United?

Yesterday was an important anniversary. 8 years since that horrific terrorist attack on our country. 8 years since those extremists had the gall to come on our soil and attack us! It's a day no one can forget. I am sure we all watched some kind of special about 9/11 yesterday. I know I did. On the actual day in 2001 I was at home, alone. We didn't have our TV hooked up yet, as we had only been in our house a couple of weeks. So I only knew what I did by listening to the radio. I didn't see any of the footage until that evening when I went to work. Even then it was only bits and pieces as I moved from patient room to patient room. It wasn't until last night as I sat on the couch watching a special on the History Channel that I really felt it. The gut wrenching, nauseating pain of what was happening. To see the people walking the streets in New York City not really knowing where to go or what to do. They were dazed and stunned, as I know our entire country was.

Some of the most memorable footage they showed was of people hanging out of the windows waving whatever kind of flag they could manage to get help. Then those same people falling out the window because they had no other way to get out of the intense heat of the fire. Even more amazing was the faces of the firefighters as they prepared to go into the second tower to fight the fire just minutes after the first tower had already collapsed. What could they have been thinking? Complete fear knowing they were going to enter a building that will most likely meet the same fate as the other, I would imagine. But they strapped on their gear and headed up the street with extra oxygen tanks and hoses to help the wounded and try to put out the inferno. Then just moments before they reached the building it collapsed just as the first one had. Imagine being one of those rescuers, knowing that half your crew is already in the building that just fell into a heap before you. Imagine being a family member of someone that you knew was inside one of those buildings.

But what they didn't show were the days that followed 9/11/2001. The days when our country pulled together, grieved together, and got angry together, demanding that justice must be served! What happen to all the cars with American flags flowing on them and all the "God Bless America" signs and bumper stickers? Where is that united front that followed 9/11/2001?

Now we are fighting to get "In God We Trust" removed from anything it may appear on. We're disrespecting our flag. There is a whole generation of kids out there that may never learn the Pledge of Allegiance. I don't understand how, in 8 short years, we have chosen to put all of that aside. In less time than that we began to voice a pure hatred for the leader that got us through that horrible day and the days that followed. Where is the respect for the police, firefighters and paramedics that spent weeks pulling remains from the rubble? I just pray it doesn't take another day like September 11th, 2001 to unite us back together.