An impossibility becomes possible; it has been a decade since 9/11/01, the day that shook our world. Ten years have passed since the planes pierced the Twin Towers in Manhattan. Ten years since the Pentagon was hit. Ten years since ordinary people wrestled with mad men flying a plane over a field in Pennsylvania.
No one who was alive that day will forget it. I will never forget it. On that September day, ten years ago, the sky over Chicago was as bright a blue as the sky seen in New York. Bright, cloudless, breathtakingly blue. A sky and a day full of the beauty of autumn.
But halfway across the continent, planes like bombs flew into the towers. Red and black flames licked the white buildings. The towers collapsed and the dust swirled like thick, black smoke, choking life out of the glorious day.
And the dark cloud blotted out the bright sky. The beautiful day darkened into early night. Hatred begat a violence that was beyond the imagination of all of us. A hatred so strong it enabled men to transform planes into powerful missiles pointed at the heart and soul of our nation. A hatred so overpowering that it put ordinary citizens in the sight lines of a war we didn't know we were waging.