Slashdot Mirror
One Year After September 11
One year ago today, at 9:12 eastern, we posted
World Trade Towers and Pentagon Attacked amidst the events of that day. Since Slashdot is really just a discussion site, I felt the most appropriate way to handle this anniversary is to simply do just that. I hadn't read those stories since the day it happened, and I really am at a loss for words. But I'm sure many of you won't be. And thanks to OSDN for turning banner ads off for the day.
Anyone else feel that it is wrong for the media to cover this story so in depth, and ultimately make money on those that died and their families. I have decided not to watch any coverage. I remember very well what happened. Is any station doing coverage without any comercials? Or at least, is there one that is donating the amount they're making above what they usually do?
This is a question I hear around the office all day long. How does the american public at large, or in this case, the slashdot community, feel about the response America has had to the attack on september 11th?
I personally feel we are continuing to provoke such things through our economic agenda, and that what bush's policy has been shortsighted and really retro-active. Others feel that the world climate is changing for the worst, and we simply need to start protecting ourselves more. What do you think?
Why stick up for big business?
September 11th, 2001:
I was consulting at a company in Rockville, a few miles outside the district. I heard the first plane had hit while I was listening to WGMS, DC's classical station; figured it for a Cessna or something. After I hit my desk I knew something was wrong when I couldn't hit a major news site for confirmation of the story.
We switched the news on; we had a big TV with DirecTV on it in the company kitchen. I had stepped away to try and get word to friends about what had happened, using instant messenging apps, when the second plane hit.
The people in our kitchen reached the instantaneous conclusion that this was not accidental. We watched as the towers burned, saw them fall, heard about the Pentagon being hit. My company employed 65 people there; were they okay?
Workers left to take their children home. I left around 1pm, with F16s and helicopters covering the sky of the DC metro area.
I called my family. They were trying to reach me but couldn't get through due to circuits being jammed. They were terrified that I was there; too many rumors, too little verification that day for us all.
September 11th, 2002:
Last November, my company deployed me to the Pentagon. It started out as one of those "for a week" things, but I wound up involved in a COOP project - Continuity of Operations - directly related to making sure a second 9/11 cannot cripple our nation's defense infrastructure. I'm sitting at my desk, thinking of how much the last year has affected my life (too much work, constant stress, a divorce..) and knowing that the majority of the things that have happened to me of late can be directly traced back to 9/11; were it not for that attack, I would not be where I am now.
I do not know if things are for the better. All I know is that I have been called on to use my meager technical skills to help my country when it was sorely needed. I'm doing my part to make sure we make it through.
Would that we all could do the same.
It's an image ploy. It's kinda like offering "Shindler's List" without commercials a couple of years ago. Everyone thinks they're a nice network...so they're more likely to watch in the future. It sounds silly, but it is a common ploy in the media.
Our newspaper published today without any ads. A friend at the paper told me that its a nice thought, to the public...but to advertise for the next month, it's going to be much more expensive to "cover the costs of today's paper". In actuality...the paper makes out in the long run. I wouldn't put it past the TV networks to do something similar.
I felt like a zombie for the next few days. All of Slashdot's team worked together to update stories and struggle against traffic that spiked to 3 times our usual peaks. Spare boxes were stolen for the cause and brought online. Meanwhile we did our best to make sense of what was happening along with everyone else.
I'm still very proud of how we handled our tiny share of that day and the aftermath. I know that what we did helped some. And I seriously feel honored that I was able to help.
I've actually been on edge all week knowing that this story was going to be posted on Slashdot. It forced me to reread much of our original coverage. It forced me to relive those frantic first minutes, and the hours, days, and weeks that followed it.
I hope this story manages to help some others too. It has already helped me.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
It's weird, I don't consider myself squeamish and I used to eat lunch while me and an old boss were checking out the latest additions to Rotten.com's gallery. But I swear to god everytime I see the footage of the planes hitting the towers I get this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I've never had that happen before where some image has an adverse reaction on me and I cant even begin to explain it.
And I said it last year and I'll say it again this year... I'm still really pissed off about those palistineans dancing in the streets with joy while downtown Manhattan was busy getting covered in 2 inches of soot.
BOSTON SUCKS!
I won't ask that you put aside your political differences in this time of national mourning. I'm not.
I won't ask that you give up your rights quietly because 9/11 shows that those rights will be our downfall if we continue to have them. I won't and I don't buy that.
I won't ask that you give up fighting because 9/11 shows that nothing can be solved by war, and that only peace will succeed in making the world a safer place. Far better and more righteous people than I have tried to end war and have failed miserably.
I won't ask you to rise up against the US government for its brutality and evil around the world that caused us to be attacked. Every other nation is just as evil, and has just as horrifying skeletons in their closet. America is just happening now. No amount of wrong done excuses what the hijackers, and those who helped plan and fund the hijacking did.
I won't ask you to condemn or absolve Muslims as a group for the actions and beliefs of some that called themselves Muslim.
I won't try to convince you that the lives of those murdered were in any way more or less important than the lives of Israelis killed in suicide bombings, the lives of Palestinians killed by Israeli solders and civillians, the lives of Vietnamese women and children murdered by American soldiers at the Mi Lai Massacre, those that died when nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those that died at the Battle of Pearl Harbor, or any other life lost. They aren't. A life is a life, whomever's it is.
All I ask is that you remember the dead. In the end, that's the best any of us can hope for after we die in this world. No amount of war or peace will bring them back to life. Whatever existence is or isn't waiting after life ends, memory is all that is left of the person in this world. Remember the dead, and be glad you are alive, because it could have been you on those planes, in the World Trade Towers, or the Pentagon. Remember the families and friends and their loss, because it could have been your friend, or brother, or sister, or mother, or father who died that day. Remember their loss and throw a party, and hang out, get drunk, play touch football, talk until the wee hours, play video games, watch movies, argue, or whatever you enjoy doing with them, because most of us will die before we're tired of this life.
In the end, what you do and what you believe doesn't matter to me, and I expect you feel the same about me. Just remember for those people, that went out of this life in a way few of us would choose to, and don't forget that we're all lucky to be alive.
That's it, I guess...
Both.
When I was a small child, I was taught to not approach the cute little bear cubs that would sometimes wander close to my parent's vacation home in the spring time. Yes, it was our property, and yes, bears can be destructive, but the cub was doing what cubs do, which, in and of itself, was not harming anything. Mama bear, of course, was expected to be close behind.
So it is when dealing with the affairs of others. OBL attacked the U.S. ostensibly because of American presence in Saudi Arabia, which he repeatedly denounced.
Executive Summary: When your government, put in place either through your winning electoral choice, or your acceptance of a democratic process pisses someone off, you increase your risk of dying.
Right or wrong, heinous or noble, justified or not -- such words vulnerable to the winds of propaganda matter didly squat to your corpse rotting at the bottom of a pile of rubble.
So, you must chose carefully, those acts in which you, or your representatives engage, for you will be faced with the burden of defending against their consequences. This does not mean that one should cower and hide in the face of those who disagree with what you believe are your rights, but it does mean you should pick wisely when chosing what's worth risking death at the hands of those you enrage.
Somehow, I have a hard time believing any sane American who values his or her freedoms would accept that U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia were worth the loss of some 3000 lives or the liberty-suspending measures purported to to be able to prevent such a loss in the future.
Sometimes, it IS better to let the bully have his corner of the sandbox -- if you're willing to fight him lest he cross some arbitrary line in the dirt, let him pick the line and see if it is all that unreasonable. Then you can defend both your turf and the moral high ground.
P.S. You know, as an aside, I chuckle about the semantic hack OBL pulled: the U.S. can't declare "war" war against an individual, only a nation, and so can't legally muster the "war-mode" enabling powers it otherwise could. Yet it clearly faces a situation that any sane person would clearly interpret as an "act of war". Heh, doublespeak bites the usual government mouthpiece on the ass. I'll leave it to the gentle reader to decide whether that's adding insult to injury or poetic justice, dripping in bloody irony.
You could've hired me.
---Japan had a long history of agressive & atrocious behavior---
If by "long" you mean more than simply that regime during WWII, then that statement seems wrong. Japan was on the side of the Allies in WWI. In fact, nationalism only exploded in Japan after the WWI Treaty in which Japanese moderates we dealt a telling blow by people like President Wilson, who not only refused to honor their contributions, but rejected Japans' proposed treaty language condemning racism and wars of racial superiority (boy, was THAT shortsighted of us!).
The Japanese moderates tons of face over this, the hardliner racist facists took over, and Japan basically decided that if the West would never accept them as equal partners, and there could be no truce against racial rivalry, then the West wasn't going to be allowed to belittle it anymore, or treat it as trivial.
---It's a good point to note: tit for tat leads to ongoing conflict, while massive retaliation generally gets the message across more succinctly and saves lives in the long run.---
So why wasn't Iraq's gassing of the Kurds, most of whom were rebelling at the time, just good policy? It sent a message (just as we sent a message in Japan) that stopped the fighting in its tracks and certainly saved a lot of lives. Do you at least appreciate how easily this principle could be abused? Do you at least see that, however warped, this was EXACTLY the stated rationale of Osama: that if they caused enough damage in one blow, that we'd reconsider and get out of the Middle East, thus saving them the trouble of having to start a war there?