Open Thread: September 11th
Remembering 9/11 at the Trade Center Site – Photo by Zach D Roberts
It’s been 12 years since a group of Saudi men took two planes and flew them into the World Trade Center Towers. It’s sparked two wars in the Middle East, over five thousand dead Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis.
Bin Laden was killed… eventually.
Now with drones flying in the sky over Yemen, dropping bombs on sheepherders and JSOC killing wedding parties, we stand at the precipice of a new war – one with Syria – yet another Middle Eastern country.
We considered an attack by commercial aircraft an act of war, but our Secretary of State refuses to call an aerial bombardment of Syria by the same name.
Discuss.
Since this is an open thread, here goes one of the most disturbing, disgusting news stories ever. Poor Linda:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/09/09/60964.htm
Benlomond2 hit the nail on the head. The bad guys won that day. They have us chasing our own tails now. The TSA spends hundreds of millions annually chasing bogeymen while our personal freedoms are eroded.
That was a horrible day in 2001. But we have killed over 100,000 of each other with handguns and assault weapons since that day. Our country has a tolerance for gun violence for some strange reason.
It truly is a troubled world we live in. For all his short comings, Rodney King said it best. “Can’t we all just get along.” Unfortunately, the answer is no.
That September morning in 2001 involved more than just the Twin Towers and US citizens.
9/11” is shorthand for four coordinated terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, that occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,977 people.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists from the Islamist extremist group, al-Qaeda, hijacked four commercial airplanes, deliberately crashing two of the planes into the upper floors of the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex and a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. The Twin Towers ultimately collapsed because of the damage sustained from the impacts and the resulting fires. After learning about the other attacks, passengers on the fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, fought back, and the plane was crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania about 20 minutes by air from Washington, DC.
The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people from 93 nations. 2,753 people were killed in New York, 184 people were killed at the Pentagon and 40 people were killed on Flight 93.
Source: http://www.911memorial.org/faq-about-911
We, as Americans, tend to forget that…if we ever even knew. Or even cared to ask. beth.
[As a point of reference, there are +/- 162 nations in the world; “93 nations” would represent a tad over 57% of them. Over half the nations in the world lost at least one citizen to those hijackers that day. b.]
since this is an open thread :
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130911/former-alaska-rep-alan-dick-ordered-repay-state-18000-ethics-violations
sometimes, a few times, once in a while, every now and again the right things happen to the right people
🙂
we lost….. on so many different fronts… our economy, our right to privacy, our right to not be searched, our young men and women, our government instilling fear in us as we traveled around our own country, our own voice in the political arena lost to corporations making obscene war profits, the world fearing us rather than welcoming us ( thank you Bush Doctrine)…we lost and the road back will take generations to recover, if ever…
But we haven’t bombed Syria and, if things work out, we never will. I am very grateful that the world’s leaders are now working together to bring Pres. Assad in line. Remember that Putin first categorically denied that chemical weapons were used and now he is brokering a deal with Assad to get the chemical weapons out of Syria. The French, who did not want to go along with doing anything to Syria, are bringing the matter to the United Nations where it needs to be. So, we should pray that all of this stays intact and that diplomacy will prevail. It is not a time for hysteria – on any side of the question – just very careful vigilance and hope.
I remember the horror that we all felt on 9/11/01, no matter what our personal political beliefs were. Unfortunately that horror was used to connive the American people into waging war with the wrong country. None of us wants that to happen again. We have a chance to work things out differently now . . . .
Amen, beaglemom, amen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(mikey- where are you? missing you! )
My friend,I have been spending too much of my time at this site and needed a breather. Tuning in everyday,many times a day has me deeply depressed. So I am going to stay off the “Flats” for the forseeable future. I’ll miss each and everyone of my friends here. Has to be done. Keep fighting for what is right. 🙂
I understand.
I do not like that you are depressed .
I’m not so sure I’m fighting anything but my own windmills and jousting with shadows but I shall keep plugging away.
Miss you.
Take very best of care!
Smile an extra smile for grand girly of Pi who called tonight full of excitement that she will be an angel in the Nutcracker this year- is the closest to an angel I shall ever be 😉
I was here in NYC 12 years ago, and I’m still here. Standing on my rooftop, I saw one of the towers fall. I’m not certain to this day whether anyone I knew personally was inside WTC. One of these days, I’ll visit the memorial and read all the names to find out. I did know personally, although not well, a young man who died at the Pentagon. He was an artist whose opening was held at a friend’s gallery. That friend’s birthday is September 11th. I just got off the phone with her, wishing her a happy birthday and a terrific year, as I did 12 years ago, as I do every year.
The new building now reaches for the sky. I’m eager for its broadcast antenna and center to open, so I can once again have decent television reception. I don’t have clear line of sight to the Empire State Building, although I love the place. I’ve often taken out-of-town visitors to the observation deck on those perfect days when one can see five states. The only thing that ever got in the way was the ugly twin towers, although I’m sorry they went the way they did, and ended so many lives, as well as our way of life, perhaps forever. They stole the sun from lower Manhattan. I haven’t been back to Church and Broadway since the new tower was (essentially) completed. I’ll let you know what it’s like.
Love, health, and peace, denizens of The Mudflats.
i understand Zacks point to be : we ( our gov ) considers something that is not war to be war and something that is war to not be war, in order to justify our ( American gov ) actions.
Terrorism is not war and trying to “fight” it with war will do nothing but increase Terrorism and damage us.
WE NEEDED A LEADER:
On Sept 12th 2001 We needed a leader to help us to not give in to our desire to exact revenge with military actions,
a leader to help us fight terrorism by not being what they believed or claimed us to be ;
a leader to help us show us that living our values and principles is the way to fight terrorism ;
a leader to help us show terrorists and the world that we will not stoop to their level, that we are better than that.
We did not have that leader,
we had a man who claimed to be a christian leading a christian nation stand up and say ; revenge, retaliate, kill kill kill. and a large percentage of our population rallied to the war cry in self righteous indignation fueled by a patriotic fervor of god and country first, no questions.
we became what the self righteous indignant on the other side falsely believed us to be. we became terrorists.
We elected a new leader but he is leading us in the same direction.
We send up killing robots into the sky to kill anybody we deem, rightly or not, to be a ” Threat to national security” , no fair trial, no day in court.
Now the same we ( our gov ) is turning that eye to us the citizens, suspecting all, spying on all, vilifying any who decent.
The American people have forsaken American principles and values by letting their leaders lead them away from those principles and values, by trading them away for false sense of security against a “threat” both real and manufactured.
We find ourselves surprised that we the people are considered a threat to them the governing and WE have given them the tools to eliminate threats.
Zach- I don’t find “We considered an attack by commercial aircraft an act of war, but our Secretary of State refuses to call an aerial bombardment of Syria by the same name.” conducive to discussion, except to say that while I am seriously against military intervention In Syria, I am also seriously against conflation of disparate situations under the definition of “war” without any of the necessary corollaries to explain why it is being asserted as being such.
A whole lot of the horsepunky, death, and destruction the Iraq war brought on the Iraqi and American peoples came from accepting the SAME KIND of hasty generalizations and leap to a conclusion not supported by the particulars AND wider picture.
We need to stop that shit. Seriously.