June 3, 2015

Finest Hour 112, Autumn 2001

Page 14

Winston Churchill was the most quoted historical figure during the week following September 1 lth …. Anent “Operation Enduring Freedom,” Suzanne Sigman sent us this: “Operations,” Churchill said, “ought not to be described by codewords which imply a boastful and over-confident sentiment.” Their names “ought not to be names of frivolous character. They should not be ordinary words.” …. On the September 15th weekend, Chartwell had 3,000 more visitors than the same weekend last year; in London, 20,000 stood vigil at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square while floral tributes appeared at the Whitehall statue of Franklin Roosevelt…. Toronto Sun columnist Peter Worthington received our 2001 Utter Excess Award for demanding that President Bush deliver an on-the-spot fight-on-the-beaches speech, and not be a “grief counsellor scurrying from airport to airport (Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska) in safety, rather than risking Washington”; and for excoriating his own country for providing a porous border. Everybody knows why the Secret Service moved Bush about and it had nothing to do with the President’s wishes. If Bush’s first remarks didn’t suffice, his later ones did. Churchill, remember, wasn’t asked to deliver his “Finest Hour” speech within moments of a disaster. This was certainly the most ignorant article we have come across except in the abodes of the guilty …. The first New Yorker we got through to after September 11th was Churchill Center Associate Glenn Horowitz, a prominent antiquarian bookseller known for his quality Churchill material who fortunately was uptown on September 11th …. Glenn said the photo of the first plane hitting the North Tower was not accidental: “Note the fireman in battle dress in that frame—hundreds were at the WTC for a training exercise and had a camera trained on the tower. They rushed to the scene just as the South Tower was hit; as many as 300 are dead” …. The towers were among the first to be designed to implode rather than topple. An older type of construction might have taken many city blocks with it…. Benjamin Netanyahu said the fanatics are working on a nuke, and that we’d better deal with them now …. Aides to Seattle Mayor Paul Schell were stunned September 12th when they opened an envelope containing an invitation from New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The invitation was for an October conference on disaster preparedness and included sessions on terrorism, major-event planning and “major building collapses with implications.” The location: 7 World Trade Center.