On 9/11, I was in the World Trade Center, where I worked. I worked in 2 WTC on the 16th floor. We evacuated early (Thanks to our clearheaded office manager, who also got to work early). I was in the staircase, I think in the basement or lobby level, when I felt what I later found out was the plane hitting the building.
Compared to many, I was lucky.
I wasn't hurt. No one at our office was seriously hurt. I kept my job. I got home easily. I ran for the subway (it was still running) and watched the collapse from home.
But I lost a lot of belongings, some irreplaceable (as an aside, my homeowner's insurance company called me to tell me that my policy covered stuff at work). I had glass in my hair. My son, who was 5 at the time, had trouble for a while:
"They flew into the building on PURPOSE?"
"I thought pilots were good people".
Later, I had more trouble. As one day he read about "torture" in the paper, and I could not say that that was something we, as a country, did not do.
But now, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the act, is dead, killed by Navy Seals acting under Obama's orders.
My thoughts below the fold.
My rabbi (a real mensch) used to tel this story at every Passover seder. (He didn't make it up, he just told it well).
It seems that when the seas parted to let the Jews go through, and then drowned they Egyptians, the angels started to cheer. God roared
SILENCE!
and asked "how can you cheer when my children are dying?"
I am not a believer, but that is a good story.
I am not sad that Osama is dead. I am very glad that Obama is our president, rather than the petulant child who was in the White House before him. I salute Obama, his aides, and the Seals who together rid the world of Osama.
But he was a human being.
I recognize that the assassination was necessary. But it was the lesser of evils, not a good. Anything else we did would have been worse.
But, if there is a God, we are all his children. Even Osama.