Red Skies

Over the weekend, I caught a rerun of the movie The Siege (the working title for this film, eerily enough, was "Against All Enemies" -- the title of Richard Clark's most damning book regarding the Bush Administration's complete failure to address the al Qaeda terrorist threat leading up to 9/11), which is about Islamic terrorists striking New York City after a terrorist leader is adbucted by U.S. Forces in Lebanon. Denzel Washington and Tony Shaloub play FBI agents hunting down several active terrorist cells in NYC with the aid of CIA spook Annette Benning, and in the process, an MTA bus, a Broadway theater, and the building at 26 Federal Plaza (which houses all sorts of U.S. government agencies) are blown up, along with thousands of fictional New Yorkers.

The makers of this film, which came out in 1998, were prescient enough to connect many of the dots that most of us were unaware of at the time (that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was connected to the plot to blow up the United Nations, the George Washington Bridge, and Lincoln Tunnel, and the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, etc. through this world-wide network of Islamic terrorists, including al Qaeda) and foreshadows 9/11 (26 Federal Plaza is brought down by the terrorists, and there are scenes of police and firefighters combing through the massive wreckage for survivors), Abu Ghraib (a suspected terrorist is sexually humiliated, tortured, and then executed by the U.S. Military), and Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay (martial law is imposed in Brooklyn and all Arab men, regardless of their rights as citizens, are rounded up and illegally interred in the search for the last sleeper cell), etc.

I remember watching the movie back then and thinking how far-fetched and looney all of this seemed. They had caught the terrorists who had bombed the WTC -- they were just this lunatic fringe group that was now shut down (c'mon, the blind sheik seemed like something out of central casting!). The first bombing of the WTC was an aberration...these kind of attacks occurred in the Middle East and Europe, not New York City.

How far we've come since then...

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On 9/11, as I watched the smoke pour out of the enormous gash in the North Tower from the 16th story of the Gramercy Park building I worked in, I clearly remember telling my wife on the phone that I was going to avoid subways and buses on my trip home because they might be attacked by suicide bombers (on that day, I had no trouble imagining the worst case scenario...). As I started my 3 1/2 mile walk home to the Upper East Side, I nervously eyed all of the tall buildings, scanning the skies for the planes I heard (which turned out to be the fighter jets scrambled to protect the city) that might slam into the skyscrapers all around me. Bizarrely, so many people seemed to be going about their regular business, buying cups of coffee, or heading back to the office after a smoke. I was racing home to protect my wife and kid, and to figure out a way to flee the city (we didn't, as the subways were shut down, the bridges/tunnels closed, and there was no easy or safe way out).

Around 42nd Street, I overheard someone mention that one of the towers had collapsed, and assumed that meant that the top quarter of the North Tower above where the plane had hit simply had fallen off. I mean, after all, the tower had withstood a huge jetliner crashing into it...

My mind resumed its review of all the possible targets the terrorists might hit -- and I planned the rest of my route home accordingly -- but I still couldn't believe that so many people were dying on this incredibly beautiful day.