"....as they fight for their freedom..."

I remember how I felt on September 11, 2001.

A cacophony of rage and bewilderment and fear and ignorance. What was happening? Why was it happening? What do these people want? Where would they stop?

It was the first time since Pearl Harbor that America was directly attacked. Our parents had those terrible memories re-awoken. The rest of us had no such experience. We were completely blind. There were no guard-rails. No maps. We careened all over the place. The wreckage. The death toll. It was more than we could bear. We cried until the tears solidified into rage. (And then we allowed ourselves to be led into a fiasco. But that’s another story for another time.)

But each of these events was a single day. We weren’t invaded. We were sucker-punched. And it changed us.