Wake up, September is history

Summer has come and passed, the innocence can never last
Wake me up when September ends

As many of you will have already recognized, these are the opening lines of the song “Wake me up when September ends” by Green Day, written in the aftermath of the tragic events on September 11, 2001. In September 2011 it was 10 years ago. I didn’t write about it on that day or even that month, but I decided that I didn’t want to not write about it at all either, so here I go.

Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are
As my memory rests, but never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends

Like most people who remember that day, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first heard. I was at work, it was early afternoon our time and the end of my work day was little more than an hour away when we first started hearing about slow network connections. As a DBA (database admin), I’m generally not that much into network issues and operations, but some colleagues who are started sniffing around for clues as to what could be causing unusual traffic jams on the lines on what otherwise seemed to be a fairly normal Tuesday afternoon. It was quickly determined to be internet traffic clogging up the corporate nets, so the next move was to check the internet activity logs for clues as to what was happening online that got so big all of a sudden. And basically, what they found out was all of a sudden, it seemed like practically everyone had started feverishly checking various news agencies and many were live streaming TV news online. Something big must have happened. Then there were whispers in the corridors about two airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center.

I remember I myself looked up a major Norwegian newspaper online. The front page took noticeably longer than normal to load. And when it finally came up, I got a near full screen image of the second airliner smashing into the second tower and exploding, at which point it was clear for all to see that this was absolutely not an accident.

I don’t remember getting any more work done that day, but I must have somehow completed the task I was working on just before, because it wasn’t something I could have just walked away from.

Unlike certain others who have written about this, I had absolutely no “mixed feelings” with regards to these attacks. Yes, I can at least partially understand how and why there are people in this world who have very little love for the United States of America. But I can never understand how anyone could look at a city full of people who are just going about their business and not trying to hurt anybody – and see nothing but enemies and legitimate targets! I can never understand that, nor will I ever accept it. It’s just wrong, and it’s going to be just as wrong no matter what cause anybody tries to link with it. There is no such thing as and end to justify the means or an action being “inherently justified” if it’s done for the right reasons. It is the action itself that is good or bad. Believe it or not, the reason is pretty much irrelevant in this context. Hence, in my opinion, if you’re deliberately targeting and murdering civilians, you’re not fighting for a cause at all, you’re just plain being evil.

And that’s what September 11 was to me: Just plain evil.

But it’s 10 years ago, so wake up, September is history.

This is the official video with the “Full story”.
I could add a few more comments, but for now I’ll let it speak for itself…