Innocence Lost

 

 

 

"It was a punch in the gut, a kick in the groin from someone who was nameless and faceless"

It was a day like any other. I was crawling my way though rush hour traffic to make it to the account I was assigned to in downtown Minneapolis. As usual, I was listening to talk radio to make the drive more tolerable. As of late however, it was pretty boring - very little was going on. In the past year, that was not the case. The historic election followed by the Supreme Court case of Bush vs. Gore had monopolized the news cycle. After the verdict, many on the Left would not accept it - this "cowboy" from Texas was now going to be our first "illegitimate" President. However, even that rhetoric had died down, and we were going into the Fall enjoying a comfortable, and somewhat boring normal.

It was a clear, Tuesday morning so I was somewhat surprised on how heavy the traffic was. I remembered what my first boss would tell me - "Tuesday in, Thursday out - those are the heaviest traffic times." Seems like he was right. As I was pulling into the municipal lot across from the account, a news flash came across the radio. A small plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. I thought, "Wow - that is weird. On a clear day, how in the world could someone be that clueless not to see a building that big?" I turned off the car and went across the street into the account. As I sat down at my desk, little did I know this would be the day that changed everything, for everybody, for ever more.

The rest of the story is history. Some of the history is national, which we all share. The other is personal. When I say personal, just about everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when the attack took place. It is the day that we as a nation lost our innocence. It is a day when for the first time since Pearl Harbor, we collectively were "sucker punched". However, with Pearl Harbor, the war drums had been sounding for a while. Although it was a sneak attack, it did not really surprise our planners. 9/11 on the other hand, caught us all off guard. Even though the World Trade Center had been bombed in the past, nobody could have thought of a scenario so bold, so devastating such as what took place.

It was a day when the precious liberties we all enjoy came face to face with the evil doers who hate our liberty. Through our naivety, we assumed people who came to our country did so looking to visit or to look for new opportunities. Little did we know the freedom we love so much would be used as a tool by the evil doers to hurt us so badly.

The attack on 9/11 not only cost us our innocence, it cost us some of our liberties. For the past twelve years, we have struggled to find the proper balance between being safer from terror and maintaining the freedoms left to us by our Founding Fathers. As much as we have learned from our parents and our faith to forgive and forget, I shall do neither. I still loath the people who killed 3,000 of our innocent citizens for the crime of simply going to work. Though never fully reported by the press, many of the deaths which happened that day were not pretty. In fact, many were horrible beyond comprehension.

I will never forget. I will always remember how our innocence was stolen by an enemy in an undeclared war. Like a thief in the night, these cowards took something which can never be replaced. The War on Terror continues. We may try to rename it, minimize it, or even say it is over. It is not. So long as evil continues to live in the hearts of men, innocence will continue to be at risk. This lesson, as well as the victims of that horrible day - we will never forget.