Today, I’ll be thinking less about the World Trade Center and more about my father and the relentless – probably unique – ability of New York City to bury its dead and move on without a backward glance.

My father was born in Manhattan in 1923, in a tenement building off Columbus Circle. A few years later, he moved to Brooklyn, a borough that was considered the country back then, a place that had more horses than cars. By the time he left there for good in 1966, it wasn’t the country anymore, that’s for sure.

He worked for Sea-Land, a shipping company that was one of the World Trade Center’s original tenants, and one of my very earliest memories is of my older brother and me playing in the company’s unfinished offices in one of the towers before the complex opened to the public in 1973.

Like many, probably most, New Yorkers, my father hated the Twin Towers at first, preferring the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, which had gone up during his childhood.

He’d seen King Kong when it came out in 1933, he explained, and he just couldn’t see the big ape climbing the towers. By the late ‘70s – after Philippe Petit tightrope walked across them, George Willig scaled them, Owen Quinn parachuted from them, and King Kong himself had been shot off them in a 1976 remake – he’d come around.

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“…on a day when others tried to divide us, we can regain the sense of common purpose that stirred in our hearts 10 years ago. As a nation, we face difficult challenges, and as citizens in a democratic society we engage in vigorous debates about the future. But as we do, let’s never forget the lesson we learned anew 10 years ago — that our differences pale beside what unites us and that when we choose to move forward together, as one American family, the United States doesn’t just endure, we can emerge from our tests and trials stronger than before. That’s the America we were on 9/11 and in the days that followed. That’s the America we can and must always be.”
– Pres. Barack Obama, USA Today, Sept. 8, 2011

Ten year have passed since the Islamist attacks on the United States of America; attacks that killed 2,977 people in New York, Washington, DC and Shanksville, PA. Since that time we have routed the Taliban from their haven in Afghanistan, dispatched Osama bin Laden to the icy deep and lopped off many of the heads of the Islamist terror hydra. We have grown as a people to better understand the dysfunctional relationship that the Islamic theo-political dogma has with Western Culture. And we have done our best to attain closure, for ourselves, for our society and for our country.

But closure can be hard to attain when there are no bodies to bury and no pointed victory over a vanquished foe. And when closure alludes because of unresolved issues we must always re-examine the event; the moment; the realities.

At the ten year mark, an American president is foolishly stopping short of succeeding in a generational conflict with fundamentalist Islamists…or radical Islamists…or jihadists, you pick the politically correct term the Progressive-Left elitists are sanctioning as appropriate this week. To me, they are the enemy; bloodthirsty ideologues who are committed to ideological conquest by the sword in their quest to establish a global Caliphate existing under the exclusive stricture of Sharia Law. But then, that’s just me…educated on the subject and painfully realistic in my examination. You see, I dispensed with the self-imposed mental handicap of political correctness years ago…and I feel a lot better for having done so. I also see things a lot clearer without the fog of stupidity clouding every issue.

At the ten year mark, a secularist New York Mayor – along with the Progressive elites of his ilk – is advocating for the construction of a victory mosque within the footprint of the fallen World Trade Center. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, about as self-righteous as they come, is so certain that a “kumbaya” inclusionist approach to fundamentalist Islam will heal the rift between cultures that he refuses to examine the Islamic traditions of conquest; traditions that include building great mosques over conquered lands and, in particular, conquered religious properties. One need only understand that mosques now stand over holy places meaningful to religions that existed long before Muhammad or the theo-political creed that is Islam, established in 610 A.D., to validate this reality.

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Ten years ago at this exact time I was standing in my pajamas in my living room with tears streaming down my face, my hair a wreck. I was a 21-year-old newlywed and mother. My months-old infant sat in a bouncy seat, fascinated by his fists. My sobs startled him; he jolted in his seat, looked for my face, smiled and cooed, which made me cry harder.

The dichotomy of such innocence in my living room and the terror and evil unfolding on my television broke me in ways that I will never be able to explain. I wept for every single person as though they were cherished members of my own family. I wanted to reach through the television to make it stop, to catch the people jumping and falling with my hands.

As the second tower fell, the realization of what our country faced and what we would have to do as a nation hit me.

I had identified myself as a liberal my entire life, until this day. I had an early midlife crisis when I was around 19 years-old, when I began to think that I didn’t actually believe in the principles with which I was raised. I was raised by a very big southern Democrat union family. I was indoctrinated by years of pop-culture, educational bias, and family mantra. It was the only way. I did not vote for George W. Bush. I supported Gore. Even as I began to shed the beliefs of a Democrat, one thing remained: I still felt that America had a problem with the “military complex.” The only reason people were hostile to us, I surmised, was because they were intimidated by our military. I thought Bush was representative of this and it was the reason I didn’t support him.

That belief was blown to hell on 9/11.

“Thank God George Bush is president,” I blurted out in the middle of a furious sob. My husband, who was born wearing a Reagan shirt, looked at me with wide-eyed wonderment.

How foolish I had been.

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It was a brilliant summer day in a world at peace. The world’s superpowers, once locked into conflict by irreconcilable ideologies, were now alike committed to stable, prosperous co-existence. Their vast military establishments, they said, existed solely for self-defense. Except in a few backward lands, horsetrading had replaced brinksmanship.

New industrial and information technologies were annihilating distance, uniting mankind and globalizing the world economy. The English language had leaped far beyond its island home, and now knit together hundreds of millions of people on four continents. Medical advances were rapidly stretching the human lifespan, while new agricultural methods offered hope of eradicating hunger. Research, science, and philosophies of progress had weakened the hold of religion in countries that once had fought bloody doctrinal conflicts and persecuted dissenters. Transnational organizations in defense of human rights were striving with rising success to eliminate evils like forced labor and torture, and reform movements in once-tyrannical countries promised to gradually introduce democracy. Man had become, more than ever before, the measure of all things, and political philosophers predicted with confidence that mankind’s self-destructive history was drawing to an end; we had entered a new and perhaps the final phase of human development, an age of reason. The sun that dawned that morning shone bright as all our hopes in a sky almost clear of clouds.

So it was on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand came to visit. So also on September 11, 2001 in Manhattan, as millions of New Yorkers made their way to work. Those of us who remember what occurred just ten years ago should know that all of it happened once before: an act of political terror committed by a small band of conspirators plunged the world into a conflict that would take on a life and logic of its own—claiming countless lives, causing undreamt-of destruction, consuming vast resources, making mincemeat of ancient liberties, reviving bloodthirsty fanaticisms that enlightened people had thought long-dead, toppling governments, causing ethnic cleansing that displaced millions of civilians, and plunging the wealthiest part of the world into economic stagnation and crippling debt. The fact that history grimly repeats itself should only surprise those who do not believe in original sin—which means that it surprises almost everybody.

What can we learn from reading these two great signposts of disillusion? Perhaps there is no useful lesson we may draw beyond a bitter irony, a grim smile of agreement with Rudyard Kipling:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

But that is too easy, isn’t it?

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I chose to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 by running throughout Manhattan, on a 14-mile route that took me from the East Village down to Ground Zero, up to the Central Park Reservoir, and back down through Midtown.

The day started with a brilliant blue sky, almost like the sky of that Tuesday ten years ago. The flags on the Brooklyn Bridge were at half-mast in the early morning.

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My memories of September 11, 2001 are likely little different than those of so many others. Thankfully, no one I knew died in those attacks, but I mourned just the same; and in that way one can ever truly recover from such a thing, I still do and always will mourn.

Ten years on, my emotions have evolved, however. Because for ten years I’ve watched the Left, much of Hollywood and almost all of the news media turn against our country for mercenary, partisan political reasons. And none of this surprised me. In the aftermath of the atrocity as solemn celebrities hosted benefit concerts and Democrats sang “God Bless America” on the Capitol steps, I knew it wouldn’t last and that over time they would become America’s enemy within in the fight to protect herself. I never even took a moment to hope I was wrong. Why waste the energy.

If you recall, we had seen it all before. We saw it when after spending years undermining a war of liberation with the Killing Fields of Cambodia as a direct result, the Left never once stopped to second guess themselves.

With great pride I watched my cousin Kyle join the military when the war was at its ugliest and just last week my grandson Mikey left boot camp and started his hazmat training with National Guard. With horror I’ve watched the Left use every dishonest trick and tool at their disposal to make their jobs harder.

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On September 11, 2001, I was a left-wing freelance journalist spending a few days in the African ghetto of inner city Johannesburg as an escape from the previous week of antisemitic mayhem at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.

I walked into a Bollywood movie at a crowded shopping center at 3 p.m.–which was 9 a.m. in New York–and when I emerged three hours later, I was completely alone.

Two memories from the aftermath stand out for me. First, the way my Muslim landlady and neighbors in a working-class neighborhood in Cape Town made a special effort to tell me how appalled they were at what had happened to America.

The Malay Quarter, Cape Town

Second, the way elite journalists and intellectuals in the international press actually celebrated the 9/11 atrocity, while offering formal condemnations of terror “in all its forms.” (more…)

9/11…A tragic day when Islamic terrorists from Al Qaeda hijacked commercial jets and used them to destroy the WTC, hit the Pentagon and crashed another hijacked plane in Shanksville, PA. 3,000 innocent lives, Americans and foreigners of all sizes, colors, languages, religions, were killed that day. All Americans were shocked, mortified, caught completely off guard. Around the world, some mourned, others cheered.

9/11…We all remember what it is and what happened, and we vowed to never forget it. But the true meaning of NEVER FORGET is not to forget what 9/11 means, to our nation and to free people around the world and to never forget our mission. I have never actually tried to put together “what it means” in its totality and scope because the far reaching impact it had on my life and where I was in my life at the time.  I liken it to being asked “What was BUDS like?” or “What’s it like to be a Navy SEAL?”

These questions are just unanswerable in a sitting.  They will usually elicit a response of “Really?” or “You will have to come up with some better questions than that.”  My quick and ready answer is the first line of a Dickens book “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  Then I just walk away.

9/11…It ripped me to the core — being that I grew up not forty miles away in — Upstate New Jersey and had some people that I knew in there as most of us in the area did.  Plus, growing up in New Jersey, you were used to seeing New York City on the horizon when we would climb to the top of the Mountain behind my house.  I used to visit my grandparents and cousins that lived out on Remsen and we would see the towers as we would go by on the GWB past Yankee Stadium.  We would sometimes go into the city and go to the towers to ride in the elevators and jump when it got to the top and you would almost slam into the ceiling or to feel almost weightless as you would plummet so fast.  Those buildings were HUGE!!! You may have seen them on TV but until you have seen them up close and personal you don’t get the full scope of what happened there.

About 4 days before 9/11, in 2001, I was a young Navy SEAL and had just graduated from SQT, which is the last hurdle to get through before reporting to your assigned Team or Platoon.  I was happy and excited to be a Frogman and there wasn’t a care in the world for me. Like firemen, you don’t wish for people to get into accidents or for their houses to get burnt down but you want to get out there and play in the big game being that you are finally in the Big Leagues.  I wanted to test my skills somewhere in the world and there really wasn’t much going on in the world.  I wanted something to happen in the world so the SEALs can go save somebody or kill some bad guys….. I remember thinking that my generation had nothing to show other than for the advent of the computer and video games, and this was about two before 9/11.  Little did I know the Horror that awaited a nation……. MY NATION!

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On this 10th Anniversary of the September 11th attack on America we’ll hear politicians and pundits wringing their hands over the “tragic events” of that morning. They’ll wonder aloud whether we’ve “learned anything” in these past ten years and whether we’ve achieved the correct level of “tolerance” and “understanding” that is so desperately needed to solve our worlds problems.

From our president we will hear a call to community service and a plea to find volunteer opportunities in our neighborhoods, because, you know… the real message behind 9/11 is to plant a garden at the local welfare office.

What we won’t hear enough of this momentous day is the truth about 9/11. The truth about what happened that day. The truth about why it happened.

The truth is that on September 11, 2001 war was declared on the United States of America. Our ideological opponents on the left (as well as some of the more troubling supporters of Rep. Ron Paul) will tell you that it 9/11 wasn’t an act of war because the perpetrators were not acting on behalf of any nation. As if in some way the fact that our attackers didn’t have a flag on their sleeves while demolishing our financial and military headquarters some how re-defines the act as merely a “crime”.

The liberals and libertarians mired in their denial of the reality of the world we live in are dangerous and must be answered with vigor. 9/11 was not a “criminal act”. And, despite what President Obama might say, we are not in a war against Al Qaeda. By narrowing our focus and pretending that we must only respond against those whose fingerprints can be found on the 9/11 attack is an invitation to our enemies around the world to wage war on us through proxies like Al Qaeda.  A Commander-in-Chief Ron Paul, with his pathetic call for Letters of Marque and Reprisal, would allow enemies like North Korea, Iran and Venezuela to send hundreds of organizations like Al Qaeda toward our skyscrapers all under the protective banner of “rogue criminal act”.

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As a first responder paramedic and survivor of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center,  the tenth anniversary has brought for me an unsettling feeling of fear that was unexpected. A fear that is not based on the threat of another terror attack but rather the realization that 9/11 is being successfully erased from our collective consciousness and memories.

The threat of new terror attacks is not only real, but has changed from a possibility to an absolute certainty. The politicization of our homeland and national security has guaranteed a second 9/11 style attack or worse. The lessons that I hoped were learned post 9/11 were quickly forgotten, ignored  and replaced with a homeland security strategy that targets political opponents.  The highly charged political environment has corroded many of our capabilities and defenses, making every man, woman and child the next potential terrorist casualty.

While the physical threats are real, the greater threat we face is a country that has lost its guiding principles and values. A country that glamorizes reality show personalities and forgets the blood and treasure of its fallen guardians… minimizes their memories and sacrifice.   The media and politicians have hijacked 9/11 as a political pawn in an attempt to rewrite history, simply to fulfill a narrative that fits each of their own personal agendas.

The consequence in forgetting 9/11 is that we will be forced to  forget the most successful rescue effort in history.

It wasn’t politicians that ran up the stairwells of burning skyscrapers, or took control of hijacked planes, or used their bodies as shields to protect a stranger. It was a cop, a firefighter, a medic, a flight attendant, a locksmith, an iron worker, who said ….”you go home today, I won’t let any harm come to you.” They said this as they gave their lives to fulfill that promise.

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Infamy.

Looking back over the last 10 years and thinking about where many of us were and how we felt when the towers fell is surreal. These are sad thoughts. But what I find even more saddening is the fact that we have allowed our country to become more and more of a police state over the last 10 years. And apparently, the end is not in site…and will likely only become worse.

When the Department of Homeland Security was launched after 9/11 and the Patriot Act was launched as a bill that would last only 4 years, many freedom loving Americans squabbled. Most turned to those rebels and told them to “shut up,” that it was necessary to protect America. Then we allowed the TSA to militarize our airports and treat us like cattle. Then came the unsecured and blatant violation of personal privacy when travelers data was being collected. And of course the full body pat downs of children and colonoscopies full-body scans.

Oh, but a little before the whole body scan debacle was of course the hush-hush hiring of Ex-Stasi Spy Markus Wolf by the DHS. Who better to know how to teach the government how to spy on its own citizens and invoke citizen to citizen tattle telling than an ex-East German communist?

Is it any surprise that in the years following Wolf’s tenure as a consultant to DHS prior to his death we have now seen programs develop out of DHS that include the government asking its citizens to report on their neighbors, and the institution of a secret police force called “Viper Team”. It’s rumored they great each other with a hearty, “Shield and sword!”

Don’t forget the vans with X-ray patrolling our streets as well…

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Mohamed Dawod, a 25-year-old man from Glendale, Ariz., faces a murder charge today, accused in the shooting death of Justin Hall, 32, of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, at a Greyhound bus station in Springfield, Mo., late Thursday night. Whether or not this was a case of terrorism, however, remains up in the air after officials in the Southwest Missouri community were quick to say the shooting appeared random, according to a report in the Springfield News-Leader. But was it really?

According to a KSPR-TV report, Springfield police said that, because of a language barrier, they only learned Dawod’s name and have asked the FBI to help them with the investigation.  Also in that report was this telling paragraph:

Ten separate witnesses say they did not notice the men fighting or arguing before the shooting. One passenger said she watched the suspect wander around the terminal until the call to line up to re-board the bus. “She then observed the suspect remove a silver and black handgun from a back pack he was carrying,” the officer wrote. “The suspect then pointed the handgun upward while saying something. The witness could not understand what the suspect said and didn’t know if he was speaking English.” No matter what was said the witness said Hall didn’t react or turn around. Shortly after the witness says Dawod shot him from a few feet away.

Witnesses featured in two television news reports, however, seem to reveal more than the “official” story lets on about the deadly incident that involved a man with a Muslim name and Middle East appearance shooting someone he did not know less than 48 hours ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

The first television report, which aired on St. Louis NBC affiliate KSDK prior to any names being released or charges filed, features witnesses saying it appeared the assailant would have kept shooting, but his gun jammed.

The second report (below), which aired on the same station after the Springfield Police Department announced the alleged shooter’s name and charges against him, offered much the same story.

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Are we tired yet? Tired of petulant fingers being wagged at us? Tired of arrogant diatribes laden with authoritative-sounding statements like, “Let me be clear?” Tired of narcissistic harangues with demands like, “Pass this bill now?” Tired of empty threats to the other party like, “I’ll take this to the American people?”

In his overly hyped faux State of the Union address on Thursday evening, President Obama demanded an end to the “political circus.” What he did not say is that he is the Ring Leader of this “circus” of his own creation, a “circus” that has denigrated the Constitution and the rights of American citizens, a “circus” that has wreaked havoc on our economy and has only just begun to do so on our healthcare system.

The narcissism in this White House, and in this Democratic party and their media pundits, has now crossed over the line between reality and unreality. In his speech, the president once again urged Americans to contact their members of Congress and demand that “his” jobs act be passed immediately, without specifics, without a budget, simply because he is the president. The fact that his approval numbers are falling, that most Americans favor repeal of his signature healthcare law, that, today, only 18% of American adults believe their children will be better off than their parents, that consumer confidence in this president’s economy has continued to fall- all suggest that this president has few “Americans” to sic on the Republican conservatives in the House of Representatives. Really, why all the concern about Michele Bachmann’s headaches when we have this level of psychological dysfunction in the White House?

Are we fed up enough yet?

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From Reuters:

The Treasury is weighing a proposal to eliminate some, but not all, of the taxes on overseas profits of U.S.-based companies, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing two people familiar with the deliberations.

Eliminating the taxes on some of the profits is a central element of the Obama administration’s broader plans to overhaul the corporate tax code, the newspaper said.

Business have long complained that the U.S. system of taxing companies’ overseas profits hits companies that have often already paid been taxed in the countries where the profits were earned.

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From the Associated Press:

Take a breather, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Florida is about to get into the Republican presidential race big time, starting with a televised debate Monday in Tampa and ending with an early primary in 2012 that conceivably could wrap up the nomination.

It’s quite plausible that front-runners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney could roughly divide the first four contests, in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. If that happens, Florida could prove the virtual tie-breaker, a prize so big in a state so central to presidential elections that the loser might struggle to stay afloat.

“My guess is that Florida is going to be the big kahuna,” said Brad Coker, a Florida-based pollster for Mason-Dixon who conducts surveys nationwide. Florida is much larger, diverse and expensive than the other four early-voting states, he said, and so it rewards the type of campaigning a Republican must do around the country to oust President Barack Obama in November 2012.

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When Texas Governor Rick Perry in the Republican debate at the President Reagan Library described Social Security as a “Ponzi Scheme”; Perry hoped the media would hyper-ventilate and scream that his political career was over. Back in 1982, Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill legendarily damaged the President’s and the Republican’s popularity by spinning that Reagan’s efforts to return Social Security to solvency was an effort to destroy the program. Perry understands that Social Security still remains popular; but he intends to use as a wedge issue against Democrats the fact that few Americans are willing to pay more taxes make the program solvent and that younger voters believe they will never receive the benefits they are paying for.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes a Ponzi scheme as “an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks.” Social Security began collecting taxes in 1937 and began in 1940 to pay their first benefit recipient, Ida May Fuller. Ms. Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program before she retired. The Social Security taxes on her salary were $24.75; her initial monthly check was $22.54; and she lived to collect $22,888.92. Essentially, Ms. Fuller earned a spectacular 925% return on her investment.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was quoted by his Labor Secretary Francis Perkins as trying to make sure Social Security would not be a swindle to future generations:

“Ah, but this is the same old dole by another name. It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress of the United States to meet in 1980. We can’t see the United States short in 1980 any more than in 1935.”

Prior to the 1970s, the Social Security program was fairly well funded; because it took a highly visible Act of Congress to change the payments. But in 1972 Republican President Richard Nixon increased benefits by 20% and created a formula to automatically adjust Social Security payments by a cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. President Jimmy Carter in 1977 more than tripled the Social Security tax on wages; but price inflation continued to drive COLA payments up faster than the taxes on wages.

When President Reagan tried to reinstate the original COLA calculation in 1982 he was pummeled by Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, who famously told the press that trying to change Social Security was the political equivalent of asking for the instant death of touching the “third rail” of an electric train. Republicans lost 26 Congressional seats in the following midterm elections, as the Democrats made preservation of Social Security the centerpiece of their campaign slogan: “It’s not fair … It’s Republican”.

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From the Associated Press:

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is struggling to keep his money-losing organization afloat as more and more people are ditching mail in favor of the Internet, causing the lucrative first-class mail flow to plummet.

Donahoe has a plan to turn things around, if he can get the attention of Congress and pass a series of hurdles, including union concerns.

“The Postal Service is not going out of business,” postal spokesman David Partenheimer said. “We will continue to deliver the mail as we have for more than 200 years. The postmaster general has developed a plan that will return the Postal Service to financial stability. We continue to do what we can on our own to achieve this plan and we need Congress to do its part to get us there.”

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I’ll be covering the tenth anniversary of 9/11 from New York.

Thursday, the “Tribute of Light” was illuminated at Ground Zero.

Amidst the political chatter, its twin beams are a reminder of what matters most.