Seven Minutes of Hell

What would you have done?

-Billy Beck

I venture to guess nearly every person would feel shocked, horrified, furious, appalled, scared, angry, or some combination thereof upon Andrew Card's message that the World Trade Center had been twice attacked by unknown forces. But his question isn't what I or anyone else would have felt. It is what would I have done.

Mr. Beck continues:

Try to understand: no sort of blithering generality is going to work, here. I want to know explicitly and specifically -- step by step -- what you would have done in those seven minutes.

The reactionary in me says Pfft, this is easy. I would have immediately cancelled the school event and departed to a safer and more communications-friendly location. I would have demanded to know everything credible. I would have demanded to know the condition of critical infrastructure concerning the reins of power in D.C., the military, etc. I would have demanded FEMA send every available resource to New York City to help in any way possible. I would have left a brief statement with the press and I would have been in the air and on the phone in under two minutes.

I assume no trivial number of Americans would want their President to respond in such a direct, no bullshit way.

And yet.

Knowing myself, how I react to unexpected emergencies, and having not the faintest flickering of an idea what it is like to "[marshal] the enormous authority" in a sitting President's grasp, I say the following in all available honesty.

I probably would have compulsively vomited fifteen seconds after hearing the news and spent the next 6.75 minutes in a fuming sea of such confusing emotion that I'd be pathetically useless for anything beyond a simple command to "get me out of here, get help to those who need it, and get the motherfuckers behind this."

Posted by Drizzten at October 08, 2004 03:25 PM