Twenty-Five Years Later: 9/11, Afghanistan, and What We Tell Our Kids

0:00Welcome to the 3 Martini Lunch. Grab a stool next to Greg Korumbas of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review. 3 Martini's coming up. I'm really glad to have you with us for this special Friday edition of the 3 Martini Lunch 25 years since the 9-11 attacks and Jim and I are not only old enough to remember them, we're old enough to be working professionals 25 years ago and we'll briefly get into that in just a moment as we begin our wall to wall thoughts on what's changed since 9-11 we'll also be talking about the pain of what happened in Afghanistan five years ago now as well as what to do with your kids or really anyone under the age of 30 who doesn't have personal memories of that day anymore. How do you explain to them the significance of that day, how it impacts what's going on right now and how they should look at what comes down in the future. Jim, I remember being a kid in 1988 when it was the 25th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination

1:00and I knew it was a big deal. I was a presidential junkie and I liked history and all that stuff but seeing the raw emotion in people as there was a lot of media coverage of that and I'm thinking it's been 25 years. How is there so much raw emotion still on well now I know and I've known that since 25 years since Challenger and many other things but you never really understand it till it's something you've gone through and we're going to briefly go through our 9-11 stories here before we talk about how life has changed over the past quarter century and Jim like most people got up in the morning. I had a little bit of a later schedule then didn't get into the office till the left or 11 at an evening radio news hour at that time and I remember seeing the World Trade Center attacks and the Pentagon attack on TV and the footage of that. I remember trying to drive into the to DC, I lived in Arlington. Everything was completely gridlocked going to the metro station, metering in and then the two or three blocks from the McPherson Square metro station to our office. Just three or four blocks from the White House and just pure gridlock again and not like annoyed rush hour gridlock but just like completely glazed over.

2:01I have no idea what's happening or what any of this means looks on the faces of all the drivers walked into the office all the TVs were showing the twin towers had imploded during the time it took me to get into the office. People covered in ash and dust and whatever else was coming as a result of that really, really shaking. My mom of course knew I worked three to four blocks from the White House and she was seeing the same reports. Everybody else was there were more planes that were headed to DC but of course the phone lines were down so that was a very stressful time for everyone. I had a colleague who was driving in who actually saw the plane hit the Pentagon and I know other people who saw the plane hit the Pentagon. I'm sure you do too. So anybody who's buying into that conspiracy be asked and can put that to rest and then after all the chaos of trying to sift through the information much of it that was so wrong for the news show that day. I remember eventually going home late that night and still seeing the flames flickering from the Pentagon as we cross the Roosevelt bridge going back into Arlington. My colleague Dem McLaughlin worked in the dual trade center on the 46th floor managed to

3:02get out that day and he got over national review. We have his memories which I believe he wrote just three days afterwards and he was a long time blogger at Red State. Greg I'm realizing that 9.11 was nine years before I met you. We started doing this podcast in 2010. There is a non-zero chance that I walked by you in that car in that traffic of walking around because state's new service offices were in the national press building then and was not far and I just have occasionally mentioned on our anniversary podcast. Get into the office. Now you think about it all of a sudden all these little details come back to you. We had televisions on. I believe it was CNN and the phones are ringing off the hook. I think the phones had rung so much that our phone system wasn't working but I did mend it and by the way I should point out to everybody kids this is pre cell phones. This is pre smart phones. People saw people had them but they were certainly not as nowhere near as ubiquitous as they were. Boxy desk telephone picking it up, checking the voicemail and there's a message from

4:04my wife saying a plane hit the world trade center and just the tone of the voice this is something different. When I first hear it you're like oh it's must have been a cessinum. It's been some idiot pilot or something. By that point they've now said two planes have hit it and it's become very clear it's deliberate and one of the things that I've I put this on on X Twitter the other day and everybody's like oh man I remember that CNN shortly after the the plane hits the Pentagon CNN reports that the national mall is on fire. Now what it was was people seeing the smoke from the Pentagon and not understanding what they were seeing further north in Washington DC but at that point one of my colleagues Craig Linder who's now I believe with the Associated Press comes into the office we see that and we're like well we're like two blocks from the mall we can verify whether this is true or not and we might as well go down there. One of the things I remember vividly is that sense of coming out the front office of the national press building which is really just like a block from the White House and just by the recognition at that point they didn't know there's a fourth plane out there.

5:06Plenty of rumors of other planes and things like that. You know at any point was I in any life or death danger on 9-11? No. But I was a block and walking around the White House and so had flight 93 not going down the way it had. I know there's been I think the 9-11 reports said that their most likely next target was the Capitol building. It was a larger target. It was easier to see. But the 9-11 hijackers said they're among their potential targets had been the White House and God forbid are they managed to do that. You know in some alternate reality I'm not here doing this podcast. But we walked out the building and at that point there was still tourists walking around and buses and we looked at each other and realized these people have no idea that something's happening and it was kind of those last moments of normalcy before the world was going to change forever. I think I got down to about the you know got down I could tell it was not any of the Smithsonian's it was not a fire on the mall itself. The clil is coming from across the river and it didn't take too much you know detective work to figure out the Pentagon was you know that's where that was.

6:07I remember hearing sonic booms which I assume were fighter jets being scrambled to defend the airspace of Washington DC and then trying to get back to you know to my office we didn't have laptops back then you know had to go back and actually type on a desktop computer and a they kept shutting down streets and they also I believe right around as you're trying to get into the city Greg the federal government to realize that every federal building was a target and we should point out at that point there were not just this fire on the roomers the Supreme Court building had been hit the State Department had been a car bomb you name the Washington landmark there was rumors that it had been hit by some sort of terrorist attack all people knew we were under attack and nobody knew where the next attack was coming from and I you know keep getting diverted every they're trying to evacuate every federal worker and I looked it up there's like 280 thousand federal workers in Washington DC at that time they've never tried to evacuate Washington ever since then they've never even tried to do a practice run because you can't you can't get that many people out of it and basically every street

7:08in every every block was was snarled in every direction just say nothing of all the parents who are thinking oh my god are my kids safe I got to get back to the school to pick them up stuff like that I get back to the national press building and they have six monitors that are in the lobby and at that point I've been walking around but I have not actually been watching the news I knew they were hit and then I see the cry on saying both world trade centers towers have been destroyed and it's the first images of like 9.11 and the smoke and all that stuff and I feel like a bowling ball had landed on my I just like gasped I you know it took a moment to process this was something out of a science fiction movie this was something that was you know it just that sort of thing didn't happen um and at that point it was a you know the the metro shut down uh there was a clear I was not going to get back into the office to work that day and it was just a matter of I guess I got to walk home and I lived a new pond circle or just south of that around that time so it was I was a walk which everybody in Washington was in that same state and I remember you know every hot dog vendor guy had

8:11their boom boxes out with news radio on as they're trying to communicate to people and stuff eventually what I wrote about this a couple years ago I said the very best part of that day was hearing the key in the lock of my wife coming home she was at a site in northern Virginia that would have made a likely target as well um and so we just kind of you know it is I'm struck this morning by how by how crappy I feel Greg and it's not just because I'm finding off a cold a sense that like these feelings are are not very far off the surface and it doesn't feel like it was 25 years ago I think the most interesting thing I've read this morning it might have been Eric Erickson uh forgive me if I miss that attributing but he said like how long should we be doing these ceremonies how long should we keep feeling the way we feel on this day and he pointed out that there was a ceremony for the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg in which the veterans came back and they embraced uh but there was just a recognition that 50 years this still mattered very much to the men involved in that and he pointed out that in over in the United Kingdom people still wear red poppies around

9:13what to us is veterans day I believe there they call it arms to stay for you if I get that wrong um but the degree you know most people in England have never met a World War One veteran but that is what that is commemorating in Flander's field and the sacrifices made during that what they just called the world war then because we didn't know sequels in the work right or yeah yes and just kind of this recognition that um you know we this I kind of hope this remains a big deal on the calendar for Americans long but we'll talk a bit more about how we talk about this with kids and those who came after um but also I kind of recognize most Americans December 7th is just another day on the calendar for most Americans don't remember 22nd is just another day on the calendar we don't necessarily stop and remember what happened on those dates so it is um yeah 25 years does not feel like it has been that long and I have a feeling when you and I are in the old homes old folks home Greg we're probably gonna still feel still feel like this on this day 30 years from now 40

10:14years from now 50 years from now if we're still around absolutely yeah to watch it again is just as raw or very close to as raw as the day had happened we'll talk about that again when we talk about how to talk about it with our kids in just a moment all of that as prologue to our actual first martini today which is the changes that we've seen over the last quarter century the last 25 years part of it of course is that we were at war for a great percentage of that in Iraq for eight years in Afghanistan for nearly 20 and we'll talk about Afghanistan in just a moment as well but in terms of the home front here obviously the security apparatus changed back in the day you could walk your family member right to the gate at the airport you could just had to go through the metal detector now sounds like they're doing to change that with TSA pre-check here in a little bit that you might be able to do that to some extent but now of course if you don't have the ticket you don't go past security there's nothing like TSA you know 15 20 years ago we're having the huge debates over the the nudie picks when they when you get in the surrender pose there in the scanner

11:15and everything else and just the security apparatus the increased technology state that we're in a lot of people frustrated by that and of course you know we had the coming together on 9-11 and and for many weeks and months after that we eventually got back to partisan politics before too long but there was this great unity that I just don't think you know we would see this day and it's just yesterday we talked about how way too many people were celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk last year I'm sure regardless of who was in the White House you know there would be some major polarizing debate immediately even before we even saw the towers come down if that were to happen today there would be finger pointing all over the place so a lot has changed both personally and in terms of our experiences nationwide you know Greg this was a topic today's morning jolt we're trying to figure out like because like you know what what's left to say and it's like okay well we're clearly a different culture than we were a quarter century ago we're in different people and the question is like you know if you if we don't like it if we don't

12:17feel like we're as if we don't like the changes we've seen why and how do we get here and one of the things you look I think about the the the the phrase called the monoculture right the idea that when the bygone era generally pre-internet when or early internet when everybody was watching the same movies same TV shows everybody you know like the the idea of the same frame of reference and I think it's you know that's something we clearly have lost we've become much more Balkanized as society not just in terms of our popular culture but I think also in terms of our broader culture it was a big deal when who is the university uh word Churchill the university of should Colorado professor who was nuts and you know at these days a nutty professor is not exactly shocking but he had said he basically had praised 9.11 attacks I guess because like I remember he called the victims little icons or something some sort of like you know and the idea well and like by the there was a huge response to that right and this was a guy who was a classical Marxist I believe who's like ah the world trade center is a symbol of capitalism all kind of destroyed a

13:21symbol of capitalism I think capitalism is bad ergo the i-11 attacks were good and everyone who was killed in it was bad and deserved to die because they were at you know gears in the cogs in the machine of capitalism blah blah blah that was a huge deal I you know when you and I say we don't know if there would be that same level of unity in the response to a terrorist attack today may that never happen god forbid um I think it has just become we've now it's just much more widespread to try to shoehorn peep human beings into these political categories ideological categories and that and and you know like you could be further to the left of Bernie Sanders you could be further to the right then I don't know till of the haunt you know wherever you want to put to somebody on 9.11 you had a very clear sense of who the heroes were and who the villains were and there was no sense like you didn't have to love you know every but every single person every company in the world trade centers to say those people didn't deserve to die those people you know

14:25and and one of the other searing observations came from my colleague Dan McLaughlin and says now looking at this as a guy who's I think he's in his 50s now his kids have grown up and he thinks about all the things he's gotten to do in the past 25 years that those who were slain that day and we should point out they were killed Zoraan Mamdani is not technically wrong when he says more you know about 3000 people died that day but that's a really soft passive verb they were murdered it was very much a deliberate act it was not a terrible natural disaster it was not an earthquake this was you know someone set out to kill as many people as possible and sometimes the verbiage makes it sound like some people want to downplay that aspect of it but other way there's the record is the observed that like there are kids who were not born who otherwise would have been born you know there are people in our lives who are not there and you know this is the we both pre-Nestrian today we're setting a record for most depressing episodes of this podcast ever but we also kind of recognize like usually we're pretty jovial and it's because life's been pretty

15:25good to us and you know we'll talk a bit about kids in a second but like you know life can be pretty darn good and when someone has it cut short like that they miss out on so many things that they deserved an ought to have had so we just had to clear a moral clarity then we didn't shoehorn people into political litmus tests and so I think it's it's unfortunate I think it's a reflection of a media space that has gone from being institution-based New York Times CNN the big three television networks and stuff like that to the era of the blogosphere which honestly I feel at turn people don't really use anymore to the era of sub-stack to the era of social media to the fact where of influencers Greg have you noticed everybody's got a podcast any two schmode just the pot yeah and you know the New York Times is a yeah you and I could do many episodes on the flaws of the New York Times the New York Times for all of its flaws I don't think would ever do a can would never have Candace Owens as a columnist writing for a year that Charlie Kirk was assassinated by these rallies in a French and Brigitte McCrone who's secretly a man blah blah blah you know like the

16:28New York Times has flaws they'll have their corresponded sign the praises of communism and to cover up Soviet crimes for decades at a time but they're not going to make that one because the institution doesn't want their fear of getting sued and to the institution like seeks out protecting its reputation the the New York Times can't afford to have a Candace Owens style columnist ruining its credibility for everyone else who works there when you're Candace Owens and you're a one person operation or Tucker Carlson or Hassan Piker or Jennifer Welch like the rise of the larger-than-life podcasting persona has enabled a lot of people to inject a lot of ideas into the bloodstream of American politics i.e. America deserved 9-11 one of the more good from the statements of Hassan Piker that's one of like that's one of the things Hassan Piker as crazy it keeps getting glowing profiles from the New York Times but he could never work for the New York Times the New York Times would be terrified of having someone like him doing that and getting them sued

17:29Joe below the blogger can say the 2020 election was stolen and then as well I hacked the voting machines and stuff like that Fox News channel will not be saying that again because they have seven hundred and eighty seven million reasons not to do that and that I think it's just a reflection of our changed media landscape and the degree to which more extreme and crazier ideas have a much easier time getting a mainstream audience thanks to the internet thanks to social media thanks to the algorithms now obviously so many different changes technologically and within the industry but the attitudes have definitely changed as well and we'll get into that a little bit later as well as you can tell already we're at the end of the first martina saying the extended edition of the three martini lunch and so much more to get to but we're also grateful for our sponsors and that includes lorenco there are many different ways to take good care of your oral health brushing of course multiple times a day you've also got the flossing and then there's also lorenco which is better for you chewing gum that uses the same mineral your teeth are made of

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19:31had been given safe haven to plot and plan all of these attacks so naturally president bush says hand him over or we're coming to get him and you and so they didn't hand him over and so less than a month later we're in Afghanistan we've got the horse soldiers we're partnering up with the northern alliance and within a matter of weeks the Taliban is gone unfortunately some have been lot in escapes out of a tour of borough we did eventually get him through an awesome seal team six mission in twenty eleven so nearly a decade after the fact kind of a little bit changing mission in Afghanistan over time trying to prop up a government there and then prop up their security forces which always seem to be a moving target and never able to to really get done and then of course we get into twenty twenty one and we got people ready to to move on from Afghanistan you and I talked about it a lot at the time president Biden saying that you know the the Taliban wasn't about to overrun Kabul but they did we talked about how closing boggarm at the time seemed like a fool

20:35hearty move before everything else was closed and then ultimately you know the Taliban was back in power throughout the entire country they gave us humid cars that international airport and that whole chaotic situation in trying to get people out smuggling people out you Americans you as allies who had helped us for all these years and then of course that horrific terrorist attack at at Abby gate and then ultimately we pulled out and so for those who put in so much for those who lost people in Afghanistan seeing the Taliban back in charge has been extraordinarily difficult and the promise that this wasn't necessarily going to happen again you have to assume the Taliban's at least friendly if not harboring folks again I know experts like Peter Bergen don't think any terrorist groups that are harboring there right now really have the wherewithal to do something like this again I guess unfortunately we'll find out in due time but Jim you know Iraq was also left with a bittersweet taste as well which kind of led to the rise of ISIS so we didn't necessarily get the the convincing and official wins that we wanted to there I still think

21:38you know those who served there can hold their heads high and they accomplished amazing things and they did everything that was asked of them and our military power is unmatched and we absolutely destroyed everything in our path and then a little bit of the politics got involved there to say the least but when you kind of have the same people in charge you were there 25 years ago it's pretty tough built a swallow it is if the United States and its government had the ability to choose the course for other countries the world would be a very different place it would be a better place it would be a happier place it would be a safer place the limits of our power were vividly demonstrated back then and I think the way we think about 9-11 and its legacy was drastically altered by that I think starting in about 2011 we could look at you know the events of 9-11 and say to the remains of al-Qaeda yes you hit us very hard that day yes it was very painful yes we still mourn the losses but your leader's fish food and there's no like you're

22:38he's not coming back and doctor what's his name so he was in so here like so here you know you guys were clowns you know people pointed out even before them 2009 as the quote-unquote Arab spring you know there was this great tumult in the Arab world and someone observed that very few if any voices in the Arab world were saying well what does been law and think right al-Qaeda had been largely marginalized now has all Islamism has all Sharia has all extremism been as marginalized as we'd like it to be no no al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula still active yeah but you know but again we don't lose any sleep about these guys we don't spend a lot of time thinking about them and I feel at that point we could kind of say oh on September 11th you guys picked a fight that you were destined to lose and that's why we don't spend a lot of time thinking about that ISIS was kind of the inheritor of that mantle for a while but I really feel like watching 2021 it became a lot harder to say that we had effectively won and again this was ultimately up to the Afghans we cannot

23:44we did you no one can say the US didn't do enough that it didn't pay enough in blood and treasure that it didn't sacrifice enough that it didn't try hard enough in the end this is up to the Afghans and what kind of country they want to be and unfortunately enough Afghan men decided we want to go right back to the Taliban we want to go right back to abusing women we want to go right back to not educating women we want to go right back to being what we were which is appalling and you know emotionally disperiding I look I understand it's really tough to look for silver linings on a day like this but I will point out that we should keep still be proud of the fact that American military equipment that we left behind at least it is still killing Taliban and that I believe they've had at least seven major helicopter crashes since then these shockingly the stone age coven cavemen who have no use for the modern world find the flight controls a little complicated and not as easy to fly as the magic carpets no no and also hats off to the people who help to get

24:45as many people out of Afghanistan in that pure chaos we'll never know the full story on that the veterans intel people journalists that I know we're working the phones 24 7 getting as many people to that airport as possible absolutely pure chaos and of course you know anyone who's lost anyone in Afghanistan throughout that 20 years but Abby gate and thinking specifically of right now you know we thank you and we agree with you because of the of the loss that you suffered there in our nation suffered that loss as well and so we would love to have something more to celebrate there but again if you served anywhere in the war and terror you did an awesome job and again the US military is undefeated it's the people who try to figure out what to do after the US military has dominated that sometimes aren't quite as good as the military folks themselves so all right in a moment we'll be talking about how to tell your kids or young adults who just don't remember that day and and why they need to but in the meantime let's quickly talk about Zakhdakh and the importance of taking care of your health and that means your primary your eye doctor your

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26:58all right Jim how do we talk about this to the kids and make sure they understand and understand correctly I mentioned a few years ago on the podcast that on one of our trips to Michigan over the summer we stopped at the United 93 Memorial in Shanksville Pennsylvania to say that I was not prepared for how deeply moving that would be and Mrs. Karemis would agree with me is quite something the visitor's center exhibit was absolutely powerful they had all the images of all the the the major moments from that day and your mind takes you right back to exactly what you were thinking and feeling at that time and it is overwhelming and there was also a wall where you could pick up a phone and you could listen to the final messages that people had left for their loved ones I honestly didn't even do it my wife did and I knew I couldn't handle it and now I regret that and if we ever go back there I will certainly do that but I just knew that would be too much and so and then you think about the story of 90 of United Flight 93 and how so many people have

27:59said they were really the first kind of fighting back of of that day America fighting back and stopping that terrorist attack that was probably coming to right where you and I were Jim whether it was the Capitol whether it was the White House they were planning to hit something really darn close to us so it's not out of the realm of possibility that those people sacrificed their lives so you and I could be and many other people could be could be around today and so they are owed a tremendous amount of of gratitude and my kids were kind of like me in 1988 they understood that this was a terrible thing they understood what the terrorist did was horrible and the courage of the the passengers that day but they didn't live through it so they don't have the same experience they don't have the same raw emotion like that so so how do you do it and one of the ways you do it is you find I think age appropriate documentaries so they can understand it I still have newspaper headlines that I collected on September 12th I still remember active war USA today infamy Washington Times I had the Washington Post as well they had like through their four sentences in a really long headline I don't remember exactly what it said but obviously it summed up what happened

29:02that day and then of course you just kind of walked through that experience and explain what happened and one of the things we're seeing today is that unfortunately things are getting watered down I hope your child still in Fairfax Public Schools hasn't dealt with this but there was a report yesterday that there is a guide from Fairfax Public Schools about how to deal with this things you should do spend time familiarizing yourself with the complexity of 9-11 and leverage a critical lens with students whatever that's supposed to mean prioritize student safety and wellness design instruction around your students needs and experiences and design for accurate inclusive representation emphasize humanity hope and unity things you should not do you should not associate the 9-11 attacks with Islam or Muslims not sure how you do that and also don't center the extremists of the extremists what else are you going to be talking about that day and so you know yes don't blame

30:04your Muslim neighbor who had nothing to do with 9-11 or had nothing to do with extremists I have a friend in the neighborhood who grew up in Afghanistan and he was an interpreter he was embedded with the Marines he showed me the video from his phone which he probably shouldn't do of him in combat with the Marines he's one of the hardest working guys I know he loves being in America Mrs. his family and friends in in Afghanistan of course but but he's great so you don't paint with that broad brush but if you're talking about what was perpetrated that day you have to talk about Islam you have to talk about the extremists and you have to talk about what they did so be honest with your kids make it age appropriate but make sure they understand and and just make sure answer any questions they have don't center the perpetrators well what was perpetrated is what we're all talking about like it's kind of hard to do that you know like you know if they don't send don't refer to Islam or Muslims how about radical Islam how about Islamism my colleague Noah Rothman had a it was on Abbey Phillips program on CNN earlier this week apparently Abbey Phillips has never heard

31:06the term Islamism or at least that was the the the reaction or there certainly seemed that way from that conversation which is mind-boggling so I was thinking about the lessons that I taught my conversable when Bin Laden got killed I was obviously elated for a variety of words but it dawned on me at that point one was three one was one and my kids were gonna grow up in a world without a sum of in-law didn't mean they weren't gonna grow up in a world that didn't have terrorism didn't mean they weren't gonna grow up in a world that didn't have any danger you know you're arguing my guys and your gals are a little bit younger but they've grown up with COVID they've grown up with you know some some real challenges you know we live in an era of school shootings we live in an era of 10 seven you know like the world still has terrifying and bad things in it but that was one less thing to worry about as they sing in in in Hamilton but Osama bin Laden had bitten the dust and was no longer going to be terrorizing anyone other than the digestive tracks of fish and

32:06and so I thought about like two terror two two museum displays that ended up because we're like you know what what age do you feel like kids are ready or something the old museum which is now is all in Pennsylvania Avenue it's now since defunct and now that by building was purchased I believe by Johns Hopkins University it was a good museum I know there are a bunch of people who felt like the news didn't deserve its own museum down in downtown Washington it was really turned into like a museum of current events they had things like the Unibomor Shack and things like that and they also believe had the radio tower from the top of the World Trade Center which was largely intact and so at some point when the kids are young I don't exactly what age maybe like five and seven something like that were there and were watching this documentary of news and they show some the footage of the attacks they show the plane the second plane hitting the tower and my got my back could see my kids eyes just bulge looking at that and realizing they've never seen that before

33:09and it's one of those things where if you've never seen it the we're seeing something familiar a plane you're seeing something familiar a skyscraper and you know what those two things are but they're not supposed to go together there there's something your mind is like that doesn't compute that doesn't process so we talked about it a bit after that and then much a couple years later we went to the spy museum which by the way is an excellent museum and one of their major displays is about the bin Laden raid and they're talking about intelligence they're talking about how you analyze intelligence and what was known about the compound what was known about the tall figure scene pacing within the courtyard but they had no actual good you know photographs of and trying to say does this match bin Laden does this match the intelligence and I remember my guys who are a couple years older at that point it's this kind of interactive thing and they kind of you know they give you a quiz and you kind of say do you think this point to this being bin Laden or not and the kids are utterly entranced and fascinated and it was fascinating to see something that

34:13you know obviously after the raid we were devouring every bit of information now to my kid like things we'd lived through were now something that were fascinating our kids and I think you know but museums can show things and make it more tactile in a way that as you mentioned with the 9-11 Shanksville memorial you know documentaries are good I think you know parents telling their personal stories is almost a prerequisite and Greg we've done this on this podcast we've done this using all over social media doesn't take much to get people telling where they were that day I think it's you know much like where you were on November 22nd 1963 much like where you were on December 7th everybody remembers exactly where they were when I was writing voting to kill psych as I was a a pollster who said when you are in a dangerous situation your adrenaline starts pumping and your mind goes into a point where the mind doesn't know what sensory input is important but it's like all of that goes into the specialty memory all of that goes into the intense you know

35:14do not forget this sort of thing so that's one of the reasons people have vivid memories and the details of what they were doing and where they were and I remember this pollster describing a focus group and they talked about parents who had often many parents had dropped off their kids at school and were either on their way home or on their way to work or doing something and the degree to which they then here on the car radio or something what's happening and that the you know planes have struck where they're America is under attack and they had the question of do you try to go back to pick up your kids at school or not and this person's this this pollster was describing a focus group and one of the moms like the head turned around and I picked up my kid and it was there was interestingly the depth of emotion this was years later and there was just kind of this sense of like that the memories came back and that that mama bear instinct that I think you know we've definitely seen in our wives and we definitely have seen in many moms across the country and across the world you know I think that there is this recognition and this is the things that the kids

36:14our kids everybody was born afterwards they're they're all good kids they don't feel it the way we do and on the one hand we kind of don't want them to feel it the way we do because it was so painful and we you know we want them to grow up in a safer world on the other hand a part of that means to them it'll just be a page in a history book it will be a thing that happened and not something that they experienced to have these kinds of raw emotions with and so it's okay for the kids to not feel it the way we do we don't want them to to to a felt it the way we do you had to have lived through it and so we want them to live you know we want these things to be a little more abstract to them and not as visceral as it is but at the same time to kind of recognize that it was a akin to Pearl Harbor this wake up of what a dangerous world we lived in and that being America we think of ourselves as being terrific people come here from all around the world to live their dreams who could hate us well alas there are people in this world who do hate us and scapegoat us

37:15for all of their problems and we'll try to kill us in the name of their twisted vision of their religion now it's incredible and you're right they can never experience it the way we did they just need to know what happened and what the lessons are from that because and we need to do a better job because what we saw after 10 seven on college campuses some people weren't taught well whether it was at college or before they got to college and so make sure your kids understand and I think we got a long way to go in that department but in a moment it's obviously been a very sombre day we're going to talk about some of the most inspirational things that we saw on or shortly after 9-11 all right Jim so many things that come to mind and I hope I'm not stepping on your toes I'll mention a couple of them here first of all you know everything was so sombre of course in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 people completely in shock wondering if we're going to get hit again then he got to September 14th there's the national prayer service at Washington National

38:21Cathedral and President Bush gets up there and says well they attacked us at a time of their choosing and we're gonna respond and we're gonna finish this at a time of our choosing and then he flies up to New York City meets with a ton of family members who lost people including first responders then he goes to ground zero and of course this moment with the bullhorn he just had a short speech kind of perfunctory ready to go there and then his instinct when the firefighters couldn't hear him is what lasted. This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you. I can hear you the rest of the world hears you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

39:30Jim there was also the moment where the first responders raised the flag at ground zero and almost like an evojima type moment which was incredibly powerful. I had a colleague, still one of my colleagues went to Walmart because everyone wanted an American flag at that point and there were not nearly enough on the shelves and so there was a package that had several small American flags and people were opening the package after they bought it and handing out individual flags to other people who desperately wanted one to understand how this galvanized the nation even for a short time was awesome. Yeah, you know like watching that video now 25 years later still gives me chills. When we're looking at like you know things that were inspiring from that I think Beemer and Let's roll the message and I thought about if you were writing the history of al-Qaeda and many people have of you know historians and scholars and analysts really the last consequential victory of al-Qaeda was when the plane hit the Pentagon everything after that was downhill they couldn't even get the fourth one right you know flight 93 as we mentioned several times during this podcast saved

40:32God knows how many lives but it was it like you know they attacked us in a way that we you know I know there'd been this talk about operation Bojinka I think that believe that one was bombings if I remember correctly the idea of hijacking a plane and then using it as a flying bomb to attack other people as far as I know it never really been done before and it was you know I don't you work on the one hand we can go ah you know look at the airports before 9 11 things were so insecure and all that stuff but like a really you think about like this was not something that had been thought about because the thinking was was that like well yeah if you if you use a hijack planes of flying bomb and fly it into something well then the hijacker dies and the idea of a suicide bomber the idea of a suicidal terrorist was fairly rare up until then you know obviously you know now it's kind now it's kind of cliche now it's no longer so original but back then like this was you know so you think about it al-Qaeda had the element of surprise for 90 minutes or so right that those about you know the the people on flight 93 managing to get through on their cell phones or

41:36the plane the phones that were on the plane hearing about what had happened and recognizing either we take this you know either we rush the cockpit or lots of other innocent people on the ground die never mind us and that recognition of there is next to zero chance we come out of this okay the question is do we die with a lot of other people who didn't deserve to die or do we try to do something to stop it that's the American spirit right there like there was that sense of like we if that's the sacrifice we have to make we're gonna do it and as far as people have been able to piece together what happened in the cockpit that is what happened that the sense of that you know they did ended up like the a field in the middle of an empty field in Pennsylvania was not on the list of all kind of targets that day and you know so it's just so the interesting thing is on the one hand if you're in al-Qaeda enthusiast first of all please die but second of all if you're in al-Qaeda enthusiast that you know on the one hand 9-11 is the the day of your greatest victory over the great Satan blah blah blah but also it's the by by mid-morning things are going wrong you don't you

42:38you've lost your fourth one and you have awakened the sleeping tiger as they said after Pearl Harbor you awake into sleeping giant pardon me and you and all of a sudden have a really angry America coming at you and I I have all you'd like to think that no other terrorist group looked at that at 9-11 it's a bomb that worked out great for al-Qaeda we should try to do that too um and I just kind of look at you know something that's uh also the kind of lingering in the back of my mind you know it's September 12 you know we kind of figured I so I mentioned how I was reading for a wire service one of my papers was the banger daily news and I kind of would you know sometimes darkly joke I hope banger is still there in the morning in the sense of we we didn't know if there was a suitcase nuke somewhere by the way there were reports of suitcase nuke and then al-Qaeda had gotten their hands on a Russian nuclear weapon none of them turned out to be true but these are the sorts of things that were being sorted through by the intelligence community George Tenet has a in his autobiography talks about something they organized called the threat matrix because at that

43:40point to the US intelligence committee tens of thousands of tips are coming in the vast majority of them are nonsense or the vast majority of them are just go chatter you know this this sense of people in online forum we're gonna strike at the great Satan blah blah blah and uh that uh there was just this unbelievable amount of data that had to be sorted through all of them and then try to sort through this we consider high credibility this we consider to be moderate credibility this is the way I'm then and how do you allocate your resources what kind of steps do you do what you investigate what you go after who do you take out stuff like that and um you know September 12th we figured this was just the beginning of a lot more and it really wasn't you know it was San Bernardino there was a pulse nightclub shooting this is not the right day to pull out Disney to C2U but you and I you know like like we've seen terrorists as al-Amas terrorists attacks since then but really nothing happened on that scale and I think a lot of us were afraid that day that this was the opening chapter of a really dark era in American in American history and human history and Islamist struck you know uh that law and the you know theater shootings you know all over basically

44:47every major European capital has had a terrible Islamist terrorist attack but nothing on the scale of 9-11 and that's because a lot of people put in a lot of work to keep us safe and in that sense mission accomplished and I think it's been said this week and I think it's worth highlighting that yes you absolutely mourn the ones who were lost that is perfectly appropriate and you honor the heroes who responded both that day whether it's police fire other other uh first responders and of course those who were the uniform in the military uh for the next 20 years in the wars that followed and in my work at the American Veterans Center I've spoken with people who survived the towers like like Dan McLaughlin I interviewed one guy who was above the impact site in tower two and somehow raced through three or four floors of flames and came out on the other side uh talked with firefighters uh talked with obviously many different members of the military fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and so kind of the thought that's been rattling around in a couple spaces online has been not only do you honor those people and thank those people you strive to be like those people what do

45:49you do in that situation how do you respond uh and help other people in that situation and that's certainly a goal to live up to as well so Jim uh not an easy day to look back but it's an important thing to do so hopefully lighter fare on Monday I can't imagine it being quite this dark uh look you know no matter how bad things go for the jets and bears it's not going to be as depressing as this episode folks now but uh important conversation and thank you thank you to everyone who's warned the uniform uh in all those different situations on that day and since uh in protection of those they serve uh for Jim Garrity I'm Greg Carromus thanks so much for being with us and join us again Monday for the next three martini lunch