America in shock

SAN FRANCISCO, California – Everything, and I mean everything, shut down here in the United States in the immediate wake of the Tuesday morning destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in the heart of New York City.

The estimate, which remains to be verified, is that 22,000 people died when two passenger jets slammed into the Towers within minutes of each other, and both buildings collapsed in a shower of shredded concrete and melted steel.

By comparison, then, the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 was only a Japanese tea ceremony: although the USS Arizona and other ships of the line went to the bottom, only 2,698 American sailors and servicemen perished. Within less than an hour yesterday, however, at least 10,000 but probably 22,000 innocent civilians, mostly Americans, died, on what had started out as a sunny and peaceful Tuesday morning. That’s more Americans than were killed in battle during the Vietnam war.

In what has been described all day on all television channels here as "the worst disaster in American history", hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston’s Logan airport for Los Angeles, deviated and sped into Manhattan to crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was 8:48 a.m. and many, if not most of the 50,000 persons who work in the 110-story Center were already in their offices. A few minutes later, a second plane, this time United Airlines Flight 175, en route from Boston to Los Angeles, also commandeered by terrorists, a Boeing 767, too, slammed into the South Tower. The terrorists had discovered the ultimate weapon – no need for explosives – of hitting crowded buildings with large passenger intercontinental carrying 24,000 pounds of ignitable fuel. The explosions and the resulting conflagration literally "melted" the two tallest buildings and affected the Manhattan skyline forever. Later on, a third building No. 7 in the complex, 67 storeys high, also crumbled. The catastrophe was so complete that 200 of the 400 firemen who responded to the calamity – including the Fire Chief and Deputy Fire Chief – died as well as 85 of the 200 responding New York (NYPD) policemen listed as "missing" and presumed dead.

Since 150,000 visitors daily go to the Twin Towers as well, the final calamity toll, as New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani grimly predicted, " would be horrendous."

Minutes after the two "attacks", an American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, scheduled from Dulles Airport (Washington, DC) for Los Angeles, ploughed into the Pentagon, the seat and symbol of American military power, collapsing most of one side of the five-sided building and killing an estimated 800 officers, enlisted men and civilian personnel.

Another plane, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757, which had taken off from Newark, New Jersey airport bound for San Francisco, crashed in Stoney Creek, Shanksville, southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Shortly before the crash, one of the passengers, Ms. Barbara Olson, rang up her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, that the plane was being "hijacked" by men carrying knives and cardboard cutters – can you beat that? An entire aircraft with 38 passengers, two pilots and five flight attendants, being taken over by terrorists with knives and cutters! It was speculated later that the pilots might have been wrestling with the hijackers when the plane crushed. The potential targets, TV anchors and newscasters guessed, might have been the White House, Camp David, or, again, the Pentagon.

The terrorists who planned and executed those diabolical assaults succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They inflicted not just a nightmare on America, but sent the entire country into a state of shock.

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Islamic terrorist "world financier" Osama bin Laden (the "backer", if you’ll recall, of our own Moro rebels, the Abu Sayyaf) was immediately announced as the major suspect, although the US government and its agencies were careful not to establish blame until investigation verified the truth. A visibly rattled US President George W. Bush, interrupted while addressing a mid-Western grade school class, vowed that the perpetrators would be tracked down and punished.

All over the US, angry calls went up for America "to strike back." But at whom? At Osama bin Laden? At Afghanistan and his protectors, the fanatical Taleban? At Iraq, or some other Middle East country? At the Palestinians, where, word came from Nablus, in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, thousands of people danced in the streets upon news of the attacks, shouting "Allah is Great!" The world’s only remaining Superpower – with two aircraft carriers "on alert" in the Persian Gulf, and more battleships, frigates, cruisers, and another aircraft carrier steaming out yesterday from their base in Norfolk, Virginia – surely has the capability to strike anywhere. But, on this Day of Infamy, to borrow from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s furious announcement of the Pearl Harbor sneak attack, America still didn’t know whom to hit.

Still, it’s early days yet. When the US strikes, judging from the public mood (the people are demanding "action") it will be devastating for any nation or group on whose heads America’s wrath descends.

Tuesday afternoon, congressional leaders met in the Capitol building in Washington, DC. The Speaker of the House, Rep. Dennis Hastert and the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Tom Dashle, pledged that there would be no partisanship here, that Republicans and Democrats were "closing ranks", and that Americans were "united in meeting the challenge."

Then, everyone in the chamber broke spontaneously into the singing of God Bless America.

The next song we’ll hear, I wager, will be The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

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What has been coming over the airwaves all day have been denials from Osama bin Laden, the Afghans, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Hamas, and the PLO’s Yasir Arafat, too, that they had anything to do with the hijackings and attacks. Everybody "innocent"? Sanamagan.

The "unknown" terrorists accomplished what they perhaps set out to do. They shut America down – for one day, at least. The Federal Aviation Administration banned all further flights. What we witnessed, instead of 4,000 aircraft which overfly the US daily, were The Empty Skies of United.

San Francisco Airport, the nation’s 5th busiest airport, ninth in the world, which handles 600 flights daily, with 110,000 daily passengers coming and going, became a "ghost town." Bustling Los Angeles (LAX) international airport, which in normal times handles 160,000 daily commuters and visitors, aboard 2,100 daily flights (I used to watch them stacked up waiting for their turn, then coming in nose to tail) was closed down – everybody sent home or off on a desperate search for a hotel.

Here in San Francisco, although a continent away from the "air-strikes" in New York City and near Washington, DC, almost all the shops closed down. Market street was empty of department-store goers or restaurant diners. Macey’s, Nieman Marcus on Union Square, also Tiffany’s and Saks, were all shuttered.

Starbucks on Stockton Street, across my hotel, opened for three hours in the morning, then all the Starbucks outlets all over the metropolis were shut down. For hours, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge, for fear of terrorist "bombing", were closed, but later reopened.

The Trans-America "Pyramid" building, the tallest structure (but only half the height of the New York Twin Towers) was the first-ordered "evacuated" by the government. The SFO authorities felt it was too tempting a magnet for "terrorist" attack. All Federal buildings were closed, employees sent home, callers barred. City schools were shuttered. Patrol cars and additional policemen and policewomen guarded each thoroughfare. The METREON building, though, were Loewe’s theatres were showing Rush Hour 2, Musketeer, and six other movies, remained open for business, although its popcorn stands redux had less than the usual sales (overweight America consumes movie popcorn by the bucket).

Across the street from the Moscone Centre, however, Jollibee was wide open, and packed with customers. (What a choice location – is it the one owned by Ed Espiritu?)

Even Mickey Mouse ducked: Disneyland and Disneyworld were closed down.

All in all, it was a day of mourning. Many of the victims aboard the doomed airplanes, the hapless passengers held at bay by the knife-wielding, "bomb" threatening terrorists, not knowing, probably, that their jet was screaming towards destruction, had come from San Francisco. One passenger, on the other hand, know what was coming. Or had an intuition about it. He managed to ring up his mother on an on-board pay phone to tell her: "I love you!" He said he might not have a chance to say that again.

It was a day, and its terrible aftermath, that reduced America to tears. Tears, I might say, both of rage and sorrow.

Bannered The San Francisco Chronicle in two and a half inch headlines reserved for killer earthquakes and declarations of war: U.S. UNDER ATTACK.

All through the day, the CNN programs carried the label "AMERICA UNDER ATTACK."

Oakland Mayor (and former California Governor) Jerry Brown, however, put America’s reaction best. He declared that City Hall and all city government offices, and all enterprises in Oakland would be open for business "tomorrow, Wednesday." What the terrorists sought to do, Brown asserted, was "paralyze America." He pledged: "We will deny them that! We will be back in business!"

Not bad for a guy who used to do the zaniest things. Right on, Jerry – and God bless you, too!