A year or three after 9/11, I happened upon a couple of websites that archived video from that world-alerting day — mostly the live TV news coverage. I downloaded it all to my hard drive and every now and then, I watch an hour so of it…usually commencing with the first report of the first plane having hit.
For a while, I didn't understand why I was doing this. No particular event in the news seemed to trigger my visits. Just all of a sudden, I'd feel like I wanted to go to that directory and watch some 9/11 news coverage. But I think I eventually figured out what I was doing and why. I'm trying to put it all in a little more perspective, examining it all in light of what we know now and how we feel. On September 11, an oft-heard phrase was "Nothing will ever be the same again." I didn't buy that then. I mean, in one sense "nothing will ever be the same again" after the newest champ is crowned on American Idol. But in the sense that we meant that dire pronouncement on 9/11, I think we were wrong. A lot of things we didn't think would ever be the same again are the same as they ever were. Alas, this includes some of the mistakes…but I think even the most optimistic among us expected more terrorism than we've had the last ten years.
The news video of 9/11/01 still has the power to shock and enrage, and I'm sure it always will. It should. But I find that each time I take myself back to it, the horror and anger are a little different. For me, at least, they're more reasoned and less visceral. Watching it as it happened, we knew it was the start of something bad but we weren't sure what or how bad. Would there be an attack like that every day or every week from now on? Was this the opening salvo of World War III? Would nuclear weapons be detonated somewhere before the week was out? We just couldn't know…and that was one of the most chilling aspects of 9/11. Today, of course, we know all that could happen tomorrow…but on 9/11, it seemed highly possible that some of that was but hours or days away. We certainly know that we'd have ten years of a different kind of destruction in this country. The self-inflicted kind.
So that's why I watch the old news clips, I guess. I like that my attitude about them is moving from raw instincts to reported facts. I have a different slant on it all with a different mode of reaction and it's no longer like watching a horror movie for me. It's tragic but it's also more of a learning experience.
You can watch any and all of the specials tomorrow — there are thousands of them — or you can make your own. Here's a link to an online archive of news footage from that day. If I were you, I'd pick out the channel I first turned on when I heard about the "accident" and watch the same coverage. You might be surprised at how different it all seems now in some ways…and how it doesn't in others.