Drenched in Sept. 11 Pain

Update:

August 1st 2022

Justice for 9/11 victims, relatives.
After Osama bin Laden (May 2nd 2011) now Ayman Al Zawahiri has been killed by the U.S. drone strike. Even Fox News said this news a "huge win".
Only 11 months from U.S. get kicked from Afghanistan (August 31th 2021).

Biden will deliver remarks 7:30 tonight. He still has Covid (rebound coronavirus ), so he will be from the Blue Room Balcony.

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A days after 911, I just a kid, on (US / Western will said) “Madrasa” --- specific actually Islamic School named Muhammad. Same name of my prophet. Same name of several hijackers on 911 day. Same name of (repeated) “most named baby in UK and France, once 6th most named baby in US 2013).

A few days after 9 years commemorate at 911, I just an intern at --some linkage with scope of works, related to CIA station, US embassy, “very big US compound but not Embassy” in Jakarta. With nickname “very catholic” (Prada---actually Sanskrit/Sansekerta means “gold”, not only Roman phrase), I’m very comfortable with Prada, because .. ya, a lot trauma from US citizen (and agencies, around the world) with every named with “sounds likely” arabic, islamic. Even like (BARACK) Hussein (OBAMA). If you have a name with Mohammed, Ali, Omar, Yousef, Hussein, US colleagues call your names like “Taliban,” “terrorist” and “Osama bin Laden”. Oh just still some information, some “very high ranking” Indonesia government failed to get a visa because (his) name is the same as a terrorist--this person really popular in Indonesia (and not Prabowo). I spill another: some Director region (Indonesia citizen) for a very big International MNC failed to get a visa because his name is the same as a 911 terrorist too. 

Since kindergarten, I love to use a BIG BACKPACK. I don't know if its impact with my height (too short--6’5’), but whatsoever. Then, when I started to have a linkage scope of work related to the US, I tried to minimize my packaging. I really hate the “recheck process, screening” at the Embassy, atamerica, whatever. But, the joke, and hatred, about suspicious “backpack of muslim” is real. Jokes about 9/11 and questioning whether someone had a bomb in her/his backpack, like me. Surveillance for Muslim in U.S. is real.

In the following decade, few local leaders spoke out against the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy, which enabled profiling and discrimination, or what many perceived to be the department’s surveillance of Muslims, which only became public knowledge in 2011, or the wave of deportations enacted by the newly formed Department of Homeland Security. Its just NYC, and not counting another cities and states in America.

911 is really deeply hurtful. I can remember many feelings shifting through me as he recounted what happened with my colleagues' US citizens every time September started. I can remember recoiling in horror as he honed in on details. I can remember welling up with tears at certain mentions of his or her colleague's family. But, most of all, I remember walking away feeling uplifted. It’s a feeling I’ve gotten every time.

I try to re-write convo with my friend to give an analogy--and eulogy of 911. 

It was as mundane, foggy morning as you can imagine, Prada. Tuesdays are usually the days to go out to see clients, coworkers. I get to my office at a quarter to eight, eat a bagel, and get my head straight for the day.

I was actually in a good mood. A couple of us were yukking it up in the room. We’d just started sharing the 81st floor of 1 World Trade Center with Bank of America, and they’d put up a sign telling everyone to keep the bathroom clean. “Look at this,” one of us said. “They move in and now they’re giving us shit.” It was about quarter to nine.

All of a sudden, there was the shift of an earthquake. People ask, “Did you hear a boom?” No. The way I can best describe it is that every joint in the building jolted. You ever been in a big old house when a gust of wind comes through and you hear all the posts creak? Picture that creaking being not a matter of inches but feet. We all got knocked off balance. One guy burst out of a stall buttoning up his pants, saying, “What the fuck?” The flex caused the marble walls in the bathroom to crack.

You’re thinking, gas main. It was so percussive, so close. I opened the bathroom door, looked outside, and saw fire.

There was screaming. There was a huge crack in the floor of the hallway that was about half a football field long, and the elevator bank by my office was completely blown out. If I’d walked over, I could’ve looked all the way down. Chunks of material that had been part of the wall were in flames all over the floor. Smoke was everywhere.

I knew where the stairs were because a couple guys from my office used to smoke butts there. We got to the stairwell, and people were in various states. Some were in shock; some were crying. We started filing down in two rows, fire-drill style. I’d left my cell phone at my desk, but my coworkers had theirs. I tried my family 50 times but couldn’t get through because there was no signal. 

The explosion was extreme, the noise impossible to describe. I started crying. It’s hard for me to imagine now that when I was on the ground awaiting my doom, hearing that noise, thousands of people were dying. That noise is a noise thousands of people heard when they died.

When it hit, everything went instantly black. You know how a little kid packs a pail of sand at the beach? That’s what it was like in my mouth, my nose, my ears, my eyes—everything packed with debris. I spat it out. I puked, mostly out of horror. I felt myself. Am I intact? Can I move? I was all there. There was moaning. People were hurt and crying all around me.

Then I had my second reckoning with death. I’m alive, yeah. But I’m trapped beneath whatever fell on top of me and this place is filled with smoke and dust. This is how I’m gonna die—and this was worse. Because I was going to be cognizant of my death. I was going to be trapped in a hole.

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I was trapped in an earthquake(s) in Indonesia, but can't imagine some 8k workers being trapped at (more than) 70th floor and some airplane hit the tower. For everyone near WTC, near the Pentagon, 911 call it the most memorable because there’s a chance that hundreds of years from now someone will seek it out to understand what it would be like to witness 9/11 firsthand. 3k victims, or with official report, count 2,977 died.

Still, the people working to identify the remains believe it is a special duty to continue the search. While forensic scientists are trained to remain unemotional about their work, many know about the victims they are seeking to identify through reading news profiles and through the agency’s continued interaction with victims’ families. With the World Trade Center, it became personal — you talk to the families, there’s hugging and crying. 

As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, The Post/ABC News poll asked Americans whether the events of that day changed the country in a lasting way, and whether that change was for the better or for the worse. Only 46 percent of respondents said the country had changed for the worse, while 33 percent said it was changed for the better. How deluded would you have to be to think America had been changed for the better by 9/11?

Another poll, by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted ahead of the 9/11 anniversary found that 53% of Americans have unfavorable views toward Islam, compared with 42% who have favorable ones. This stands in contrast to Americans’ opinions about Christianity and Judaism, for which most respondents expressed favorable views. Mistrust and suspicion of Muslims didn’t start with 9/11, but the attacks dramatically intensified those animosities. Some Muslims in the United States think about their lives as having two distinct chapters — before two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and after. Then there’s a generation that has only known a world in which one terrible day changed their country. Islamophobia was present and predates 9/11, but it became so much more substantial in terms of the way it became rooted in American structures and culture.

Perhaps it’s a lingering memory from the first days after the attacks. More haunted every U.S. now because of a failure in Afghanistan. On the verge of 20 years 911, and the verge Taliban will be declared “Emirati” (Taliban projected-shown really the same exact September 11th too), Joe Biden spoke with China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday (9/9), literally a country “who will replace the US in Afghanistan”. “Biden call” amid growing frustration on the American side that high-level engagement between the two leaders’ top advisers has been unfruitful in the early going of the Biden administration. For the latest, The Kremlin said on Friday (10/9) , published by PRAVDA, that the Government of Russia would not take part in any way in the Taliban government's inauguration ceremony in Afghanistan on September 11th.

Biden has long argued (not just on his position now about POTUS) that the United States’ military mission in Afghanistan was over, that the U.S. needed to stop allowing its soldiers to die there. But for some, the return of the Taliban to power, and the terror threat it could produce, has made the 20th anniversary a bitter and worrisome one.

“....20 years has gone so fast” Green Day (wake me up when September ends) repeated across the US to remind, calculate again why the US failed to kill all Taliban(s) even since 2001. With a wrath on heart, and fully-weaponized, even I am still amazed why US soldiers can't kill all Talibans from Oct 2001  until (at least) February 2002. The bombing began on Oct. 7, 2001. The U.S.-led coalition, along with its so-called Northern Alliance allies, a collection of warlords-turned-anti-Taliban fighters who would later be handed power in Kabul, launched an offensive to oust the Talibans. But still questioned, amidst a wrath of 911, “spirit pay of price the attack (911)”, U.S. soldiers failed to kill entirely the Talibans.

I know this song is actually for Billy dad, but everyone really admires this song more, more, more, and more relatable for all American to ask itself “are Americans want a war again”. After losing ground in Kabul, the most unnecessary longest damned war the US has been, for those who came back, from Indonesia citizen, I wish every soldier who had too much painful at Kabul will receive a long happy peaceful life and for those who didn't wake up ours deepest respects, you live in our memories now.

“What if Ahmad Shah Massoud (afghan-US allied, and anti Taliban) was still alive when got attacked by Taliban on Sept 10, 2001, and prevented Bin Laden to instruction “911 operation”. This song (Green Day - WMUWSE)  feels more poignant this September, especially when the 11th comes, because it will reach the 20 years since Black September, and a fragile US out from Afghanistan like a sick man.

Everywhere we go now we are subjected to heightened examination and inconvenience, some of it necessary and much of it no more than “security theater,” meant mainly to make it seem like we’re being protected. The US govt, with fully considered, acknowledged, militarized  local police, sends weapons of war to departments who ordinarily have to deal with nothing more serious than small-time drug dealers — and those weapons are inevitably used on the public. Bizarre conspiracy theories have never been more mainstream than they are now.

For the first time in history, the use of torture became official U.S. government policy; American officials employed beatings, waterboarding, extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation, stress positions (designed to produce excruciating pain), and mock executions on prisoners. From this shameful period we learned virtually nothing; one of our two great parties remains essentially pro-torture.

But were there some positive effects of Sept. 11 on the national spirit? I was really biased because just a Muslim and even from a country with “a biggest muslim populated country in the world”.  But if I try to answer, maybe Americans have that moment of “unity,” after all.

Yes, the U.S. can’t become kinder to one another. American political and cultural conflicts did not grow more thoughtful or less bitter. Americans did not gain a new and deeper understanding of our place in the world. American are no smarter, no wiser, and no more humane. 

Although in The Post poll there were no real differences by party (36 percent of Democrats said 9/11 changed the country for the better, as did 35 percent of Republicans), the GOP could certainly say the attacks reinvigorated the sense of purpose and focus it had lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

After a decade of drift, here was a new enemy for the U.S. — foreign and alien, but also one that could be used against its domestic opponents, who could once again be charged with insufficient patriotism and secret traitorous sympathies. The War on Terror offered a grand and glorious clash of civilizations, in which no harebrained scheme was too outlandish to consider and no brutality too immoral to indulge.

Twenty years later, if we’re less respected in the world it’s no more than what we deserve given the disasters of our foreign policy. At home my fellow US citizen grew angrier, pettier, more deluded and more divided: elected Donald Trump, quite possibly the most corrupt and immoral citizen in the entire country, to be president (four years later we booted him out, but not by much).

At least 90,000 people enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, which gives free medical care to people with health problems potentially linked to the dust infected because 911. Many people enrolled in the health program have conditions common in the general public, like skin cancer, acid reflux or sleep apnea. In most situations, there is no test that can tell whether someone’s illness is related to the Trade Center dust, or a result of other factors, like smoking, genetics or obesity. Nearly 24,000 people exposed to trade center dust have gotten cancer over the past two decades. But for the most part, it has been at rates in line with what researchers expect to see in the general public. The largest number have skin cancer, which is commonly caused by sunlight. The painful physically failed to heal, and from outside, U.S. people broke (again) because a failure at Afghanistan.

Over the years, that has led to some friction between patients who are absolutely sure they have an illness connected to 9/11, and doctors who have doubts.Two decades after the twin towers’ collapse, people are still coming forward to report illnesses that might be related to the attacks.In short, all the ways every U.S. citizen, especially a victim on a site like WTC, Pentagon, or Pennsylvania, tried to turn the horror of 911 into national progress and a better world ended up failing quite miserably. And once again, the U.S. presented with a multitude of lessons to learn, if only we could clear our vision and find our way toward them.

I was losing my dad, 1 year 3 months before the 911 tragedy. For your beloved, I really empathize with everyone American who suddenly decides what to do with a loved one who died 20 years ago. It’s almost like reopening old wounds. Over time, you feel like you’re getting better and then this happens 20 years later and you’re dealing with it all over again.

20 years came and went by way too fast. Dedicated to those who gave it their all. For US citizens-Muslim who try to normalize her/his live alongside to try give a better perspective about Islam. For soldiers who are trapped, they are clearly struggling financially and forced to join the merchant marine so that can earn some money. For soldiers who were forced because they were worried to get surveillance if refused to join the army for sentimental “loving America after 911”. For all Afghanistan who were victims in war, a very bad 20 years war.  Thank you so much, a lot my fellow America, for birthday cake(s) to me, remembering my August 2nd.

-@ tvl, 11.41 PM, Sept. 10, 2021, on the verge before Sept 11-

-prada-