The way I remember 9/11
Dr. Barry Zulauf
Defense Intelligence Officer for Counternarcotics, Transnational Organized Crime, Threat Finance @DrZulauf
On this day, as always since 9/11 I take joy in another year, and in the love and support of my family and friends.
Even more so I think of the comrades I lost on that morning in the Navy Command Center in the Pentagon. I was a drilling reservist in those days and if it had been a weekend I would have been among them. That is precisely where the airliner struck the building. It being my birthday, I had planned a brunch in the Pentagon, so, if it had been a hour or so later, I would also have been among them most likely. My office in DEA HQ was literally across the street, so when the airliner circled for its final approach to the Pentagon, it came perilously close to my window. Again, a few hundred yards one way or the other and it would have been me.
So they tried three times and I consider that three strikes. My turn!
"IT" of course refers to those heathen cowards -- whose names I will never speak -- who overpowered unarmed civilians and turned planeloads of their victims into guided missiles to snuff out the lives of thousands more in New York, Shanksville, and D.C.
Our lives changed in that instant. I like to think that was the same instant those bastards entered Hell in a fireball of aviation fuel. They wanted to wipe us out and erase our very way of life. Well, we are still here and they are not.
They did rob our children of their innocence, cost us billions and billions of our treasure and even more thousands of brave lives. They changed the trajectory of my career and took me away from my family to Afghanistan where I was proud to deliver God's justice to so many of them who so richly deserved his wrath.
After it all, even the twisted, evil mastermind, UBL, I won't say his full name either, paid the price. And after it all, we are still here.
I pray on this day, as I do every day, that we can deliver a country and a way of live safe for our children. And I most fervently pray that MY children will never have to do what I did to protect their own.
God bless you all and God bless the United States of America.
Attorney at Inter American Development Bank
3 年Well stated, Barry!
Assistant Provost for Graduate Studies
4 年Well said, and I'm proud of your service Barry! And proud to be working with you now.
Thank you for your service. Looking forward to future collaboration.
Operations Specialist at US Department of Defense
4 年Proud to call you my teacher Professor Zulauf. Thank you for all you've done and still do. God Bless!
Adjunct Professor/Research Fellow at Georgetown University
4 年I never knew your closeness to the 9/11 events, Barry. Glad luck was with you, and still is.