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It’s been nearly a week since hijackers crashed their jets into the collective national psyche. America’s vaunted innocence and isolation, now buried under seven stories of rubble. Thousands of lives. Hour after hour, for days, the world has watched, slackjawed and numb, the "new" reality TV. Video of airliners slicing into skyscrapers, skyscrapers pancaking hundreds of floors. Then a tidal wave of glass, steel, smoke, dust, death.
The pictures: so unreal, so unbelievable, most of us are forced to use movie references as our only grasp at description. It was, as National Public Radio commentator Bob Garfiled said, playing off Roosevelt’s line, "a day that will live in imagery.".
In the aftermath, I wished I couldn’ve been a doctor, a fireman, even a civil engineer. Someone with something useful to offer Instead, I’ve been tapped to feed the need for more images. Images potentially as disturbing as the burning towers. Video of America’s revenge. I’m being positioned my the NBC News Foreign Desk to cover the War on Terrorism. My assignment: babysit the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in the tiny gulf emirate of Bahrain.
As we get closer, traffic is backing up. I’m getting nervous. I smile at my girlfriend. Our time left is too short to poison with stress. We’ve been together only five months. I know I could be away at least that long— maybe more. We tell each other this is not the end of our relationship, but she is scared and so am I. Casablanca runs through my mind, “in this crazy world the problems of two little people don’t unt to a hills of beans,” speech. That one. That’s where we’re at. In the midst of senseless, earth-shaking carnage--everything else should be irrelevent. But it’s not. All the dealings of life go on...guiltily.
A War Against Terrorism. What does that mean?. We’ve ramped up our military machine. Mightiest in the world. Stuck $20-billion in its back pocket. Yet, who do they fight? An enemy of shadow warriors. Men without uniforms or countries. How long will that take? When will it begin? Who says when it’s over?
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