I came to the US to live in 1997. I've always been a great admirer of the America but I didn't have much of an emotional attachment. That changed on 9/11. That is when I first felt a strong emotional bond to America. It is when I became an American.
Congrats on your decision to join the Republic!
****
Me and the wife were actually high up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains camping in our tent trailer. 9-11-2001 was the day we were packing up to head home(300 miles/6 hours drive back to S.F. bay area.).
We couldn't get cell phone calls, but could faintly get a Reno, Nevada 50,000 watt AM radio station.
I turned on the radio that morning as the wife and me were brushing our teeth, and getting ready to start packing for home.
By that time both towers had collapsed, and the news broadcast was still conjecturing about other possible attacks around our nation.
I still remember listening to that radio report and thinking it was an Orson Wells type of "War of the Worlds" radio/fiction drama that I had tuned into.
Nope: It wasn't!
Our drive home Westward on I-80 towards the S.F. Bay area/San Jose was so strange. Not an airliner in the sky as we looked skyward while driving through the Sacramento valley. However we did see military fighter jets occasionally passing over.
The car radio stayed on for our entire 6 hour drive.
We got hold of our three sons who were at home, and they were all worked up, and had some anxiety. We calmed them, and gradually made it home.
It was good to be home and together as a family. We stayed glued to the news for quite some time too.
*****
As an American, I felt so different that day. I had both sorrow, and an inner strength and hope that this nation was both resilient, and we would not let this terrible disaster bring us down as a society.
When President Reagan years ago referred to our country as that "Beacon On A Hill", those words couldn't have been more appropriate. I just knew that who or whomever had done this to us would pay dearly.
I know that our country is not perfect, but of all the nations on earth, it is one of the most successful experiments of nationhood and nation-creation that has ever happened on this terrestrial ball called earth. A nation that is ruled by law, that grants liberty and freedom for all, yet that freedom must respect the individual, as minute as that might seem to many.
I think that day, I felt "violated" as an American. Yes, "violated!".
I am a biblical Christian, and I abhor the Quran burnings, yet I son understand the angst that so many people have.
Mohammed Atta's suitcase missed his flight, and the FBI obtained it from the airlines and the contents of that suitcase was indicting to Atta, and reeked of an evil agenda/intent that transgressed human civility whether one is a Christian, buddist, Hindo, agnostic, atheist, etc......
Sadly, the Quran does teach that all of the world must be brought under Islamic law.......A theocracy......It was tried in Europe for hundreds of years.........and we know what the outcome was.........
People like Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton......etc.... knew exactly what a toll it took on humanity in Europe and wherever it was practiced as a national way of governing.
Thus, the Great Experiment was created, and withstood the mightiest military(Great Britain) both in this nation's birth and then in the early 1800's again but somehow prevailed.
Last Note: After 9/11, church attendance in the U.S. jumped up drastically, as Americans looked for solace, and fellowship in a lasting faith that could transcend the "worst" of earthly life.
Sadly, church attendance is back to pre-9/11 size. It isn't that churches have failed in their mission to be there, but it is that we as a people collectively, and individually have "forgotten" the reality of that 9-11-2001 day. Why must it take a tragedy of such monumental proportions to wake us up, and make us think beyond ourselves, to a bigger picture?
