It’s about 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001. A telephone rings and Lyzbeth Glick, of Hewitt, N.J., picks up the receiver. The voice on the phone is her husband, Jeremy, calling from aboard an airliner and telling her it is being hijacked.
In a second phone conversation, Lyzbeth tells her husband about the fates of other hijacked planes; tells him that two other planes were used as terrorist weapons to attack targets on the ground and have been crashed into New York City?s World Trade Center.
And in the fourth and final phone conversation, Jeremy concludes that he and other passengers are going to take action.
A fellow passenger, Thomas Burnett Jr. of San Ramon, Calif., is on another phone and tells his wife, Deena, “If they’re going to run this into the ground we’re going to have to do something.”
Shortly thereafter, United Airlines flight #93 crashes in an empty field near Pittsburgh, Pa., killing everyone on board but not one person on the ground.
The passengers of that flight, while the already fatally-damaged World Trade Center was being ravaged by fire and on the verge of collapse, were the first Americans to fight back.
And their actions were nothing short of heroic. Who knows what the terrorists’ target was — the White House or the U.S. Capitol?
What we do know is that the terrorists failed to carry out the murders of thousands more innocent people on the ground because these brave men and women, facing their imminent deaths, decided to not let these barbaric terrorists have their way.
Immediately after these cowardly and horrific attacks were carried out, when war was declared against our nation, heroes emerged and America’s sons and daughters began rallying around Old Glory in the name of freedom and justice.
Hundreds in the initial wave of firefighters, police officers, and emergency personnel who assisted in the evacuation of the World Trade Center remain missing after the massive building succumbed to the devastating structural damage and ensuing fire. Currently, thousands more volunteers and rescuers from all walks of life are digging and sifting through the rubble and still risking their own lives in the hopes of finding any survivors.
President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have begun forging plans to retaliate and wage a war against those who seek to destroy America’s way of life.
U.S. armed forces around the world have been informed that the duty their country will ask of them is to “vanquish” the free world’s enemy of terrorism.
Surely, many more of our country’s citizens will heed the call and join the armed forces to fight if necessary.
Already, people from around the country are continuously flooding the American Red Cross with donations of much-needed blood, money, and supplies.
These terrorists will not succeed in seizing the spirit of our beloved nation. These terrorists will not cause Americans to live in fear.
The federal government has remained in full operation; a unified Congress is in session; the Pentagon has reopened; airports are again in service; the financial markets are beginning to move forward; even the pro-life protesters and UW students gathering to express their disagreement were in full force in front of Memorial Library last Thursday afternoon.
Truly, the will of our people to enjoy the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the American Dream can never be smothered.
The free citizens of the United States of America have already begun to fight back.
We must never cease until our enemies, who would attack our children, our families, and our country?s future generations, are absolutely defeated.
To our nation?s enemies, abroad and among us, who refuse to join our nation in the battle for protecting freedom, justice and our way of life ? the war has just begun, your day will come, and your defeat is inevitable. So long as we Americans stand together, pray together, work together and stay together, we will fight and win this war against terrorism ? together.
