8 Years Ago
I have told my story before of finding myself a visitor to Manhattan on 9/11. I watched much of the disaster unfold from the roof of the W Hotel, and spent a weird Omega Man-like evening as some of the only people walking around a deserted Manhattan (police were letting people leave the island but not come back). And the surreal drive around a still car-free Manhattan the next morning, as police would admit there was one way off the island, but out of some bizarre notion of security would not tell us where it was, so we drove much of the perimeter until we got out via the GW at the north end.
We were lucky in about a zillion ways that day. Our kids were being watched back in Seattle by someone with the flexibility to watch them for the four more nights it took us to get home. We randomly bumped into a friend who had the last rent car in Manhattan and was headed west. And, of course, my meeting was in midtown, unlike several friends of mine who had meetings in the WTC and never got out.
I still think the two best works of journalism on 9/11 I have seen are National Geographic's "Inside 9/11," which is airing off and on this week, and the Onion's 9/11 issue. I know the latter choice seems weird, but the Onion was easily the first place anywhere to try to make people laugh when everyone was being so serious. They did a great job of being funny without being disrespectful. A bunch of the articles are still funny, and this one seems dead on in retrospect:
"America's enemy, be it Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, a multinational coalition of terrorist organizations, any of a rogue's gallery of violent Islamic fringe groups, or an entirely different, non-Islamic aggressor we've never even heard of... be warned," Bush said during an 11-minute speech from the Oval Office. "The United States is preparing to strike, directly and decisively, against you, whoever you are, just as soon as we have a rough idea of your identity and a reasonably decent estimate as to where your base is located."...
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the war against terrorism will be different from any previous model of modern warfare.
"We were lucky enough at Pearl Harbor to be the victim of a craven sneak attack from an aggressor with the decency to attack military targets, use their own damn planes, and clearly mark those planes with their national insignia so that we knew who they were," Rumsfeld said. "Since the 21st-century breed of coward is not affording us any such luxury, we are forced to fritter away time searching hither and yon for him in the manner of a global easter-egg hunt."
Standing in opposition to Bush and Congress is a small but growing anti-war movement. During the president's speech Tuesday, two dozen demonstrators gathered outside the White House, chanting and waving placards bearing such slogans as "U.S. Out Of Somewhere" and "No Blood For Whatever These Murderous Animals Hope To Acquire."
Here is some footage of the disaster that was not released until years after the event.
