Where I was, where I am.

I remember sleeping in that morning.

It was the first day of a long awaited vacation. I had taken three weeks off and had made absolutely no plans. When I got up that morning, I would decide. Fly out west? Drive up to the mountains? I had no idea, and that was the beauty of it.

My cellphone had been ringing that morning, and I shut it off without looking to see who it was. Hopefully it was some clown from the department who might actually have to go look at a duty roster and see that I was on vacation. (And would not learn from the experience).

When I flipped the phone back on shortly after sitting up in bed, there was a message from my old college friend. "Dude. Turn on the television. Some blind fool just flew a passenger plane into the World Trade Center!" I flipped on the tube just in time to see the second aircraft strike. Having expected to see what was an almost impossibly improbable accident, the second crash hit me like a hammer.

We are being attacked.

I spent that morning in a rage, I am sure the neighbors knew why I was yelling obscenities in my little apartment. The trajectory of my entire life was going to be altered forever in ways I did not yet fathom, and I rang in this new era yelling "Bastards!" at some unknown and unhearing enemy on the television.

As the days went by, we all learned more about the tragedy, learned of friends who were there. I knew some folks in the towers, Federal agents, a businessman. My friends all made it out safely, only to run for their lives once again as the towers fell. I called a buddy of mine who was on the NYPD and asked him if they needed help, since I was on leave and could come up. He said don't bother; they were swamped with volunteers from all over. The idea of just sitting by idly was one of the most maddening things I have ever experienced. I considered the possibility of returning to the military, but I wanted to shoot bad guys, not watch a radar scope on a Navy ship, and I had gotten a little too old and too fat for the infantry.

Police work changed significantly after 9/11. Suddenly we were told what most old salty Sergeants had already known for many years: emergency services in the US are not prepared for large scale cooperative operations across jurisdictions. We started making changes that had been suggested by the 9/11 Commission as well as other think tanks. Radio frequencies became shared. Codes changed to plain language. Standardized incident management systems were put in place.

After the 2003 Iraq invasion, a call went out for experienced police officers to go there and help train up the Iraqis in the field of policing in a democratic society. I don't think I even thought twice about it before shooting an email to the contracting company that was handling the recruiting and training for the State Department. My old chief of police told me I could have one month's leave of absence for each year I had given him on the department. That came out to just over the year I needed. In May 2004 I packed my bags and was in Baghdad before the end of the month. Baghdad was the Wild West in 2004. As cops, we were left to handle our own force protection for the most part, so we did a large amount of our moving around on our own. Most of us had military backgrounds so at least we knew enough to not shoot ourselves in the feet on a regular basis. We even became pretty experienced at not doing stupid things and getting ourselves killed. Most of the time.

While I was in Iraq I met several Foreign Service Officers and had numerous informal conversations with them about their work. I was particularly interested in the officers who were assigned to the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. I was told that if that type of work intrigued me, that I should take the FS test. I filed that tidbit of information away, and completed my Iraq mission in June 2005.

I returned to Charleston, put back on my stripes and went back to work. Something was different though, not quite right. I missed the excitement of working in Iraq. I missed the changing surroundings. I still loved police work, but something was missing. I did know that my experiences in Iraq showed me that life is a precious and fragile thing, and Bubba, you had better live it to the hilt while you have it. I placed myself up for auction on the Internet and my future wife purchased me for $29.95 in September of that year (that's Mrs. Warpiper's running version. I like to think she paid more for me). A year later we were married, and Tater came along less than a year after that (not putting up dates, and will only say NO it was not a shotgun wedding).

With a new family at home, the prospect of spending the rest of my life missing birthdays and recitals while I work midnight shifts on the streets was just not appealing. After Tater was born, I told Mrs. Warpiper that I was considering taking the FS exam, and she was open to the idea. I then began the process that ended with me joining the Foreign Service in March 2009.

A couple weeks ago I was sitting at a cafe along the Saigon River eating breakfast while Mrs. Warpiper, Tater and Munchie were having a swim nearby. My cellphone was buzzing in my pocket. Text message. I ignored it because I was happily tucked into an omelette and the message could wait. When I finished eating I pulled out the phone and it was a colleague who lives in the same compound.

"Turn on the news. Obama about to make a statement about Bin Laden."

That could be only one thing. I had the manager put CNN up on the television in the cafe and watched the news, followed by the President's message. Other expats began drifting in to watch, mostly Australians, a few Europeans. All were visibly satisfied by the news, if not openly happy. I really did not know how to feel at that moment. Justice served? Definitely. Closure? Not really.

I suppose that for many family members of the victims of 9/11, Bin Laden's demise brings at least some closure to things. In a larger sense, this is just a waypoint on the road in terms of facing terrorist threats to our country. There are gigabytes of opinion on Bin Laden's death all over the blogosphere, and I'll keep my own to myself. They aren't very politically correct or respectful.

What I remember most about the moment was that here I am, sitting in a cafe on the Saigon River. My job has me directly involved in the business of keeping bad actors from entering the United States. I am married to a woman I may not have met if not for my Iraq-influenced decision to settle down. I have two beautiful daughters. I cannot escape the thought that the events that put me on this trajectory were caused by this murderer who finally got his in the head in a dirty compound in Pakistan. It is hard to know how to feel about that.

If not for Osama bin Laden, where would I be now?

Fate works in strange ways.