It was the beginning of a beautiful day in New York City. The sky was a soft baby blue with the bright ball of the sun hanging in the sky as though it were placed there just for the benefit of New Yorkers. The same bright sun that made the twin skyscraping towers of the World Trade Center gleam for all the world to see also made it easy for the cowards to see their targets from miles away. It was early in the day with an average workday beginning either at 8 or 9 o'clock for most people. Many of the thousands of men and women were already in their climate controlled offices. Some were hard at work, while others were enjoying coffee and the occasional breakfast treat at their desk before starting their day. Some were in the cafeterias or sneaking a cigarette before heading up to their offices or work areas. But NONE of them were preparing for the unthinkable. None of them were getting ready to die and none of them were saying goodbye to loved ones…that would come later.

At 8:48 a.m. on a beautiful September day, a declaration of war was made by a group of cowards that believe in an oxymoron, a holy war. Their beliefs, their reasons, their motives matter not a whit because what matters is what they did. They knowingly and willfully committed a crime against all human beings. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children. They took those lives in the most heinous and cowardly manner possible. They took those lives without warning and without conscience. They are NOT warriors, they are NOT soldiers, and they do not even deserve to be referred to as human. They are animals that are diseased and a threat, and as all dangerous animals that are sick, they need to be hunted down and put down for the good and safety of us all.

In the course of less time than it takes to fly from Boston to San Francisco, the lives of thousands of people changed. Children were left without fathers or mothers. Some were orphaned and men and women were left without spouses, brothers, sisters and friends. The victims suffered in a myriad of ways that no human being should ever have to deal with. No death row prisoner ever faced a tougher sentence. Men and women were trapped on teetering structures with flames and smoke blocking their escape. Some of them jumped hundreds of feet to their deaths rather than face being burned alive. Others held out, praying and hoping for rescue only to die horribly as their world fell away from them and they plunged to their deaths along with the structures that they had worked in and felt safe inside.

The horror and the death did not stop with the innocent ones inside the towers or aboard the aircraft. It continued with the brave…firefighters, police officers and emergency medical personnel who were struggling to do their jobs as the world fell down upon them, crushing them beneath concrete, steel and glass.

Even this toll in carnage was not enough for them. They wanted still more blood on their hands as they crashed yet another hi-jacked jet into the Pentagon building and still more as another jet that they tried to guide like a bomb was wrestled back and crashed into a field, killing the innocent people along with the animals. September 11, 2001 is not a day that will live in infamy, it will be remembered as the day a world…wept.

Lest We Forget