Remembering 9-11

I remember the morning of 9-11 vividly. I was on my computer in my bedroom on Tanbridge Dr in Martinsburg. Leigh and Patrick were at school and Ryan, who 21 months old, was watching a kids program and playing with his toys in the great room. I heard breaking news and thought Ryan must have learned to change the channel. I went out to the great room and watched Peter Jennings report that there had been a plane crash into the World Trade Center. They were reporting on the evacuation. As they were reporting, you could see another plane coming in. Peter Jennings was not even aware of it. I saw live the 2nd plane hit and was in shock. Like most of America, we knew something was dreadfully wrong. I continued to watch stunned but the tears did not fall until the first tower did. That was the moment of impact for me when I thought of the lost hope for all of the people who did not make it out. When the plane hit the Pentagon and the plane crashed in the field in Pennsylvania, it hit even more close to home as the terrorist were just 70 miles from the quaint little town of Shepherdstown. The rest of the memories are not quite as vivid as I stayed glued to the TV for the next several days.



Tom was already a Navy Reservist by that time and I knew that we were going to have to fight a different type of war. I was opposed to the war in Iraq from the very beginning. I thought that was an off-shoot of our president's agenda to simply secure an unstable part of the world that contained oil, but certainly not a response to 9-11. Sadam Hussein was an evil man, however Iraq was a sovereign country and diplomacy had not been used to its full capacity. I was also upset because the United Nations was supposed to stand for something and we just side-stepped it. Tom deployed for the first time in April of 2003. Because Iraq fell so quickly, he was home by October of 2003, having spent his time in Rota Spain managing the galley as a supply corp officer. Now Tom is in Iraq and while I was against this war to begin with, I now feel that we created a mess and we are responsible for cleaning it up. We invaded a sovereign country, took down the dictator, and created a civil war. It is up to us to finish what we started and return that country to its people and then get out. However, we can not leave now. The work is not done. We can't quit in the 7th inning. Otherwise, we will pay the piper in a couple years. We are living with the consequences of a bad decision in Iraq.



I find it odd now that Bush wants to withdrawal 7,000 troops from Iraq and put 4,500 troops in Afghanistan. You see, that is where we should have been all along. The focus shifted from the real war on terror to Iraq. Tom said that he has been deploying with soldiers who have orders for Iraq and they find out when they get to Kuwait that they are going to Afghanistan instead.



On the presidential election, I feel that John McCain is the best candidate to lead us for our national security interests. I know some of the troops were very disappointed because Obama went to Iraq with a plan of withdrawal but had never even spoken to the Generals who are in the field. He has lost some credibility with our troops. However, there are so many other issues that I disagree with McCain on. I will be following this election very closely and am currently an undecided voter leaning more toward McCain.



For anyone who would like to write to Tom, his address is :

Tom Maiden

Unit 931003 TFT-PT

APO AE 09391



Do not refer to rank, job, unit or command when writing.



Here is the link to my post on CNN on what Tom is asking for.



http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-83079