The knife fight -- remembering 9/11

  • Published
  • By Col. Michael R. Boera
  • 36th Air Expeditionary Wing commander
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam (AFPN) --  It’s been four years since the horrific attack by terrorists on American soil, an event that has so shattered our sense of security and been seared into our collective memory that we still refer to it simply by the date on which it occurred. Just say “9/11,” and everyone knows what you’re referring to.

These were my thoughts and words written back in September of 2001 when I was assigned to the Air Force Academy. We are still in the knife fight...

Exactly 11 days after Sept. 11, 2001, a day that changed America for bad and good, I attended a memorial mass on Staten Island in New York City for my cousin, Janie, the daughter, niece, cousin and friend of New York firemen. She was working for the Cantor Fitzgerald securities firm on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center Tower 1 when it was hit by an American jetliner aircraft hijacked and flown by a lunatic (but smart) terrorist group on what would become one of the bloodiest days in American history.

On Sept. 22, we were saying goodbye to Janie without the luxury of a casket to touch, which made it all that much more difficult to accept and only added to the surrealism of this event which “will live in infamy.”

I had watched the attack happen time and time again on that fateful morning, a blessing and a curse of modern media news coverage. But from the first hit, the questions remained the same for me; what WTC Tower does Janie work in and what floor does she work on? From that first hit, I became a New Yorker once again, returning in spirit to the city where I spent the first 12 years of my life.

The oath I took to defend my country uncontrollably flashed through my mind as well, because I knew right then and there our country was once again at war. The president had it right when he addressed the nation in front of a joint session of Congress. The WTC was not just a symbol of the New York City skyline, it was a symbol of America and its financial strength. We will rebuild our symbol; our financial might will return; we will stand tall now and forever.

There was never any doubt in my mind that America would rebound from the initial battlefield defeat and will win the larger war against terrorism. But I fear this war may not be won in my lifetime. I say that for the same reason I know our military might will remain second to none … because I have faith in, and believe in, the capability of our military professionals and the sons and daughters we have following them waiting their turn to fly, fight and win for their country.

However, the lunatics have young lieutenants and sons, and those sons will have sons, many of whom will want to continue with the vicious ways of their fanatic elders. Future history may not be pretty now that the stakes have been raised.

I have seen war a couple of times before, but it was relatively swift and I did my part in the skies over enemy territory. Our losses have been blessedly few during these most recent wars, although each one of the those losses is not forgotten. But we are in a knife fight right now, and knife fights are not pretty.

Picture if you will another Somalia “Black Hawk Down,” for better or worse, and you may imagine what I mean by knife fight. This will not be Air Power Demo III, following the successes of Desert Storm and Allied Force.

There is no doubt in my mind that aerospace power will play a significant role in this war, but “you negotiate with the enemy with your knee on this chest and your knife at his throat,” and since we won’t be negotiating with the enemy on this one we will need to actually ‘slit’ his throat. It is not an easy task, nor a pretty one, but America has been hit, and hit hard. It’s been four years, but we have not forgotten.

I most certainly will not soon forget. A day before the memorial mass for Janie, I flew into New York’s LaGuardia Airport on a clear night and on a flight only a third full because of the air scare. I couldn’t see “ground zero” from the air, but I realized something else more remarkable to take away from this frozen moment in time. Besides getting back into the air over America, America’s lights were on … all of our lights!

I have flown over the skies of Iraq and former Yugoslavia during our coalition conflicts against those extremist regimes. And besides free-flowing commercial air travel coming to a complete halt for an extended period of time, those countries turned dark at night; their lights turned off either by our precision attack or by their own thirst for life. But not America! Our lights shone freely and brightly in spite of their cowardly attack, and because of our own thirst of life, and for life.

And yet it was some of those same lights shining brightly I noticed for a different reason as I drove southbound on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway paralleling “ground zero” in downtown Manhattan from just across the East River. Even without seeing the sacred rubble of the once magnificent skyline magnet, I sensed the enormity of the disaster unlike any time before. As the television commentators have told us countless times, the TV-projected images of the ruins truly cannot do justice to the magnitude of the damage.

The light from the spotlights turning night into day for the rescue workers snaked through the canyons between the remaining downtown Manhattan skyscrapers, which in turn diffused the light into a halo over the now hallowed ground. It was eerily sad and surprisingly uplifting simultaneously as America took care of their own under their artificial glow of hope. For me, it was as if a stairway to heaven was unveiled for Janie. I also understood a little bit more lucidly the task at hand for America.

I was a New Yorker before there was a World Trade Center; the Empire State Building was the symbol of greatness of that glorious skyline then, as it is once again. The attacks left a temporary void in downtown Manhattan, and a permanent void in my extended family. But as I left New York on the day after the memorial mass on a glorious Sunday, the Statue of Liberty looked out on planes flying overhead again, boats working the harbor again, and people getting on with their lives again.

The sun glistened off the glass from the rubble on this day. It was if I was back in time and all was well again. And then, flying out of LaGuardia, I was given an awakening slap in the face and reminded one more time of the reason behind the upcoming war; Yankee Stadium was just below and beginning to fill up with anticipated thousands of mourners for yet another memorial service to those lost in this attack and the heroes of the rescue effort… another memorial service to Janie.

Janie’s mission is complete, and I know she is flying higher and faster than I ever have, or could ever dream to do. The necessary military sequel has begun with no end in sight, our course of action clear in one sense, and unclear in another, but as a knife fight, it has not been bloodless for either side.

I do not doubt we will eventually be victorious as we seek justice for our losses of Sept. 11, 2001. I only hope to be around long enough to see our objective to rid the world of terrorism achieved.