Reason magazine has an open comment thread for 9/11 thoughts. Here’s mine:
I remember watching the towers burn in real time as it was happening, and I remember wrestling with the fact that it was too late. No matter how rich and powerful and capable we are, we could never bring back all the people who were murdered by the crashing planes, by the roaring fireballs, and by the smoke filling the towers.
That must be what it’s like to make a mistake with some fast-moving machinery and see half your hand fall to the floor: There’s the pain, and there’s the realization that it’s irreversible and you can’t undo it no matter how hard you try.
I did manage to find a little good news, though. Ramzi Yusef’s boastful quest to bring the towers down had failed again. The towers may have been burning, and thousands may have been dead, but the towers still stood. That glimmer of hope lasted about 45 minutes, until I saw a huge dust cloud envelop one of the towers from top to bottom, and I figured out what had to have caused it.
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