It’s a good guess that most all Americans remember where we were on Sept. 11, 2001, just as — if old enough — we remember the day John F. Kennedy was shot or, for some, the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
These events are indelibly stamped in our conscience and our consciousness, playing over in our minds like a movie reel on each anniversary.
Yesterday, was the day 3,000 people died — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, atheists and agnostics — when American passenger jets at the hands of terrorists flew into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
In a field in Pennsylvania, 40 passengers and crew of the United Flight 93 perished when they tried to prevent terrorists from flying the plane into another target, possibly the US Capitol Building.
As for me, I was in a conference room in Bucharest, Romania, conducting message training for Victor Ponta, the secretary-general of the ruling Socialist Party, when the news came. Ponta would later become Prime Minister.
I had just finished my initial presentation with my colleague from Moscow, Roman Diukarev, when Ponta's aide rushed into the room to say a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
Thinking it was probably a small craft, we continued the training. Then, within an hour, the aide returned with the news that a jet, then another, had crashed into the iconic towers.
At that point, I could not finish the training and asked if we could reschedule for the next day. Numb, I went back to the Sofitel Hotel and throughout the rest of the day and night watched CNN.
It was a horror unfolding before our eyes. I didn’t even leave the room to have dinner, dining the night through on every snack in the mini-bar, and, perhaps, washing them down with liquid refreshment.
There are events you never really get over. For me, 9/11 makes the highlight reel of momentous events that have had lasting impact. This one led to a war in Afghanistan that has lasted these 18 years.
If only we could take back time. If only we had a make-do on decisions taken over those years.
In the intervening time, my youngest daughter was born and entered university. About 7,000 Americans have been killed in the ensuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sparked by 9/11.
The other day President Trump said it was his decision to invite the Taliban to Camp David for peace talks, much the same as President Carter in the late mid-70s brought together Arabs and Israelis.
The Taliban, of course, were the ones who shielded the mastermind of 9/11, the terrorist Bin Laden. Trump’s plan — which he then called off — was around the 18th anniversary of the day that will always live in infamy.
My only reaction was this: “Mr. President, don’t you have even a ounce of emotional intelligence?”
