Seven years ago at about this time I am writing this, around 4pm, I was at a police station in New Jersey, waiting for a friend of my wife's to pick me up to take me to their home...
I had just gotten off a free-ride all-stops NJ Transit train from Hoboken, fed by shuttle buses from the New York Waterway ferry terminal in Weehawken...upwind from the plumes of smoke arising from Ground Zero.
My goal was to walk across one of the bridges that linked New Jersey to Staten Island, where we lived, and get my car and drive out to see my wife at a hospital where she was with my sister-in-law, who had suffered a heart attack while we walked from our then-midtown Manhattan offices to the ferry. But the police said they weren't even letting pedestrians through...
Meanwhile we hadn't heard from our son, a paramedic. He had called my wife after the towers were attacked, saying that he was being told to go in...
When my firm, Call Center Magazine/CMP closed its offices I left with my assigned laptop. I had witnessed the attacks on my commute in and knew what to do. I had lived in the UK during terror campaigns in my teens and in my early 30s and knew instinctively when and how to get out of harm's way.
That evening, at my wife's friend's house I logged on...the Internet worked...and sent and received 'Are You OK' E-mails.
Last weekend I got to thinking about terrorism, both by individual and organizations and by governments alike. So I'd like to share with all of you my thoughts how to stop the senseless targeting of civilians by all parties, and would like to get your feedback:
1. Establish an international day of mourning for terror victims of all kinds i.e 9-11 (how appropriate, 9-1-1). After all, people from nearly every nation died in the attacks
2. Launch a campaign to end terrorism aimed at non-combatants. No more deliberating bombing, mining, sinking, and shooting of civilians, and placing military targets in civilian areas.
If you must kill and destroy, aim at those who can and are trained to fight back, so you can eliminate their capacity to kill and destroy you.
There is no reason, with today's technology, to kill and maim civilians to achieve military and political ends.
