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20 years later, the fi ght for our freedom continues

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Glendale Star Columnist

The fi rst plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the North Tower at 5:46 a.m. our time. I was at my desk, sifting through topics for a radio talk show that would never air.

Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 cored the South Tower. By 7:30, the World Trade Center was a pile of rubble, twisted steel and lost humanity.

On the radio and in public conversations, there would be no other topic for months.

Somehow, 20 years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001.

This anniversary was a day for remembrance and a day to inventory all we have lost. It was also a day that begs a question: If al-Qaida delivered this evil in an attempt to defeat a mortal enemy, to claim victory over us, did they in fact win?

As a boy in New York, those twin towers were perpetually present, forever jutting 1,300 feet into the sky. As a young man, I rode the elevator to the 106th fl oor for dinner at Windows on the World. I was wearing a borrowed sport coat too short in the sleeves, but still I felt like a million bucks eating off the white linen tablecloths.

Human beings have a limited capacity to pay attention: We catalogue things in the background of our consciousness, taking them for granted until they’re uprooted from their customary place.

It’s one way terrorists shake us: They carve out a hunk of the ordinary, stealing something we may not notice every day, but that’s no less a part of us.

Striking the Twin Towers was a subtraction like that: If they could knock down skyscrapers before our very eyes, strike at the heart of the world’s fi nancial markets, what else could they do?

America’s response to the attack revealed the best of us and the worst. Flags fl ew everywhere. People stood in line for hours to donate blood. The Phoenix Fire Department sent the best urban search and rescue team in the world to comb the wreckage.

Partisan politics gave way to national unity, a heartening respite that felt like it should last forever but didn’t.

As for the worst, four days after the attacks, Frank Roque took his .380 pistol to the Mesa Chevron station owned by Balbir Singh Sodhi, an immigrant from Punjab, India. Roque had been ranting for days that he wanted to “shoot some towel-heads.”

Sodhi wore a turban and beard in keeping with his Sikh religion. Roque, primed to shoot anyone whom he adjudged Muslim, killed Sodhi with fi ve bullets in the fi rst hate crime of the 9/11 era.

Roque’s death sentence was later commuted to life. In what I can only brand a shame, Roque is still with us, living out his days at the Lewis prison in Buckeye. His disciplinary record shows 36 violations during his time incarcerated, everything from disorderly conduct to assaulting staffers to manufacturing a weapon.

Some people never learn.

Maybe we haven’t learned either. The terrorists lured us into a 20-year war that we exited disastrously only weeks ago. American unity has never seemed like more of an oxymoron, the Civil War excepted.

We killed Osama Bin Laden, but new enemies of freedom are minted every day in far-off places like Iran, Syria and Afghanistan.

The terrorists stole some valuable things from us on 9/11, including almost 3,000 sons and daughters, fi refi ghters and would-be rescuers. Even so, I would estimate we have fought them to a draw in the 20 years since.

This remains the most free nation on earth. The fi ght to defend those freedoms continues.

David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com.

Time stopped, eternity beckoned on Sept. 11

BY J.D. HAYWORTH Glendale Star Columnist

Twenty years.

Two decades.

About 7,300 days.

Time enough to encompass a youthful lifespan. Time enough to grow up, grow tired, grow old.

Many of us have done all three.

For 2,977 victims on Sept. 11, 2001, time stopped and eternity beckoned.

For the 19 terrorist hijackers who thought they would become martyrs, history now regards them as murderers.

For the paradise they thought they were promised, there is instead perdition.

For the “masterminds,” there has been manipulation of our justice system. Pre-trial hearings for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters just opened at Guantanamo Bay on Sept. 7 of this year.

For the elites who offered legal aid to the “masterminds,” there is an insistence on constitutional rights for enemy combatants but an unwillingness to extend the same to lawful citizens.

For “sophisticates” at the alphabet networks, there was a refusal to wear American fl ag lapel pins on camera in the days and months following the Sept. 11 attacks, because it would suggest “favoritism.”

For common-sense Americans, there was no confusion between patriotism and favoritism, nor between survival or suicide.

For George W. Bush, it was a shock that he put in historical context: “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today,” he dictated into the White House daily log upon his return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

For the Bush administration, clarity of purpose was modifi ed by the muddle of multiculturalism; thus the “war on terror,” rather the “the war on Islamic terror.”

For “offi cial Washington,” there was an initial imperative to remember the fi rst role of government: protection of its citizens. Sadly, it didn’t last.

For “bureaucratic Washington,” a subsequent, unfortunate imperative: expanding the role of government — more agencies, more spending, more bureaucrats — leading to less protection of citizens.

For “political Washington,” initial unity — soon sacrifi ced on the altar of ambition. In its place, a strange type of unanimity. At the behest of major fi nancial institutions, agribusiness and multinational corporations, “establishment” offi ceholders basked in media adulation by claiming that we could

DUFFY’S OPINION – King Features

HAYWORTH FROM PAGE 12 not stem the fl ow of illegals across our southern border and that we had to allow illegal aliens from Mexico to open bank accounts using a matricula consular — a form of ID issued by the Mexican consulate.

These same offi ceholders still use the poll-tested phrase, “We must secure the border!”

But the fact that such sloganeering endures while defi nitive action has come in fi ts, starts and now a full stop simply reinforces the reality that elected offi cials view this as a political problem to be managed — instead of a national security threat to be removed.

And what of our national security apparatus — the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and the Department of State? Apparently infl uenced by politics and culture, it seems that the notion of “victory” has been replaced by “virtue signaling.” From the outset of our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan we tried to achieve two very different goals at the same time: destruction and reconstruction.

Because the terror threat was not eliminated, our military shifted its focus to force protection. As we took up occupation of both countries, that changed our military posture from offensive to defensive, putting targets on the backs of our warriors and ensuring stalemate in the best of situations.

As just witnessed, the occupation of Afghanistan ended in calamity. Joe Biden ordered our military to leave, and left Americans behind in the process.

It all but ensures that his successor — or that Mr. Biden himself — will one day say, “The 9/11 of the 2020s took place today.”

If Joe can remember it.

J.D. Hayworth worked as a sportscaster at Channel 10, Phoenix, from 1987 until 1994 and represented Arizona in Congress from 19952007.

Correction

A column by David Leibowitz about school boards erroneously stated that at an August meeting of the Scottsdale Unifi ed Governing Board, a mother had falsely accused a district employee of distributing a neo-Nazi comic book on some campuses. The mother did not make such an accusation.

COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS - REDISTRICTING HELP DRAW THE NEW COUNCIL DISTRICTS

The City of Glendale is seeking public input on proposed district maps, both online and through a series of community workshops and City Council meetings. All voices matter in this process and greater participation can lead to a more transparent and representative experience for all Glendale residents.

September 20

2:00 p.m.

September 22

10:00 a.m.

September 27

6:30 p.m.

MEETING DATES

Glendale City Council Chambers

5850 W. Glendale Avenue

Glendale Main Library Auditorium

5959 W. Brown Street

Foothills Recreation & Aquatics Center

5600 W. Union Hills Drive

Community workshops can be attended in person or viewed live on the City’s YouTube and Facebook channels where viewers can provide feedback and ask questions of the redistricting consultant. A recorded workshop presentation will be available on the City’s Glendale 11 cable channel and the redistricting webpage at www.glendaleaz.com/redistricting.

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September 16, 2021

Unhealthy processed foods are still mighty tasty

BY JUDY BLUHM Glendale Star Columnist

How long will you live? Hmm, maybe you would prefer not to know. While there are many medical claims on how to prolong our lives, there also seems to be “predictions” on how to shave off a few minutes here or there by simply eating.

Mischief or medicine? Can we rely on a health strategy that tells us eating one beef hot dog lops off 36 minutes off our lifespan? Please say it’s not true.

A new study from the University of Michigan School of Public Health ranked foods based on how many minutes you might gain or lose off your healthy life by eating them. Hot dogs, in particular, are robbing us of 36 minutes! That’s if you believe that a grilled wiener on a bun, with all the fi xings, can be detrimental due to “processed ingredients” that we are risking a shorter lifespan by eating! Sure, no one would consider a hot dog a “health food,” but come on, why spoil a good old treat at a ballgame or barbecue? Hey, Joey Chestnut, not sure how to break the news to you, but you are a dead man walking! Yes, Mr. Chestnut is the world record holder because he can eat 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes! Should we accept the premise that competitive eating is a sport? If so, Joey Chestnut should be in the Olympics.

This 37-year-old man is a true champion, with the annual competition usually held to a packed crowd in Coney Island at a baseball fi eld. A celebrity eater? Last contest, he was introduced by a Major League Baseball announcer, proclaiming to the cheering crowd that “the roar of Chestnut’s assault will sunder the dome of heaven to reach the ear of God himself.”

Hey, champ, those 76 hot dogs could take 45 hours off your life! Stop it. You might get to that “dome of heaven” sooner than you’d like.

OK, so many of us don’t eat hot dogs. But now the research claims that chicken wings and sugary beverages can also wipe a minute or two off of our lifespan. Why worry? A few enjoyable treats might not be so bad in the big scheme of things.

We could, of course, start eating more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, because they have the amazing effect of adding about 33 minutes onto our life. I am not good at math, but I do know how to use a calculator. So maybe the “formula” for longevity is how to add and subtract minutes based on what you eat.

Have an urge for a hot dog on the grill? Go for it! Just be sure to back it up with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you are back in the “neutral” zone.

The research looked at 5,800 foods and ranked them by their “nutritional disease burden.” Eat fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes and seafood and you can add about an hour a day to your lifespan. The even better news is that one slice of apple pie can add one delicious minute onto your life. Let’s get healthy, 1 minute (slice) at a time.

Judy Bluhm is a writer and a local Realtor. Have a comment or a story? Email her at judy@judybluhm.com.

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