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A former partner
in a top-10 global management consulting firm,
Joe Buff is a seasoned risk analyst and professional
writer on national security and defense preparedness.
He is also a novelist of tales of near-future
warfare featuring nuclear submariners and
Navy SEALs in action at their bravest and
best. Two of Joe's non-fiction articles on
future submarine technology and tactics, which
appeared in The Submarine Review, received
literary awards from the Naval Submarine League.
His recent novel Crush
Depth made the Military Book Club's
Top 20 Bestseller List after being selected
as a Featured Alternate of the Club in late
2002. Tidal
Rip was released from Wm. Morrow in
hardcover in November, 2003, and quickly made
the Amazon.com Top 100 General Thrillers Bestseller
List (paperback edition due in October, 2004).
Joe's next book, Straits
of Power, is scheduled for hardcover
publication in November, '04.
Joe is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis,
a non-partisan international scholarly body
headquartered in McLean, VA. He is a Life
Member of the following organizations: U.S.
Naval Institute, the Navy League of the
United States, the Fellows of the Naval War
College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation,
and the Naval Submarine League. Joe's father
was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in
the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951,
and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the
North Atlantic convoys late in World War II,
before being drafted into the U.S. Army to
serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany. In
August, 2004, Joe was made an Honorary Life
Associate Member of the Navy Seabee Veterans
of America, partly in recognition of his pro
bono work for Operation
Seabees Knowledge.
Joe
Buff Article & Column Archive
Joe Buff Contact Info:
readermail@joebuff.com
http://www.JoeBuff.com
Joe Buff Books:
Straits
of Power
Tidal
Rip
Crush
Depth
Thunder
in the Deep
Deep
Sound Channel
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October 6, 2004
[Have an opinion on this column? Sound off in Military.com
at the Frontlines.]
The third anniversary of September 11, 2001 has come and gone. While the damage to the Pentagon Building in Washington was long since repaired, politicians and citizens in NYC still squabble over what form a memorial at the World Trade Center ground zero's gaping chasm should take. Around the country some people hold their breath in serious concern, waiting for the next major terrorist attack against the U.S. homeland. Others deride the multi-colored national alert system as just a myopic kaleidoscope whose main driver is the presidential election campaign. On and on the debates and the arguments rage.
But the attacks of 9/11 were aimed at America as a whole, and succeeded as such. Each and every one of us lost something important, permanently, that day, even if no one we knew personally was hurt or killed or left bereaved. Our way of life was challenged in an especially vicious way, and our collective peace of mind was severely reduced, maybe forever. Our shared pride and joy over beating the Sovs in the Cold War has faded fast into bitter divisiveness over prosecuting the Global War on Terror, preserving our individual freedoms in an era of danger and strife, keeping the lid on nuclear proliferation worldwide, and balancing our ultimate national sovereignty against the desires and agendas of other countries.
This essay is intended to be short and very simple. The topic is not a political one. All of us (regardless of party affiliation, if any) owe it to ourselves -- and to the thousands who suffered during 9/11/01 -- to memorialize that searing moment and remind each other, today and henceforth, of the perpetual need for vigilance as the true and inescapable price of liberty.
A easy, unobtrusive, but lasting gesture can accomplish these goals, to remember and remind. I did it myself on the afternoon of 9/11/01. Often since then I've thought of sharing this idea with other people beyond my direct acquaintances, but for one reason or other I refrained. As the day approaches to "change the clocks" in many parts of America, by turning them back by an hour on the morning of October 31, the moment seems right to finally say something.
Many clocks in homes and offices from coast to coast are of the analog (round faced) type with hands to show the time of day, and another hand that can be set as an alarm clock. In a lot of cases (including two such clocks in my house) the clock is relied on only to tell time, and the alarm feature is seldom if ever used. Being by nature a somewhat quantitative, analytical person, and detail oriented perhaps to a fault, for decades I'd asked myself what to do about this "extra" unused arm on the face of the clock. Leaving it pointing to some odd and meaningless time seemed so untidy -- but you do have to point it somewhere.
Back in the late 1980s, working in an office, I figured neatness counted, so I set the arm to 6 o'clock, that is, pointing straight down. Then, in the mid '90s, as I began my research on national defense in preparation to change careers from actuary to writer, I moved the unused alarm arms of my clocks at home to 7:55, as a reminder of the time the first bombs fell at Pearl Harbor (give or take a few minutes, as accounts of the exact timing vary slightly among historians and eye witnesses). On 9/11/01, amid the eerie afternoon silence as not one car moved on the road past my home and not one plane flew in the sky, I shifted the same arms to 8:45. Why?
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At 8:45 a.m., on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, with 92 people aboard, slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Thus began what commentators have often called our generation's Pearl Harbor.
As I sit at my desk now, writing this on my laptop, the clock in my office stares at me, with that extra arm -- for the built-in alarm clock feature I never use -- still set at 8:45. It's been like that for more than three years. I occasionally wonder what terrible event -- assuming I survive it and clocks even then still matter -- might cause me to move that otherwise-unused arm again.
At the end of this month, in most states, you need to adjust your clocks anyway. Think about doing something extra, to mark that awful moment that changed the world, to remember and honor the victims and the heroes of that day and its aftermath, and maybe bring our divided country closer just a little.
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© 2004 Joe Buff. All opinions expressed
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