Attack

Author's Note:
This is the essay that I wrote for my DWA.

"A second plane has crashed into the South Tower" a woman heard on the news.  She didn't think much of it as she walked her daughter toward the bus stop to head to school.   As she walks with her, she begins talking to the other parents, no one really knows what's going on.  The bus picks up the children and the parents head home.  Once the woman clicks the television back on, she realizes what has really happened.   Panic.  Panic is the only word to describe what happens next.  She calls the school, she calls her friends, she calls anyone who could tell her that she heard that wrong.  The whole world stops after this historic broadcast.  This day will be remembered in history forever, as nine-eleven.

On September eleventh two thousand and one, four planes crashed in the United States.  The first two hit the World Trade Center.  The third hit the Pentagon and the fourth crashed down in Pennsylvania.  Once the first plane hit the North building of the Twin Towers, people assumed that this was a horrible accident.  Though once the South building was hit, America knew they were under attack.  Later, a third plane crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth hit down in a Pennsylvanian field.  America later found that it was headed the fourth plane was headed for either the White House or the Capitol building.  One day, four planes, three thousand lost.

While there were three thousand people who died, there were nearly as many severely injured.  Some saved themselves, while a few brave people went back to save others.  Firefighters and policemen risked their lives to help those who were inside the buildings.  People all over the America, even the world, gathered with candles and prayers to remember those who were lost.  Mothers, sisters, grandfathers, and children, these were not casualties of war, these were victims of hatred.  Not hatred of race or hatred of gender, hatred of freedoms. 

A Muslim extremist group called Al Qaeda was responsible for the nine-eleven attacks.  Al Qaeda believed that because Allah, the Muslim God, didn't believe in certain rights, that those rights were wrong.  So Al Qaeda created these attacks to make a statement.  A statement that lead to war, death and millions Americans frightened to walk out of there front doors. 

While millions of people were dismayed and frozen with shock, thousands were killed on the day of nine-eleven.  Innocent Americans killed because they were American.  How would you feel if you lost a loved one to people who didn't even know their name?  Would you be angry, sad, even terrified?  Al Qaeda put answers to those questions in the minds of all the families of those who died.