{"id":86,"date":"2008-09-12T22:05:33","date_gmt":"2008-09-13T02:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=86"},"modified":"2008-09-12T22:05:33","modified_gmt":"2008-09-13T02:05:33","slug":"reflecting-on-91101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/reflecting-on-91101\/","title":{"rendered":"REFLECTING ON 9\/11\/01"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span> <\/span>I\u2019ve been in New York since yesterday.<span> <\/span>It inspires awe to see the memory of the Pearl Harbor of my generation observed with dignity by the community that lived through it.<span> <\/span>Even McCain and Obama were here, setting aside their differences for the solemn occasion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span> <\/span>It was a time to remember the countless ordinary citizens who helped to save the lives of others that terrible day, and to reflect upon the sacrifices of the legion of public safety personnel who did not survive the disaster. I had dinner last night with Bill Allard, a plank holder on the famous NYPD Stakeout Squad. He and his famed partner Jim Cirillo were shot at many times, and sent many violent criminals to the morgue with deadly accurate return fire. When Stakeout was disbanded by a generation of city leaders who deemed shooting violent armed criminals to be politically incorrect, Bill transferred to the legendary Emergency Services Unit. Unique in American policing, the ESU is a high-risk unit that combined rescue work \u2013 digging victims out of subway crashes, getting jumpers off bridges and skyscraper ledges \u2013 with the function other cities called SWAT. Bill had been retired by the time 23 fellow ESU officers were killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers. He had spent yesterday at a unit memorial service for the ESU\u2019s honored dead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span> <\/span>The firefighters, paramedics, and cops were the ones that charged <em>into <\/em>the danger as a sea of humanity fled from it. They and the many private citizens who saved lives on 9\/11\/01 wrote a chapter of courage and commitment into the pages of American history.<span> <\/span>One hopes that the magnitude of that single, cataclysmic incident will not obscure the fact that such sacrifices are made every day by the same kind of good people, in crises that are smaller in scope yet every bit as life-threatening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span> <\/span>May they always be remembered, and appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been in New York since yesterday. It inspires awe to see the memory of the Pearl Harbor of my generation observed with dignity by the community that lived through it. Even McCain and Obama were here, setting aside their differences for the solemn occasion. It was a time to remember the countless ordinary citizens [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-86","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}