World Trade Center and Pentagon Bombing –Sept 11, 2001

  Rizal Looking down at the WTC

Over the Hudson River

 

I see the World Trade Center towers every day through our balcony in Jersey City located just across the Hudson River. The New York skyline’s highlight is certainly the palatial US landmark and reminds me of mountaintops every night.  My view developed my inherent easement right to the skyline.  It is more than a building - it is a generation built within our times but it is also a modern factory of human resources. People work inside and artificial people known in legal parlance as corporation lives.  The presence of strong twin towers in basketball team guarantees sports dynasties.  New skyscrapers are slowly being built near me hindering my free and unobstructed view about a mile away and I was about to call ‘blocking foul.’  On the morning of September 11, I was in Washington DC suburbs watching the terror in the sky on the tube almost without belief. Had I been home, I would be watching it live as the second assault took place. To call it flagrant foul is almost mute.

 

Skyscrapers are measured by how it can withstand avionic collisions from planes. Last week on the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” the question was “what is a crucible?” The contestant failed and the building collapsed the following morning.  Rockefeller’s American Dream by went down the same way another industrial icon the Pan American Airline (PAA).  Both by world terrorists.  To compare these cowards to the Kamikazes pilot is absurd for the victims and targets are innocent. The Pentagon was the same way but I never thought the damage would be serious but I was wrong. The war room houses as many offices as the World Trade Center and built to withstand the weapons of WW2.

 

The New York skyline and the American way of life will never be same again. A new masked evil declared war beyond sky limit.  America is finding ways to combat this assault. As I was driving back to Jersey City trying to sort the years behind and anxious to see what’s left, I look back to the cold war era when roads were constructed in some part to accommodate jet landing.  Bridges and tunnels were specified for mobile relocations of missiles launchers in the event of war. The faces of the enemy were more defined.  Friendly nations have come and go however. The blind fanatics will disguise this Jihad War that Filipinos could relate as followers of Osama Bin Laden has infiltrated the Philippines for some time.  It is scary that the Philippines and Jersey City are mentioned as sanctuary of these madmen.  The nation of Pakistan being of the proximity is being reviewed. Pakistan once a very strong ally, staunch member of the SEATO (oriental counterpart of NATO), allowed the takeoff of the famous U2 over Russia that was shot down during the cold war. Lesser players hostile to the United States now could be counted as the lesser of devils. This is pragmatic in the world of politics, but after triumph as in the Gulf War, the end game has not been won.  The victors must pursue the enemy to the very end.  We can even compromise on the issue of privacy for this goal but this old salty sailor would never forget printed in his Navy Liberty Card, “Eternal vigilance is the prize of liberty.”

 

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Nestor Palugod Enriquez
http://www.filipinohome.com
Coming to America
https://members.tripod.com/philusnavy
Filipinos in the US Navy
 
 
Yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery.
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