Did 9/11 change your life?

[Joe_K]

Yes. And still waiting on the guilty to be brought to justice.

[OtterbatHellcat]

It did for me, and I don't see how it couldn't for all Americans. That event probably united us as a nation more than any other time in our history.

[BPTactical]

It didn’t change my life one bit.

It changed my world like a motherfucker though…

[Doc45]

Yes, in many ways. The most impactful is through my older son, currently deployed-Colorado Army National Guard, E7 Flight Medic and ncoic, who saw along with me the second plane hit the World Trade Center. That pivotal moment convinced that then 17 yr old kid to join the military. Two years later when he was feeling unsatisfied at college, something was gnawing at him, he signed up.

The good and bad experiences he’s been through these past 18 years shaped him in to the fine man, husband, father and son he is today. Can’t wait for him to get home.

[StagLefty]

I think it really brought it home that the USA was not invincible !!! I was thinking a lot about that this morning while I was putting up for display my Flag of Honor that has all the names of those killed that day.

[rondog]

Wonder how many times Joe's gonna check his watch today.....

[Aloha_Shooter]

https://www.facebook.com/United/vide...8075396892606/

I first heard about a plane flying into the WTC second-hand that morning from someone who I think had just overheard a news broadcast as he was exiting the operations center. Our first thought was that it was a weird accident, a general aviation plane, something small. I had to go up to the ops center and saw the second plane hit the tower, saw the size of it and realized it was no accident. I dropped off my report then went back down to my office area and gathered my people, telling them that while it wasn't official yet, we were at war. We then got phone calls from people we worked with in other states, noting we couldn't contact our usual POCs at the Pentagon and there were reports of a bomb or explosion at Foggy Bottom (the State Department). Eventually we realized someone was seeing the plume from Flight 93 hitting the Pentagon and just mistaking where it came from but information was sparse and confused all day.

I did manage to contact my people overseas and verified their safety but we had a small group TDY up in DC who were incommunicado and stuck for a few days. Eventually they were able get a rental car and drive back to our base in FL but of course it's always uncomfortable when you have to report "no contact".

It's hard to say how it changed my life directly -- most of the impacts to me personally were indirect. My father had died months before 9/11 -- to some extent, the event mollified the lingering effects of his loss because I was glad he hadn't lived to see that attack on the US. As a boy, he sat on the roof of his parents' house in Kaimuki and watched the Japanese flying overhead as they attacked Pearl Harbor but he never told us of this -- we learned about it from a cousin at his remembrance party. I can't imagine the white hot rage he would have felt if he'd seen the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon. My young nephews were concerned for my safety as we ramped up for OIF even though I wasn't directly involved.

9/11 changed the direction of where we were going with space operations (my own career field in the USAF). Bush was set to act on the recommendations of the Rumsfeld Commission and go full throttle with US Space Command. We might even have seen Space become a separate service before Trump's election although I still have some doubts about that. After 9/11, Bush decided to create US Northern Command which meant the dissolution of US Space Command (in order to keep the number of combatant commands down) and it gave impetus to the take over of the space operations career field by the missileers for a decade and a half. Career-wise, everything was set against a standard of what are you doing for the GWOT -- you were nothing if you didn't deploy (not much need for people with my background in theater but that's beside the point).

I'll stop with that. The rest of it sounds like sniveling whining when I think of the guys and gals who went to the desert and sacrificed lives, limbs, and minds there. Eff the Clintonians who pointedly and knowingly ignored a building threat for 8 years (with 2 attacks just months before the 2000 elections) and the Obama-bots who set out to restructure American culture, history, and society despite the proven threat. Bush made some bad decisions but he had limited information and got bad advice at the time -- plus he was undermined from Election Day onward and through the EP-3 incident by the Leftists in Congress and the bureaucracy. I think he at least honestly wanted to protect America which is more than I can say for Billy Boy or his 2 Leftist successors.

[JohnnyDrama]

Yes it did.

The events of 9/11 and the following cautions took a lot of the impetuous out of the travel industry. The company I was working for closed its doors within two months of the attack. That can be directly and immediately attributed to 9/11. The course in life I took after that, going back to school and getting into a different career, getting married, the rest of life that happened after that, who knows? But, the events of that day definitely changed the course of my life.

[JohnnyDrama]

Wonder how many times Joe's gonna check his watch today.....

It's Saturday. You could make a drinking game out of it.

[BlasterBob]

Not for me directly. But my youngest son went into the Air Force in 2003 and became a JTAC. He did 7 tours between Iraq and Afghanistan. He has just over a year and a half to retirement now. Seems like just last summer I was watching him graduate from Basic Training in San Antonio and now he's an E7 in Alaska. So his chosen life direction was directly impacted by 9/11 and, in turn, that has had a pretty profound effect on my life.

If you don?t mind telling, , your son is stationed WHERE in Alaska?