Musings of a Murtad

Isaac Schrödinger

2005/11/02

I was having breakfast in my serene world, unaware that zero-hour had arrived. I went to my 9:30 math class, came back to my dorm after the class was over, and checked online for the latest news and upon scanning caught three words.

“World. Trade. Crashes.”

“Hunh, the stock markets are crashing?” was my confused thought.

“Center,” was the fourth unbelievable word that hit me.

I clicked the link and there on the page was a picture of one of the twin towers crumbling.

“No.”

I ran out to the main living room and turned on the TV. The twin towers were no more.

I knew who was responsible. Every fiber in my body knew. It was the scum who had declared war on Americans in 1996, and then masterminded the attacks on the embassies in Africa two years later. His group had attacked a US warship in Yemeni waters in 2000. I knew that he wanted to showcase a grand attack. Perhaps, bombings of multiple airliners over the Pacific and Atlantic or assaulting the enclosed infidel sites in Saudi Arabia. Instead, Osama had struck at the jugular of the American Republic.

Practically all the channels showed gruesome scenes and presented scary scenarios. Some thought that there were more than 10,000 dead. Others differed but still offered numbers in the thousands.

Students started to stream in the living room. They all watched the horror without uttering a word. I left them and went to my room. That morbid picture on the screen, in which so many innocent lives were instantly extinguished, produced a feeling of emptiness.

I checked other websites and came upon a most wretched spectacle. Palestinians were celebrating and passing around sweets. Their euphoric performance made my stomach churn. How demented is a society when it reacts with glee to thousands of innocents perishing? I simply couldn't comprehend the depths of their depravity.

As the day passed, my grief morphed into anger. Anger for those who had carried out, supported, and financed the heinous acts, for those who had rejoiced at the news of the atrocity, and for those who were planning more assaults on the West. For too long the Islamists had thought of Americans as cowards. For too long the Americans had been at the receiving end of their attacks. For too long the US had done little in response. For too long the majority of the American public had not acknowledged their evil enemies.

At long last, at tremendous personal cost in blood and treasure, the US was awake and furious.

The Fourth World War had begun.

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