldberg asserts that "murder is the real meaning of 9/11."  I could not agree more.  The extremists involved in the plot used their specific beliefs in Islam to obscure their hatred for humanity.  Goldberg makes an assertion near the end of his writing that caught my eye.  He says, "...simply because al Qaeda represents one strain of thought in Islam does not mean it represents all strains of thought. Islam, like any great and complicated religion, contains a thousand streams."  I feel that a lot of Americans out there have the mindset that what the extremists believe is the only strain of thought in Islam; I can't help but think that as well.  But Goldberg does make a good point; there are thousands of ways to interpret Islam, and only one of the thousand ways is the extremists'.  

It's difficult to fathom that ten years ago on this day, I was waiting at the bus stop with my brother Alec, and his friend Jeremy came running down the street to tell us that planes crashed into buildings.  I never understood the significance of it at the time because I was only seven years old, and it took several more years to finally understand.  Though 9/11 was ten years ago, it feels like yesterday because of its impact on America.  September 11, 2001 undisputedly and significantly changed the American way of life.  On this day, remember the brave men and women whose lives were taken by the acts of evil.  God Bless America.