Slashdot Mirror
Marking 10 Years Since 9/11/2001
10 years ago today, coordinated terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. killed nearly 3,000 people. It wasn't the first terrorist attack directed against the U.S., or even on U.S. soil, but it was the deadliest, and came at a time of relative peace. Probably most people reading this remember where and how they heard the news. We've often discussed the consequences of the attack: security cordons, ID checks and metal detectors where none existed before, a reexamination of how U.S. policy affects international perception and attitudes, and the encroachment of surveillance policies and technology, to name a few. Today, we don’t want to inundate you with links to tributes and retrospectives, so we’ll offer the only thing we can: a look back at how the day unfolded here. Our thoughts are with everyone who lost friends and family members.
I try to remember the thousands upon thousands of civillians in the Middle East who have perished, as well as the poor souls in America.
I'm sick of that aspect being completely ignored so often by Western Media.
My hat is off, hand on heart - to all of the victims of the event, and the consequences.
Would love to be able to fly without being treated like a criminal though.
I sure didn't think i'd be spending the ten year anniversary of 9/11 in Afghanistan... but here I am. strange how life works out. i remember on that day, i wanted nothing more then to find the people who'd done it and make them pay... i wasn't in the military back then.
now, i'm here, they know they've won, we've announced our intentions to leave(surrender) and they attack almost daily. their(Islamists) resolve is stronger then ever. ours(average US citizen) is pathetically weak and short sighted. though, it's not like we have any direction or a plan to get behind.
nope, never thought ten years later, this would be happening.
I was in 10th grade German class when we got the announcement. I remember not grasping the significance of the news until I saw the look of fear on my teacher's face. I hopped on the school network to try to get updates. I was moderately successful... most sites were down, CNN was a 50/50 shot, and so much of my news that day came in through reading updates and comments on Slashdot, at least until we were allowed to go to the library (the one place in our school that had cable TV).
I'm fearful that we've squandered quite a bit of the opportunity (not the right word, I know) that the tragedy bought us in the following months and years. Instead of making amends with the world, I fear we've gotten involved in three endless wars and brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy, both fiscally and morally.
As one commenter put it, in perhaps the most chillingly precognitive Slashdot comment of all time: "The biggest casualty will probably be our Constitution. Whenever a tragedy likes this occurs, the government always announces a get tough on terrorists policy that will have no effect on the psychopaths who do this, but will severely limit our rights.
"The huge loss of life is bad enough. The subsequent loss of what truly represents what this country stands for will be intolerable."
It wasn't even a secret. British journalist Robert Fisk interviewed Osama bin Laden several years before the Twin Towers attacks. He stated that his aim was to draw the U.S. into a protracted war in Afghanistan, one which would last a long time, ultimately leading to defeat of the U.S. - just like the way they beat the Soviets. He understood that, as with the Soviet campaign, they could not hope to win a conventional war. He also named the U.S. Somalia experience as being an influence. When U.S. marines went to Somalia Osama sent some Afghan Mujahideen fighters to battle them. They reported back that the American soldiers had fled the country after a few short battles; they believed that the Americans were not ready to fight against a long-term guerilla campaign. And why did Osama want to fight the U.S.? Two of the important factors he mentioned in these interviews were U.S. troops entering Saudi Arabia, and U.S. sanctions against Iraq leading to the indirect deaths of 600,000 Iraqi children. Fisk also pointed out that some of the first anti-U.S. operations - the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which had been blamed on simple "hatred of America" by the western media, occurred on the eighth anniversary of the arrival of the first US troops in Saudi Arabia in 1990.
The Onion has an article joking that Americans enjoy remembering 9/11 more than we enjoy remembering the 10 years since. It's true, and you can hardly blame us. On 9/11, despite the pain and fear, we saw scenes from around the world of people weeping along with us, or standing firmly in solidarity with us, because they saw this attack on the US as an attack on civilized people everywhere. Sure, there were some assholes cheering here and there, but there was also the Queen of England having "The Star Spangled Banner" played at Buckingham Palace, and countless makeshift US flags and signs saying things like "we are all Americans today" being waved at vigils in the streets around the world.
Then George W. Bush – with the support of the American people – pissed all over that goodwill, to the point that the Nobel committee eagerly handed the Peace Prize to the new guy when "regime change" finally happened.
I wrote this on 9/12/2001. I sent it in to the local newspaper, and they ran it on the front page of the Opinion section the following Sunday, next to a big picture of Osama Bin Laden and an article about what America would do in response. As my words were being read, they were already being ignored. Fear and Hatred won.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The Russians had publicity in the west against them so they pulled out of a war that was nothing but negative press to them.
The US was making that bad press and funding the war against the russians.
The Russians may be laughing their ass of at the mess the US has gotten itself into BUT they are not going to aid the taliban just to piss of the Americans.
The US may not be winning the war but they sure as hell are thinning out the Taliban. There is reason the Taliban is using more and more terror tactics in Afghanistan, they are running out of capable recruits.
What you may not have heard is that just after 9/11 the Taliban fielded a fairly capable army and was using traditional war strategies against the Afghani government. They are no longer capable of it. That is not to say the war has been won but you got to have a LOT of hatred to join up for what is practically a suicide mission. Suicide bombers you say? Count them. They have a horrific impact but are totally incapable of being used in any sensible military tactics. Post 9/11 people feared an uprising, the beginning of a new war... but where is the hatred? Just recently Libyan's were shown kissing the US flag for the aid in helping liberate their country. Oh, the US involvement there is far from clean BUT Osama cried for Muslims around the world to rally to a common cause and for 9 years, the answer was silence. There are plenty of individuals with enough hatred but terrorism is hardly new. IRA, Basks, German radicals. There are always going to be people who want to force their minority opinion through violence.
The western world has payed dearly for the war but the price payed on the side of the extremists is far far higher. Their leadership is in ruins, new plots are half-assed and stopped routinely and worsed off all. When the uprising finally started, it was peaceful and directed against Muslim rulers with so far precious little input from extreme Islam. This is not what Osama was dreaming off.
And those who cry about how the west is fighting itself... metal detectors? They have been at airports for decades. Just because the US allowed internal flights to be boarded from the runway by anybody taking anything they wanted doesn't mean that this is the norm. I was search 30 years ago on a boat trip to the UK for crying out load. Maybe the US just needed a wake-up call in general.
As for hatred against the US? There seems to be more hatred amongst rich white boys from the American suburbs then say in Egypt or Tunisia or Libya. Remember the protests in Iran. The ones happening in Syria? Against the evil imparislists! Oh, wait no... they are protesting against their own leaders, leaders who try to use the US as the great Satan and their people are rejecting it.
No, 9/11 saw big changes in the world but I doubt Osama is very pleased with them... even if he was still alive.
But kiddies like you wish to see the world burn and use their own fears to put hatred into other peoples mind, even if those other people got far more important things to worry about. Read the real news for a change, not Fox or the BBC, both are extremists wishing to color the news to suit their agenda but the real news. What real people living real life are thinking.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The best writing I've seen on 9/11 was by Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter knew how the US government worked, and foresaw just about everything that has happened since right from the start:
The trucker union, the Teamsters, has some power, but it's not even enough to protect their pensions - let alone force the US to choose roads and airports over rails. The power is in the vehicle makers: car and truck makers, airplane makers. And of course the oil corps. Those corporations have been calling the shots since Henry Ford, and are the ones who tore up America's rail to replace with roads and cars. Those are the orgs that set up Houston, Oil City, the way you hate - not the unions.
You can tell me about how your family oil business knows there's so much oil left to drill, yet despite getting royalty-free drilling land practically wherever they ask, their industry doesn't drill. Except maybe when getting Federal money from the rest of us to multiply their profits. The actual unlimited supply is self-serving lies about where oil is or isn't coming from oil companies with agendas to maximize profit by increasing demand and decreasing supply. I know they're your family, but if they're like mine or any other family I know, they'll tell you the same lies they tell themselves that protect what they do that they know is wrong.
I can tell you from direct experience that NYC building owners don't invest in their operating capital even when the ROI is, as I told you, close to 100% or better, except when the government both forces them and pays them to do it. It doesn't make sense. But that's because economics is not like electronics, where consistency and actual value rule the actors. Economics is a measure of people's exchanges of value with each other and their environment. Which means it's governed by human social psychology, not primarily by the potential and limits of the material being exchanged. Despite their deserved reputation of being the worlds most determined capitalists, NYC building owners refuse to make rational investment decisions all the time. It's not because of property/zoning laws/regulations. It's because they are used to increasing profits only by cutting immediate costs (like cheaper maintenance workers) or by reducing the supply of real estate against the constantly increasing demand for it. Purely rational people would change despite what they're used to when there's double or triple digit ROIs from investing in necessary costs they have to pay anyway (boiler upgrades and fuel). Building owners don't change, because they wait for everyone around them to change, or to be forced to change, or to be paid to change - or all of them usually.
Again, this is not some kind of guess at what might happen. Also, your statement that the rich in NYC are taxed so much that they flee to other states is just a lie. Except for the extremely rich who move across the state line to Connecticut. It's not that they're taxed so much in NYC, but that they're taxed so little in CT. So when rivers overflow in predictable storms, they're surrounded by a moat their private airlifts have to get across with food and diesel for their generators. Because without taxes and working government their infrastructure, like roads, powerlines and drainage, can't withstand the changes their businesses are making. They are the tiny minority. NYC is full of the richest people in the world, not despite the taxation but because of the services it pays for. And every day more rich people come here, to pay the taxes and consume the services.
FYI, NASA is not a good example to contest government leading energy efficiency, because building efficiency is not rocket science. NASA as run by either a Republican president or Congress or both for the past couple of generations is like any other large government procurement system: corporate welfare for those who sell by the part# through their DC lobbyists. NYC law, like practically all energy efficiency regulations these days, requires only performance standards and energy improvement results (or just standardized reporting in physical units).
I'm always fascinated by the people whose entire career
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make install -not war
you got it twisted son. the war against 9/11 was not iraq. its afghanistan. as a current service member, i absolutely abhor what happened iraq. that was not our fight to begin with and never was. but afghanistan absolutely was the fight for 9/11 and continues to be. as long as those in the middle east continue to wish death against those of us in ANY western nation, then i will continue to fight, till death does me part. for it is not only the sovereignty for our nations, but the right for us to leave in peace without fearing a terrorist attack that i will continue to fight against those that wish harm upon my friends, family, and brethren.