my first post-post-9/11 9/11 post

So, now it is eight years. Eight years since the sound and vibration of American Airlines flight 11 screaming over my building and slamming into the north tower of the World Trade Center a dozen blocks south sent me running downstairs and into the street. And it was there I stood with my neighbors and watched as all of the drama and horror of the day played out in very real time.

As I commented on a past anniversary, one of my earliest thoughts that day was that with George W. Bush in the White House, flanked by Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft, we had about as bad a collection of leaders for that moment in history as I could possibly imagine. And for the next six anniversaries, that team did nothing to make me doubt my initial instinct.

But now, with the seventh commemoration, the eighth anniversary, I am forced by the very Constitution the Bush gang sought to destroy to contemplate something else.

It seems mundane, but thinking or saying, “This is the first post-Bush 9/11” also feels wildly momentous. But should it?

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