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Still, while I am not surprised that such a catastrophic terrorist attack has happened, it does not mean that I am not personally disturbed or troubled by it; this is a time when there is no pleasure in being right. Right off the top, I've been to the World Trade Center. South building on the tourist deck, it was the one that was hit last and fell first. At the time I visited it, it was the tallest building in the world. I understand the "how" and "why" behind all the building collapses - but like most Americans, particularly New Yorkers, it just seems very hard to think of the New York City skyline without the two twin towers. At this moment, it is probable that the death toll will exceed 5,000. That's roughly the size of the town I was born in. A town's worth of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, lovers and others who did not make it home Tuesday night. Our technology did not make this one any easier: many used cellular phones to call in a "good-bye" to their loved ones or to tell them the grave nature of their situation. To this day, I remain haunted by the otherwise routine answering machine message left to me by a loved one who unexpectedly died a short time later in a hospital before I could get to the hospital. I cannot imagine having a final conversation with a loved one who KNEW they were going to die in a few moments. Even though military people understand they may be called upon to give their life in the service of their country, the loss of my literal "brothers-and-sisters-in-arms" at the Pentagon - and those who are yet to lose their life in the upcoming battle against terrorism - still saddens me. "The purpose of war," General George Patton once said, "is not to die for your country. The purpose of war is to let the other bastard die for his." Most of us in the military did not get into this business to die - we understand that militaries are in the business of dealing with not-very-nice-people and that getting killed doing it is certainly a possibility - but like most people, your typical member of the armed forces is just as happy dying of old age like anyone else. The same holds true for the police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical service professionals killed in the line of duty trying to save others. As a former firefighter and as an emergency medical service worker (boy I sure do know how to pick my avocations, don't I?), I know NONE of them is in the business to die. A high-risk business, for the most part we believe that risk to be manageable: we know we COULD be killed doing it, but will probably NOT be killed doing it. While it ultimately was a fatal mistake to enter the World Trade Center in an effort to save lives, each emergency professional killed there probably truly believed the risk was both manageable and acceptable, based on what they knew in the instant moment - and given the immense proportion of the problem, it was hard for them to do what would have been the prudent thing: stand back and do nothing. If they had even given it a moment's thought in the first place: having played the "acceptable risk" game many times myself, I have only once found myself thinking I could be killed doing something - the rest of the time it was well after I was done. I felt the most sadness for two people. The first is the little neighbor boy whose world is now forever changed by these cowardly acts. We unexpectedly ran into each other as I was leaving to report to my National Guard base and he saw my uniform in my hands. He knew what happened in New York and Washington and he knows that I belong to the Guard. And now that whole madness has a personal face he can relate to it: mine. The second is a dear close friend of mine whose heart was kind and gentle. A woman who thought the best of a world that was pretty crazy anyway before this all happened and often was hard-pressed to understand why it was I had the view I had on the world. Yet she was refreshing to me because she could see goodness in people and things that I would see only because she COULD and would point them out to me. Upon hearing of Tuesday's carnage, she said, "Something HAS to be done about this." And undoubtedly something MUST be done about it - and your Sarge-at-Large stands ready to BE that "something." "Retribution," one TV commentator called it. "Justice," corrected the rabbi who was being interviewed. "Revenge," the less-diplomatic might call it. "Vengeance" is the word I'm kinda partial to. Still, there's something sad about that "loss of innocence" that probably was typical of many Americans that day. And that loss of innocence was replaced with that other human mechanism that tries to make sense of these things in some other way: it was her suggestion the date of 11 September might have been selected on purpose - "nine" for the month of September, and "11" the date. 9-11 - or the American national emergency number of 9-1-1. Continue to March! The Sarge |