You know, if anyone out there wants to rent themselves out as a temporary husband or grown child, I sure could use some help unpacking and getting my new condo into shape.

I’m just sayin’.

On September 11, 2001, I was twelve miles west of the Towers. I worked for Montclair State University, helping redesign the SVP’s website. When the first jet hit, I was walking down the campus to pick up a copy of Dreamweaver at the bookstore. When I got to the bookstore, the DJs on the radio were talking about the second plane hitting the second tower, and I thought, “This is the stupidest joke I ever heard in my life. It’s not funny.” I picked up my copy of Dreamweaver and stood in line to pay for it. “What’s with the stupid joke?” I asked the clerk. “It’s not a joke. Two planes hit the World Trade Towers.”

I hurried back to the office. The news was all over campus by then. I found myself crowding around the small TV in one of the administrators’ offices, watching one of the towers burn and wondering why the picture looked so strange, and then suddenly realizing that there was only one tower standing. And I remember scouring the web for alternative media, as the main news sites were overloaded with people all over the world trying to find out what was happening. . I didn’t find Instapundit that morning—I spent more time at Dave Winer’s site, gleaning information from there, and trying various non-local media sites with some success. By noon, I had had enough and although the VP told us we didn’t have to go home, I went home. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

For some reason, I was convinced that was the end of life as we knew it, and I went to the supermarket and picked up some food items. When I tried to get home, I couldn’t. The police had blocked off the route between my supermarket and my home, because Eagle Rock park lay in between, and some 20,000 people had gone there to watch the towers burn. Eagle Rock park has a phenomenal view of the Manhattan skyline, and has a great restaurant where you can eat good food and watch the lights of Manhattan. An impromptu shrine sprang up along the wall people stand by to look at The City. That’s what NJ natives tend to call New York. “I went to a party in The City last night.” “I’m going to The City to do some shopping.” “I’ve got tickets to a show, I’ll be in the City tomorrow.”

The City was burning.

I went home by roundabout streets and convinced the officer at the last one that I lived where I said I lived. When I got home, all of my neighbors were outside, sitting on the porches of our apartment complex. My upstairs neighbor was an IT tech who worked in the World Trade Center. He didn’t die, because he was always late. He never, ever got to work on time. So that morning, his lateness saved his life. I expect a lot of his coworkers didn’t make it. They were working on the 103rd floor, I believe.

We sat outside in stunned conversation for some time. I had the TV on from the moment I got home, and switched from station to station to station. NBC, ABC, CNN, CBS, anything and everything. I was lucky enough that I didn’t have to worry about a relative, although I found out later my cousin’s husband drove into Manhattan to work that day, saw the towers on fire, and turned around and drove back out. One of my sister-in-law’s cousins died in the tower. Even though there are 20 million people in the New York Metro area, everyone knew someone or knew someone that knew someone who was in the World Trade Center that day.

Our lives changed that day. Don’t believe anyone who says it’s time to get over it. It’s over. It’s in the past. 9/11 may be in the past, but the events of that day were the proverbial ripples in the pond that are still heading towards the shore today. 9/11 changed me from a lifelong Democratic voter to a woman who voted for W. four years ago and who will vote for McCain in November. 9/11 destroyed the American airline industry, or at least, it was the first of the one-two punch (the second being the price of fuel). But the price of fuel is up in part because of 9/11. We went into Iraq and Afghanistan because of 9/11. 9/11 terrorists attacked Spain and England and threaten Europe today. 9/11 was the attack that woke America up to the fact that we are at war with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. There are many who still don’t believe we are at war. They are mistaken. The terrorists have been very plain in both their intentions, and their thoughts. They tell us flat out that all we have to do to stop them is to convert to Islam, sacrifice Israel, give Spain back to the Muslims, and take a secondary role in the Islamic Caliphate.

Yeah, we have a three word answer for that: Not. Gonna. Happen.

It’s an overused expression: “The world changed.” But it’s a true one. Osama bin Laden’s mindless cruelty changed forever the way America and Europe moved forward into the twenty-first century. The fact that seven years later, there has not been another attack on American soil, is a sign that we’re winning the war. The fact that seven anniversaries have come and gone without an al Qaeda hit on us anywhere in the world on that date is a sign that we have weakened al Qaeda quite well. But they’re not gone yet. They are resurgent in Afghanistan. They still plot in Europe and South America. So we’re still in what some call The Long War, which will take quite some time before we can safely call it ended—but we’re winning.

Now I live 90 miles south of the Pentagon, but two days a week, when I work in my Job in NorVA, I’m ten miles north.

I never want to see the smoke rolling to the heavens again. I don’t think I’ll have to. But it is far from over.

A New York Times article reports on tapes of Osama bin Laden that are now being studied.

While Mr. bin Laden’s evolution from opposing Saudi Arabia’s ruling dynasty to running an international terrorist organization has been detailed before, said Flagg Miller, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, who spent five years translating the tapes, the recordings provide a more spontaneous look at Al Qaeda than what is available through the carefully choreographed messages it releases.

“These are back-room conversations of Al Qaeda’s key operatives as well as fresh or potential recruits who are trying to figure out what the heck is going on and what their role in it is,” Mr. Miller said.

The article is underwhelming, except perhaps, where it discusses how boring the life of jihadists was. And that recalls an observation of Reuel Marc Gerecht as to why the United States had so little good intelligence on bin Laden.

A former senior Near East Division operative says, “The CIA probably doesn’t have a single truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern background who can play a believable Muslim fundamentalist who would volunteer to spend years of his life with s***** food and no women in the mountains of Afghanistan. For Christ’s sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We don’t do that kind of thing.” A younger case officer boils the problem down even further: “Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don’t happen.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.