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Clearing the Browser Tabs – Ten Years Later and I Still Will Not Submit, 9/11 Sunday Edition

Jimmie | September 11, 2011 | Comments (1)

Lan Astaslem, in Arabic, means “I will not submit”. Michelle Malkin has adopted it as a motto for how she lives her life as a citizen of the greatest nation history has ever known. I believe I’ll adopt it myself. I rarely tell my story of 9/11, not because it’s traumatic but because I believe it is trivial. There are thousands of stories of heroism from that day a decade ago (and I link to quite a few of them farther down in this post) and mine is not one of them. I did, however, share some of what happened to me and those around me on September 11, 2001 in the latest episode of Right this Way, recorded to commemorate the day.

I do want you to listen to the podcast because the stories my friends Wendy, Kimberly, Andrew, and Ben tell are important, I think, and because I talk a bit about an entire group of people forgotten at the many ceremonies to honor our deserving first responders — the emergency dispatchers of 9/11. I won’t recount what I said here, mostly because it’s a very hard thing for me to discuss and I do it as little as possible, but please listen to that bit of the podcast (toward the end of the first segment) and do what you can to thank those people who sit behind the microphones and bleed a little bit every day inside to keep you and yours safe.

Mark Steyn has written what I consider the definitive column on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It inspired my post on the comparisons to the Tet Offensive earlier today and it may inspire you to commemorate today differently from here on out. Here is his final paragraph.

And so we commemorate an act of war as a “tragic event,” and we retreat to equivocation, cultural self-loathing, and utterly fraudulent misrepresentation about the events of the day. In the weeks after 9/11, Americans were enjoined to ask, “Why do they hate us?” A better question is: “Why do they despise us?” And the quickest way to figure out the answer is to visit the Peace Quilt and the Wish Tree, the Crescent of Embrace and the Hole of Bureaucratic Inertia.

We have gone wrong when a touching rendition of “America the Beautiful” by a talented Presidential candidate is met with faux outrage and mocking derision. The mockers do not believe in the historical fact that America is and has always been exceptional among all nations. September 11 is their day to push that meme as far into our heads as they can because they desperately need us to believe that we are not special, that we are not the inheritors of a unique tradition, and that we are a massive force for good and right in the world. They, like the Islamists, want us to submit. I, for one, will not.

Lan Astaslem.

And now, more links from around the blogosphere.

We need a lot more of this: “Newly Published Audio Provides Real-Time View of 9/11 Attacks” (via memeorandum). Also, ABC News posted its live video coverage of 9/11 as it happened, in hour-long blocks. It is hard but necessary viewing.
I recommend you listen to these three speeches from various memorial ceremonies: President George W. Bush from Shanksville, PA, President Bill Clinton from Shanksville, PA, Vice President Joe Biden from the Pentagon.
Even after all these years, we learn new stories of heroism. I had not heard of Lt. Heather Penney before today, but I do not believe I’ll forget her now that I have.
The 9/11 attack was visible from space, and one American astronaut got a picture.
See-Dubya came back from a three-year blogging hiatus to tell us about a local 7-11 store with a 9/11 connection. If his post makes you a bit irate, that’s good. Our government, as he points out, has done nothing at all to prevent illegal immigration, fraud, and Islamism from coming together again.
Lance Briggs, linebacker for the Chicago Bears, may well be a big jerk but this week he did the right thing with courage and conviction and got his league to do the same.
For some, 9/11 won’t ever be anything but a means to grab more political power.
Ten years ago, Stacy McCain wrote about a big drug story that no one remembers today and Toby Harnden, US Editor of the Daily Telegraph, began a journey that led to his becoming an American citizen. On the other hand, the President proclaimed that today is National Grandparents Day, so we can see just how much the world changed for him.
Project 2996 remembrances: Kui Fai Kwok, son of immigrants who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald; Robin Kaplan, mother and passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11, Sharon Carver, civilian Army accountant at the Pentagon and resident of my home town.
I believe Wendy Sullivan has the best outlook on the day I’ve seen from around the blogosphere. Not all of us can be soldiers or leaders, but all of us can remember the story and teach it to the generations that come after us so that none of us ever forget what was done ten years ago today.