A punch in the face

I was living in Whitley Hall. Whitley is a “skyscraper” in the bustling metropolis of Commerce, Texas. I was a sophomore at Texas A&M University Commerce when the September 11 terrorist attacks happened. Commerce is a small college town of about 8,000. Whitley Hall is a 12 story residence hall. Easily the tallest structure in town. It was a co-ed building and much nicer than my previous dorm, Hubble “Rubble” Hall.

Nick was my roommate at Whitley once again. We lived on the sixth floor. John lived down on the fourth floor. September 11^th was on a Tuesday. On Tuesdays John and I had the same government class at 930 AM. Nick had a different class. We would meet at John's room on the way down and took turns driving to school. Nick and I arrived around 9am but John looked concerned. He asked if we heard the news out of New York and we had no idea what he was talking about. John let us in and his TV was on ABC. Peter Jennings was early in his legendarily epic marathon coverage of the attacks and aftermath.

We were stunned. The USA was invincible. Nobody fucks with us. One plane could be an accident. Two planes was clearly an attack. A third plane hitting the Pentagon? A fourth plane in Pennsylvania? Oh God will this stop? We just sat there in silence for a few minutes and had stupid looks on our faces. We drove to class. John and I went to our government class and Nick went to whatever class he had.

Ordinarily this class was boring and stupid easy. John and I would write lyrics to songs for our pretend band. But today was obviously different. All the guys were shaken. There wasn't a gung ho “let's kick some ass!” attitude in there. John and I listened stoically as the men were asking about the draft. They didn't want to go to war. They didn't want to die. I didn't either but was ashamed of them for acting like this. I wasn't any better than them, I just kept my mouth shut. I suffered in silence. I felt that it wasn't a good look to publicly proclaim your self-centered cowardice. American civilians were dying right then. Shit, there may be more attacks, stop worrying about what might happen and think about what is happening.

We didn't really have class that day. More like a 90 minute therapy session. A fellowship of the frightened coming together in a time of great confusion, intense alarm.

After class I went to the Performing Arts Center. This was where the Radio and Television department was, along with Theater. I was going to see if they needed any help in the radio station. I saw Luis Camacho on the way, he was the News Director at KETR and my practicum supervisor. He asked me what I thought about what was happening. I was honest and told the truth.

“I don't know. We go to war it's not going to be easy. These guys are fanatics. They strongly believe in their faith. Misguided or not, this is not about land or oil. It's about ideas. It's about oppression. There can be more attacks. Nobody can take us on with an army. They HAVE to hit us with numerous small attacks. They have to count on the fears of citizens.”

He nodded. He didn't verbally agree or disagree. Nobody knew what to think or how to feel. We were under attack. Was it over? Was it beginning? The receptionist, station manager and program director at KETR were all women. All of them were at the front in tears. This was over four hours after the attacks began. Had they been crying the entire time? God bless them. There was nothing to be done. No local news originated from our station for a few days. Just broadcasting national feeds.

I went to lunch. We had a handful of televisions in the cafeteria. Normally the TV's would have been turned on to a channel that broadcast music videos and other programming targeting young adults. Not today. We had CNN on. Aaron Brown put on amazing coverage that would win him a prestigious Edward R Murrow award. 

A few years later CNN would give him the boot for an Anderson Cooper who turned heads during his often ridiculous hurricane live shots. 

Aaron Brown gave great commentary on what was happening and informed us of every new bit of information that came out. Nowadays CNN is a joke in breaking spot news situations (more on CNN and how they have become ridiculous in a future post). People that didn't give a damn about news were glued to the sets. We all just wanted to know we were safe.

James, one of my pot buddies, was sitting with me in the cafeteria. He wasn't afraid to let loose his feelings. He said, “Fuck those towel heads.” James said we should round them all up. Whoa. I told him that's bullshit. This isn't the 1940s. Doing that crap is not going to make anything better at all. All of the sudden there were dozens of experts on Al Qaeda around me and James was one of them. I won't go into everything that was said because I don't remember most of it. What I do remember wasn't pleasant, and in the heat of the moment and with all the fear going through his head, I'll forgive him for making statements that were ugly. Everybody was upset. I mean everybody. Despite what Trump believes, there were no huge crowds of Muslims chanting death to America or cheering in victory. We had Muslim classmates and Muslim instructors. They were horrified of the actions against fellow Americans and what consequences they themselves may have to pay. I refused to villanize them for what a couple dozen assholes did. They showed no outward hatred for me or our  country. I wasn't going to hate them for what they COULD be, what they probably weren't.

The local gas stations had oppressive lines.  Every time there was a tragedy there are lines to outflank the imminent gas price surge and adjoining shortage.  Self preservation is the most basic animal instinct.  It trumps empathy and love of country.  

Fear had turned to anger and rage. There were a handful of people who enlisted after the attacks. Mostly though people just got mad. And patriotic. John and I saw Disturbed in Dallas on September 28 and lead singer David Draimen introduced Dimebag and Vinnie Paul from Pantera by saying, “we should send these guys over there to kick some ass” before playing the heavy metal classic “Walk” with the Dallas legends. This got a cheap and easy cheer from the audience. Yay patriotism and tough guys. I cheered too, so I'm not hating a metal front man for seeking an easy pop from the crowd.

Ever the empathetic one, I always “play the devil's advocate” and try to understand why. People don't want to hear why. Good and evil are black and white. We are always good and the other side is bad. There were bullshit slogans like, “They hate us for our freedom” and also, “If we change who we are then they win.” What the fuck ever. Philosophies like that get you nowhere. It solves nothing and promotes ignorance and prevents nothing. I was for sure never going to degrade a class of people because of the actions of a miniscule amount of them.


George W. Bush did one of the few good things during his administration on Friday the 14^th. He grabbed a bullhorn at ground zero.

Rescue worker: I can't hear you. Bush: I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world can hear you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

Al Gore should have been president but there is no way he would have had it in him to rally us to tears of optimism like Bush did. I doubt Gore would have prevented the attacks so that doesn't play into this at all. Gore would have gone about the war a lot differently though. And the Iraq invasion and subsequent formation of ISIS would probably never have happened.

Iraq's invasion did not get very much support from our allies. Nor should it have. Bush squandered the good will he got for bringing the nation together and sold a bogus war to Congress. I had a CCCP (USSR) hockey jersey that I had out of irony. It was a Vladimir Konstantinov 16 jersey. I wore it in March of 2003 to school one day, over a year after 9/11. The US was poised to invade Iraq without the broad coalition it enjoyed with Afghanistan. A theater major who also took some television classes with me saw me in the jersey and screamed in disgust, “Fuck every country that's not the US!” I told him that that is exactly what the problem is. He wasn't unbiased either. In the winter after the 2000 presidential election he had the nerve to tell me that Al Gore was tearing the country apart. What the fuck ever man.

My brother graduated high school in 2008 and within a month joined the Army. He knew he'd eventually get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Sometime in late 2009 he was seriously wounded in Afghanistan (I will write a little about this in a future post). I was livid. Obama was president, but I placed the blame on Bush. I still do think Bush's and Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the war led to so many unnecessary casualties, but some shareholders enjoyed massive profits (at least until the fall of 2008) why the hell was this war still going on after so many years?

September 11 may not have affected me directly or any of my family or friends at the time, but it shook us all. I drove all the way home that afternoon just to hold my mother and talk to her face to face. I cried. I was scared. The mighty impenetrable United States of America had been punched in the face. An unconventional war had begun. The enemy may hit stealthily and with small numbers anywhere. We wouldn't know when or where. But we had to be vigilant. We had to trust our government to keep us safe and to tell us the truth. Many of us who had no faith said a prayer to whoever would listen.

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My nephew Jakob and me. 2001

If I had to pick a single song to be the soundtrack for this post it would be...