God Bless America

It's been eight years. It feels like yesterday. It's a day I will never forget. I hope you won't either.

Let's move forward with hope -- hope that we as a people will learn from tragedies like this not to hate. Hope that we will all work together for the good of mankind. Hope that our children and future generations will not fear one another.

Please always remember what happened on September 11, 2001 and never forget those who died, the families affected by this tragedy and how we came together as a nation.

Never forget the heroes that emerged -- those that died, those that survived, and those that continue to fight for our freedoms.

God bless America.

23 Years

It's not something I think about every day myself. But every year on January 28th, I do. I guess you can't expect the 23rd anniversary would be a headline. Maybe in two years -- on the 25th -- it will be.

I would have liked to have seen some recognition of it today though. I checked today on the web sites of MSNBC, CNN, FoxNews, and several other key news agencies. Nobody had even a mention of it.

But after 23 years, people forget. People have moved on. You go up to a teenager today and mention it, and many may not even know what you're talking about.

I was in sixth grade at the time. We were out of school that day. I can't remember whether there was snow on the ground outside, but I remember it was cold. I think it may have been a teacher workday for us. We were over at one of my mom's friends' houses. If I recall correctly, said friend had a daughter my sister's age and the two girls were playing around the house. Dad was at work.

The first teacher in space was supposed to go into space that day. We weren't watching the launch of the Challenger on STS-51L -- it was on the TV in another room.

I just remember suddenly hearing voices of confusion talking on the TV.... "obviously a major malfunction" (that ended up being the understatement of the century) and I ran to the TV.

All I saw were white plumes going off in separate directions. 'That's weird, the SRBs don't separate like that - it was too early for them to even release,' I thought.

There was a big multicolored cloud of orange, red and white in the center of it all. They were saying things on the TV that I really didn't pay attention to at the time. My eyes were transfixed. I couldn't believe it.

They went on saying that they are looking at the situation, but we all knew what had just happened.

Scobee. Smith. Resnik. Onizuka. Jarvis. McAuliffe. McNair. All are names that are burned into my mind.

The loss of the Challenger crew devastated families. It destroyed careers. Some NASA administrators walked away in shame. Some engineers and administrators at Morton Thiokol walked away in disgust.

It broke the hearts of millions, myself included. But it never dashed my belief in space exploration.

Since a young age, I have always been fascinated in anything that could fly and/or go into space, and the concept of exploration itself. But despite the loss of the Challenger and its crew, my faith and belief in the mission of our space program remained strong -- in fact, it has gotten stronger over the years. As has my admiration for the men and women that put those spacesuits on and go out there among the silence of space - to float. To watch. To look ... at all the awesomeness.

Two years later we crowded around a TV in our school library on a September day to watch the Discovery launch on STS-26 as the space shuttle program returned to flight. We were all overjoyed when we heard the words "Discovery has cleared the tower."

Then I waited to watch what happened when they said the words that still make me flinch - "Go at throttle up."

We watched as it burned a trail of white smoke across the sky and soared into outer space. We were screaming cheers. Everyone was clapping. It was an awesome sight.

Seventeen years after Challenger we went through another tragedy -- the loss of another shuttle and its crew of seven.

I'm going to save my political beliefs on space exploration and the losses of the Challenger, Columbia, and the Apollo I and their crews - and my portion of the blame game - for another time.

January 28, 1986 is a day I will always remember. Whether the newspaper, news websites, or whomever, include even a small headline or not about its anniversary, I will always remember.

I sometimes find myself turning away from the TV when they show clips of the STS-51L launch. I know what happens next once those words "Go at throttle up" are spoken.

But I'll continue to look up to the heavens, thinking about how far we've come in space exploration and the things we have yet to achieve - wondering what's out there - and admiring those heroes who are daring to explore that frontier for us and are blazing trails across history.

"The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God'." - Ronald Reagan, Jan. 28, 1986

Fighting the Fight

It didn't really hit me until I was on my way into work today.

I knew it was coming up, but in the rush of work and other things, I didn't realize that the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks was today until someone on the radio station I was listening to mentioned it.

Where were you that morning?

My wife and I were in the car on our way to work, listening to the radio when one of the DJs announced that an commercial airliner had just struck a tower of the World Trade Center. We listened as they were reporting what was coming over their wire.

Nobody knew what was going on - even when I got into work a few minutes later.

You would think at a TV station where people are supposed to be on top of things that someone would know what was going on. But things were happening so fast.

We watched as the second plane struck the second tower; as reports and video came in of a plane hitting the Pentagon; of another plane crashing in a field in Pennsylvania; and then as the Towers collapsed.

All you can think is "My God. All those people."

Throughout the morning false reports of bombs were flooding the national airwaves; phone lines and cell systems in New York and DC were overwhelmed.

When I heard of a suspected bomb at the State Department, my first thought was "Where's Tim?"

A good friend of mine who works (in Argentina right now) for the State Department was working in DC at the time. I hit the phone and started dialing. I kept trying to reach him all day. "Gotta find out if Tim's OK."

I finally talked to his wife around lunchtime and she said he was OK and that they were both at home, safe. Thank God. That was one of the biggest weights ever lifted off my chest when I heard her say that.

In our newsroom, you could see the reactions -- how people felt -- on their faces. But we had a job to do also. We did our job. We reported on how this tragedy was affecting our area of the country, our counties, our towns, our schools, our churches, and families --- how shocked, hurt, and angry we were.

All those emotions compounded on top of each other -- after the tears and holding your loved ones, watching the same footage over and over, you can't help but feel numb.

I felt that way for days afterwards.

They say each generation has one day that will define them. Some have more. For my parents' generation it was the day JFK was assassinated. I would venture to guess that the day we first set foot on the moon was one also.

For years, I thought that Jan. 28, 1986 would be the one that defined my generation - when the Challenger exploded. I know it had a tremendous impact on my life. I still don't like to watch that video.

Sept. 11 was defining moment in history - not only for the the youth of this generation, but for every American and the entire world.

We saw more flags, more patriotism, more support for one another, and probably the largest outpouring of sympathy and community that this country had probably seen since the attack on Pearl Harbor. I wish that all that would have continued on as strong even to now. But alot of the flags have since become faded or torn or put up in a closet; many of the yellow ribbons have been taken down or lost.

A few weeks later my wife and I were at a NASCAR race. Halfway through the race, they just stopped it.

Over the loudspeakers, the announcers say that it is being reported that our military forces have begun a bombing campaign in Afghanistan. You wouldn't believe the volume of cheers, applause, and screaming of "USA, USA" that was going on. Then President Bush came over the monitors and loudspeaker as he addressed the nation. And afterwards, more cheers, applause, and screaming of "USA, USA".

I will never forget Sept. 11, 2001. It still hurts us though. Some people don't want the hurt to remain. Different people remember and honor in different ways.

I noticed a few quotes in an article on FoxNews this morning that kind of struck me.

• "We've kept it alive, and perhaps kept it alive too long," said Charles Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed at the World Trade Center. "How many times do you reopen the wounds?"
• "The remembrances have to continue; for how long, I can't say," said Barbara Minervino of Middletown, N.J., whose husband, Louis, died in the towers.

A former supervisor of mine has a daughter who watched from a nearby office tower as the World Trade Center burned, people jumped from windows 100 stories up, and the buildings collapased. It had such an impact on her that she went into counseling afterwards.

I know people and have friends that have fought in the desert of Iraq. I have never heard them question why we are there or what their mission was. Our mission is clear: Protect our way of life. Protect those who can't protect themselves. Foster Democracy in nations that have never known such freedoms.

I stand behind each and every one of our men and women in uniform. I support them; I love them; and I want them to come home. But at the same time, I know they are there for a purpose.

We can second guess our government all we want. That is our right. We can say that McCain will be a better president for this reason or Obama will be a better president for that reason. That is our right.

They can call George Bush every name in the book for all I care. They can complain about our military and our intelligence community's methods and tactics all they want. People can sit back and bitch about the Patriot Act all they want.

We can say that the War on Terror was justified -- that our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have been worth it. You won't ever catch me saying they have not been. We can speak out against it. That is our right.

But it is our responsibility to remember the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 and the families and victims. It is our responsibility as Americans to make sure that never happens again. It is the cross we have to bear.

We need this country to be secure. We need to keep the future our of country and of our children in mind at all times. We need to continue to fight to preserve our way of life.

A wise Vulcan once said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Your may think, "Well I need a 47-inch wide screen TV, or I need a gas guzzling SUV or a pair of $150 pair of shoes. I need to go out tonight, dress like a skank, and party with my friends. I need to go yell at a referee and act like an obnoxious ass at a little league game." You don't really NEED to do any of that. It's your right as an American to do any of that; and that right is being protected by men and women in dark holes of the Pentagon, on the streets of Baghdad, in the warden's office at Guantanamo Bay, and in the mountains of Afghanistan.

If it keeps my family safe - if it keeps my friends safe - if it prevents my neices and nephews from growing up in a world where they worry about planes falling out of the sky to hurt them, then I don't care the lengths that our government has to go to in order to keep this country safe.

One of my all time favorite quotes was on the very last episode of Jericho: "That is the responsbility we've got here... Because that's how things get better and people stay free."

So let's go forward, remembering those who died on Sept. 11; remembering and honoring those who have died for us in the line of duty since then; remembering and honoring where we were, what we've learned and how we've grown; learning from our mistakes; and continuing to fight the fight that needs to be fought.

No One Title Fits This....

So Jericho came to the end of its -second and alleged final- season on CBS last night. My boycott against CBS (see my March 23 post) will continue.

Knowing full well this could be the final episode ever of Jericho, I watched it with nervous excitement having my own ideas of what would happen, seeing the plot unfold, and watching it with a wide range of emotions.

The whole show has had a lot of symbolism and hidden messages in it, from political to historical. It has kept me riveted.

I never expected when Jericho started to be as disappointed with the closure of a television show as I am now because last night's episode exhibited some of the finest television writing I have ever seen. From the ripping off of the Allied States of America patches from the soliders' uniforms showing their protest of the puppet government put in place by a powermongering corporation, to the show of respect for another man's loss of family... and I never thought I'd find myself saying something like this, but ... to the shooting down of two former United States Air Force jets by the Texas Air National Guard.

Throughout the whole episode, I was yelling at the TV. A 33-year-old man was getting misty eyed watching how well the humanity and the patriotism bled through the screen. I was screaming in frustration or hollering in excitement.

That, my friends, is television at it's best.

However, one of the most profound moments in the show came during an exchange between the two heroes, when the one, Jake Green, was asking the other, Hawkins, what was going to come of their actions.

Hawkins replies: "Whatever happens in the next few hours could determine the course of things for years to come. Maybe our history for the next hundred years. That is the responsbility we got here. And if that comes at a terrible cost, then so be it. Because that's the only way that things get better and it's the only way that people stay free."

Imagine these scenes:

• The morning of July 4, 1776, Philadelphia, PA, at the Pennsylvania Statehouse as delegates of the Second Continental Congress assemble to go over the final draft of a document called "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America"....
• April 12, 1861, in the Charleston, SC harbor, as Confederate batteries are about to open up on Fort Sumter...
• December 7, 1941, in the White House as President Roosevelt receives word of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor...
• August 6, 1945, as crewmembers board the Enola Gay at Tinian Airbase in the Pacific...
• April 16, 1962, as President John F. Kennedy reviews surveillance photos showing Soviet missile batteries on the island nation of Cuba...
• November 22, 1963, as Lyndon Baines Johnson is sworn in as president aboard Air Force One following the assassinaton of President John F. Kennedy...
• August 2, 1990, as President George H. Bush receives word the the Iraqi army has invaded Kuwait...
• November 8, 2000, in the Florida election commission headquarters....
• September 11, 2001, in the Pentagon, aboard Air Force One, or in the FAA headquarters as civilian airliners are used as weapons of terrorism against the United States....

Think about what happened in a few hour time period on each of those days.

Government leaders, military personnel, and ordinary citizens all made decisions and put actions into place that have since affected American history and world history and will continue to for years to come.

In many of those cases, the cost of those decisions was in a particular hardship, political strife, turmoil, or signficiant loss of American lives. These are things that we must be faced to go through from time to time in order to sustain our freedom.

We've lost 4,000 servicemembers in the Iraqi theater in the past five years. We lost more than 58,000 in a more than 10-year period in Vietnam and the jungles of Southeast Asia. Nearly 292,000 American servicemembers died serving their country during our less than four-year involvement in the theaters of World War II.

We've seen that there can be a terrible cost for our actions and for how we respond to different situations - and that cost, whether in the past, present, or future, can or will be hard to deal with and cause tremendous heartache and doubt. But that's how things get better and people stay free.

Unrelated Topics On the Mind

I feel bad I haven't blogged in a few weeks. I have a few things that I want to just mention really quickly though. I may expand on these in the very near future, but for now I just wanted to get these out of my brain and onto paper (or the web, as the case may be)

1. Thomas Ravenel
For those of you who are unfamiliar with who Thomas Ravenel is, he is the (suspended) South Carolina State Treasurer. Earlier this week he was indicted on drug-related charges. This guy seemed sleezy from the get-go. He's just one of those types of people that looks like you can't trust him from the minute he opens his mouth. I am a die-hard, card carrying member of the GOP but this guy just is like nails on chalkboard. In every election since I was 18 I voted a straight Republican ticket - except in 2006. The one non-party line vote I have ever cast in my life was for Ravenel's Democratic opponent, Grady Patterson, who had been in office for years.

People like Ravenel are the reason why most of the nation thinks South Carolinians are an uneducated bunch of inbred hicks. He is an embarassment to the entire state. I don't understand why in the world ANYONE in a position like his would even think of being involved in anything remotely illegal. Yet politicians do it all the time. Again, this is a case of someone of status thinking they are above the law. And, fortunately for the justice system, the law caught up to him, yet unfortunately for the state of South Carolina, it makes us look like a bunch of drugged up rednecks. Thanks Thomas.

2. 9 Heroes
On a sad and tragic note....
Nine Charleston firefighters died earlier this week when the roof of a mattress store collapsed onto them as they were searching the store, which was engulfed in a massive fire, for anyone remaining inside. It was the highest loss of firefighters in a single instance since September 11, 2001. My thoughts and prayers go out to each and every family member and friend of each of these brave men.

3. Get in the game, Fred
Fred Thompson is polling very well right now, despite the fact he is not officially a candidate for president. A lot of people are saying he will bring a return a Reaganesque era to Washington. Frankly, I would like to see that. I think Thompson is really the only true unifying candidate the GOP is going to have and the only one who will be able to topple Hillary. Edwards and Obama are both a joke. The GOP can take them out of this game with relative ease if either survives the primary.

That's it for now.... more to come on Friday.