Saturday, September 11, 2010

Want Proof?

Today is the 9th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks on our city and, as usual, there are commemorations and tributes to those were died on that -- and whose lives were permanently changed. All of us living in NYC then were changed by it and the city and country will never be the same again.

The popular refrain, in the days and years since, has been "The terrorists can't win." And they can't. What is it that the terrorists want to "win" exactly? They want NYC and American to change to their perverted idea of some 7th century Islamic caliphate, some kind of mystical Shangri-la that never existed and never will. This is a place where women are subjugated, modernity and progress (science, human rights, technology, music, etc.) are banned, and our way of life no longer exists. Obviously no sane American wants this and 99.9% of Muslims don't believe in this nonsense either. So they can't "win."

You only need to look around at how NYC has thrived in the years since 9/11 for proof that the terrorists "jihad" is quixotic. But when I think about how the terrorists can't win, I like to find the small examples, one that most people wouldn't even think of.

Too whit: this Monday, nine years since 9/11, the city's first Chock Full o'Nuts in 20+ years will reopen -- and there are more on the way. Chock Full o'Nuts was a city-wide chain of coffee shops that were a city icons for decades before they dissapeared in the 1980s. I remembered them as a kid in the 1980s and was sad when they went away. There was something so distinctly New York about them that it felt like a part of the city's spirit has died. But now that part of our spiriit has been re-kindled. You obviously can't compare something like that to 9/11 but the fact that they're coming back makes me smile -- and on a day like today, that's the best you can hope for ... and further proofs that the terrorists can never win.

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