I am in NYC this evening. I wound up, purely through Priceline happenstance, staying in room 1208 at the Hilton Millenium, which is directly above the former WTC 9/11 location; at this time of night, it is full of construction trucks-- still excavating with the haunting blowhorn going off intermittently.... and it looks like, 9 years later, that they are still pulling out original tower concrete and iron that remains.

And the news... I have to admit a bit of hope with Obama making the right choice over Afghanistan when I read about his administration staff telling CNN: "People at the Pentagon are trying to force a certain outcome."

More from the WH:

I sure hope that's true, because when you read the likes of what CBS is putting out, its downright politically disastrous for Obama and Democrats: In no small part, Obama won the Democratic nomination because of his opposition to the invasion/occupation of Iraq, and he strongly opposed the Bush surge there. Now, he many times mentioned about Bush 'taking his eye off of the real war in Afghanistan' or some variation of the sort, but never said anything about sending in tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds, of more troops into Afghanistan. Did I miss that part? There is no way that Obama would have won a Democratic primary had he laid out that sort of plan. In fact, there's no way that we would have had a Democratic wave in '06 and a Democratic tsunami in '08 of wins, had the Democrats campaigned on the bait and switch of leaving Iraq, for Afghanistan.

But now, sources out of the Pentagon are saying that Obama is about to go for his own "surge" of troops as part of a long-term occupation of Afghanistan.

For now though, I refuse to believe that Obama and the Democrats will make this huge a mistake. It's too unbelievably self-destructive to accept.

9:30 pm must mark the end of construction, as the machines have quieted down below. Its remarkable, how one event can serve to swerve a nation off course. I know that there were evil people that committed the atricity of 9/11, and it is natural to want vengeance; but at some point, the loss must be let go lest it turn in with its destruction.

We are becoming lost as a nation in the land of a country that, as it stands now, had nothing to do with 9/11. We no longer have a military reason to be in Afghanistan-- other than we are losing a war that's now 9 years old. Yes, we want to help the people that live there gain a better life, and we do have a global responsibility to fund the UN and NGO's that fulfill such a task. I fear the worst for our nation if we deepen the US military presence in Afghanistan.

I'm gonna go out for a walk around this place now, and hope for the best-- that Obama wields the power he has to turn off the machines of a meaningless war. Let the Republicans whine and gloat about it. Democrats won the past two cycles because they vowed to end our midesast wars, not go deeper into a new one. We will not lose if we do the right thing; in fact, just the opposite.

Update [2009-11-9 22:57:1 by Jerome Armstrong]: The last time I'd come to to ground zero was during the '04 GOP convention, when Bush was renominated. With Anatopia, we walked the entire perimeter, stopping often to view the left memories from friends and relatives. Tonight, I walked over to St Paul's church, and as I was coming back around the side, I was struck at the presence there next to the sidewalk of the 9-11 ground zero cross-- in its temporary location since 2006. They've begun working again below. Non-stop it appears through the night.