On September 11, 2001 I was sitting at a different desk, using a different computer, and was in a different city than the one where I am typing this.

I felt fairly dreadful as I had some sort of cold or other RSV and my plan was to sleep away most of the day. I was listening to Don Imus on the radio and reading through news on my computer. Imus mentioned something about a plane hitting one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

At first a lot of people thought it must be a light airplane of some type, maybe a news helicopter, maybe some other small plane.

Then the second plane hit and I knew that we were at war with somebody. Or rather, somebody was at war with us. Then the report of a plane hitting the Pentagon came in and a while later the report of a plane crashing in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

I watched TV for a while then went to bed to try to shake the cold.

The world had changed in those minutes and then the hours while I slept.

We went to war, won, then lost the peace. I’ll keep politics out of this because it’s not a day for politics.

It’s a day for remembering the sacrifices of both the public safety providers and the regular everyday people who didn’t live to see the sunset on that day. It’s a day for remembering the sacrifices of the people who are still dying twenty two years later from diseases caused by the carcinogens carried in the choking dust of the debris. I knew or knew of half dozen or so people who responded to the site of the towers that day who have subsequently died. More no doubt will die in the coming years.

While we and our children lived through that day and won’t forget where and what we were doing that day, to my grandchildren it’s a remote historical event. I wonder if the schools teach about that day, and if they do what they teach about it.

It seems that it was all for naught, as the religious fanatics in charge of Afghanistan are now back in charge. Plus they are inviting the same, or worse, types of terrorists back into the country. Pakistan, which gave aid and support to the Taliban now finds that it is in a low level border war with their former allies. Thousands of coalition troops and civilian support personnel were killed and it seems that their sacrifices were in vain.

A friend with absolutely no sense of history says that the first thing governments should do before going to war is decide if they can afford to pay for it. I correct him and say that the first thing governments should do is decide if they can afford the cost in lives of young men. For that is the real cost of war. I know that young women are now involved in war fighting, but that’s still a small percentage of the losses because men do most of the heavy fighting. So, forgive me if you think I’m a misogynist.

We seem to have given up on a war that we absolutely can’t afford to lose.

It’s a somber anniversary for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it seems that so many people no longer care about what happened back then.