While this is a much older post, from May of 2004, it still remains to be one of my favorite post that I have ever written. When I sat down at my computer and wrote it, I was thinking about 9-11 and what we were faced with in the coming election. We knew at that time that the Presidential candidates were going to be John Kerry and President George Bush. At that time, I still hadn't quite decided to vote for the President but was not at all impressed with Kerry. I just wrote my thoughts down. When I finished with it, I ran the spell check and word count and too my amazement, the total was 911 words. How appropriate I thought to myself and decided to leave it as is. So for this fifth anniversary of 9-11, I thought I would go ahead and repost it...as it originally appeared.
It seems every so often that someone comes along and inspires us. In July of 1941, one of the great speeches of the 20th century had Winston Church saying “You do your worst - and we will do our best", taking England from certain defeat into victory.
After we were attacked on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt had said, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan” . The country was strong and determined to defeat the three countries that wrought war on us.
Ronald Reagan had one of those moments while standing in front of the Berlin wall in June 1987. When Ronald Reagan uttered “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, he forever sealed his fate as a memorable president.
We remember greatness by great things happening. England survived the Blitzkrieg, Roosevelt led us into Normandy, and that wall that symbolized cruelty and denial of human rights eventually came down. Great things came as a result of great men who stood their ground in moments that would make most men cower to the desires of those around them.
Omaha beach
After September 11 our nation fell into one of those moments. Our nation had reached a point that it could have fell into fear, we could have easily been afraid of our own neighbors. We could have let our prejudices get in the way of our rational.
It happened to me, while I was managing a store, one of my employees, Gilbert, was up front working the register, when I came around the corner, four men were standing in line. One of the men looked at me and after noticing my skin tone yelled, “I can’t believe all these (expletive) camel jockeys in here!” and stormed out.
I was completely unaware of what a camel jockey was; I tried to stop the man because I thought that we had done something wrong. The other three men just looked at me as if too let me know not to worry about it. After we had taken care of the customers I asked Gilbert what we did to make that guy so mad.
He then told me he called us a camel jockey and I asked him what a camel jockey was. He explained to which I responded, “Well, what’s he going to do for an encore? Go into the ghetto and call everybody there a bunch of honkies?”
Though I don’t deny there are more examples than that, I do believe that was the exception and not the rule. Yes, there was anti-Arabic sentiment, but it could have been much worse. President Bush stood up and told the nation not to blame Arabic people. To quote President Bush, "We should not hold one who is a Muslim responsible for an act of terror."
Bush led the country. Bush had a big moment, but the Presidents big moment came a little later while visiting that memorable site in New York City. As President Bush stood on that rubble and began to address the crowd, a man interrupted President Bush and yelled, “I can’t hear you”
The President looked and said; “I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
President Bush’s response got me out of my chair screaming. That’s what I wanted to hear I wanted to hear that we weren’t going to allow this to happen anymore. I wanted to know that we weren’t going to be pushed over. I wanted to know that our President would stand up for us. The rest of the country shared my sentiments.
Our President had one of those moments and he talked the talk and led us into action that would alter the way the world was. The Taliban was the first to drop, then Saddam Hussein. The President was showing a leadership that had been missing since 1989. We walked into a great moment and though the war is not quite over, our country is safer. The rest of the world knows, if we are attacked, we will fight back. The rest of the world knows, not all of us will tolerate terrorism.
Our future is becoming clearer as we approach the election. We have a guy who spends half of his campaign questioning his own patriotism and the other half changing his mind. One guy would rather trust the sovereignty of the United States in the hands of the United Nations. One man, does not even trust his own judgement over that of the United Nations.
While on the other side we have President Bush. The Presidents campaign has taken on a tone that goes after his opponent. Though I found them humorous and appropriate, I believe that the President needs to focus more on his leadership. The President ought to take the nation by the reigns and lead us into the election. The campaign ought to tell us more about the man who told us that those terrorists would hear all of us soon. The Bush campaign should show the President as the leader he was immediately after 9-11. Once the President does that, the other guy, the one who doesn’t even know what country he is in, will be sunk in his bid for the presidency.
