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July 2, 2004/Tamuz 13 5764, Vol. 56, No.41
Unfinished business
MICHAEL MARKOWITZ
Special to Jewish News
Last week I took my family to Ground Zero.
We moved from Long Island to Phoenix five years ago, and it was the first time we had returned as a family to Manhattan since 9/11.
I was in the New York area on business on 9/11, and watched the Twin Towers fall as I drove over the Throgs Neck Bridge. The debris is now cleared; reconstruction is underway. There's not much to see from outside the fenced area. I started to cry anyway.
Across the street sits St. Paul's Church and a small cemetery that has been transformed into a 9/11 memorial. Pictures of the missing and mementos placed along the World Trade Center site have been moved inside the church and preserved.
That's where I really lost it, feeling mad all over again at the meaningless waste of life. My two young sons, uncomfortable watching their father so upset, wondered how I could still cry over an act that took place almost three years ago. As far as I'm concerned, it might as well have happened yesterday.
I looked up into the sky where the Twin Towers stood - an empty void in the Manhattan skyline - and in my mind's eye I could still see the planes crashing into the buildings. I could see the bodies flying, people leaping voluntarily to their deaths rather than be engulfed by the burning jet fuel inside their offices.
I could still see the people on the streets running for their lives as great clouds of dust and debris chased them for blocks - while NYC firefighters and police ran back into the chaos to try to rescue those still inside the buildings and paid for it with their lives. What did they ever do to deserve such a fate?
With these thoughts in mind, I ask that we continue to support the war on terrorism. Many Americans now think, "Enough is enough - we've ousted the Taliban, toppled Saddam Hussein, crippled Al Qaeda and incurred the wrath of virtually all our Arab and European allies. Let's leave Iraq and go home."
But it's not enough. It wasn't Germany's Twin Towers; it wasn't France's Pentagon. It wasn't over a field in Italy where the passengers said, "Let's roll."
The United States is the terrorists' target. We are called the "Great Satan." I guess the terrorists hate us because we respect personal freedoms, have indoor plumbing and air-conditioned supermarkets. If we stop now, every life lost on 9/11 and every soldier who has made the ultimate sacrifice will have died in vain.
What our nation is doing now is working; there has not been an attack on American soil since 9/11. But as hard as it might be to watch again, perhaps we need to remind ourselves of the ugliness of 9/11, so that our resolve to defeat terrorism does not falter.
We are fighting a war against an enemy that does not share our values for freedom, for equal rights and certainly not for human life. Our annihilation is their ultimate goal.
I close my eyes and picture the Towers falling again, or hear the screams of Nick Berg as his throat is slashed just for being an American - and get mad all over again.
Iraq is a mess. Everyone is questioning whether we should have been there in the first place. Right now, it doesn't matter. We're there, and we need to finish the job. I will not remove the American flag flying over my front porch until every last GI comes home.
Michael Markowitz is a free-lance writer and president of Write Idea Communications, Inc. He lives in Cave Creek.
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