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September 10, 2011 04:48 PM UTC

9/11 10th Anniversary Discussion Thread

  • 36 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols



Photo by Colorado Pols

“Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small.”

–J. Ruth Gendler

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36 thoughts on “9/11 10th Anniversary Discussion Thread”

  1. Sept. 12, 2001: We’ll go forward from this moment

    They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

    You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

    What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward’s attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

    Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.

    Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.

    Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

      1. The needless war in Iraq and all that has followed, not only unfunded but waged concurrent with tax cuts, unprecedented in wartime, certainly contributed to the economic woes we face, even if the greed and recklessness our own elite financial class, who contributed nothing during the wars, bears the greater responsibility.  

        All in all, Bin Laden had every reason to take pleasure in the what has become of us in the post 9/11 world. We are considerably poorer and more divided,  burdend with crumbling schools and infrastructure, less freedom and fewer guaranteed liberties due to precisely the increased fear the writer says wasn’t achieved. Anti-Muslim rhetoric from public figures has become as virulent as the racism and anti-Semitism that preceded it.

        The biggest blows to his cause came not from our reacting by invading Iraq, which recruited thousands to it, but from ordinary people in Egypt and Libya showing that there is an alternative to El Qaeda for those who hope to end oppressive dictatorships, often supported by the west.  

        The bringing together was remarkably short-lived. First responders are still being denied needed health care in spite of being haled as heroes.  Vets are still struggling for treatment and jobs in spite of all the magnets declaring support and ground zero still isn’t rebuilt.  I’d say the triumphal tone of the article is more than a little off base.  

        While we honor the true heroes and mourn the victims, the reality of the results of that day bear little resemblance to this presentation of them.  The described silver lining is largely non-existent.

        1. should have been spent:

          ThinkProgress has assembled ten alternative policies that the United States could’ve pursued instead with this money that has been spent on the wars so far:

          – Provide 63.3 Million Scholarships For University Students Every Year For Ten Years

          – Give 58.9 Million Children Low-Income Health Care Every Year For Ten Years

          – Give 23.6 Million People Access To Low-Income Healthcare Every Year For Ten Years

          – Provide 20.68 Million Students With Pell Grants Worth $5,500 Every Year For Ten Years

          – Provide 15.12 Million Head Start Slots For Children Every Year For Ten Years

          – Provide Veterans Administration Care For 14.7 Million Military Veterans Every Year For Ten Years

          – Hire 2.01 Million Firefighters Every Year For Ten Years

          – Hire 1.76 Million Elementary School Teachers Every Year For Ten Years

          – Hire 1.73 Million Police Officers Every Year For Ten Years

          – Retrofit 69.4 Million Households For Wind Power Every Year For Ten Years

          – Retrofit 26 Million Households For Solar Photovoltaic Energy Every Year For Ten Years

          These numbers reflect only the monetary costs of the wars. The human costs are much more difficult to calculate, both because it is it impossible to quantify the value of a human life and because calculating the death toll among Iraqis and Afghans is very difficult. But over 6,400 American soldiers have perished in Iraq, Afghanistan, or supporting theaters and death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan combined are in the hundreds of thousands.

          The cost in blood and treasure of these wars since 9/11 demonstrate that they enacted a heavy toll on our country, and this data should inform our actions in the future.

           

                1. http://thinkprogress.org/secur…

                  What I think has been pretty consistently been contributed here over the last few years.

                  I first started taking part in CoPols when I was SO mad and upset with GWB and his crazy lies and anti-American actions. I have consistently been a voice for peace. Many have called me anti-military. I’ll accept that as accurate. The military is a brainwashed, indoctrinated bunch of well intentioned people who follow orders. I’m more about those who give the orders.

                  Some call me brave. I realize the popular culture reference. I also realize that JFK was brave to try and go against the military-industrial complex. My friends call me fearless. I’ll accept that, too.

                  As has been mentioned here, I survived 11 foster families that started at the age of 4 when I lost my mother. Since then, I have lost my biological father, my younger brother and my middle sister. There are three remaining of the original family of 7. I’m relatively young, but know loss, as well as you do. Mine is different. Even I can’t imagine yours. And my imagination is top of the line.

                  My ideas? They should be in a diary. But I think most here know me from my postings/sharings. We are deeply in overshoot ecologically, economically, population wise, resource wise, etc. The future, from every source I read, is fragile.

                  I have lived in deep wilderness on nothing but my wits, shooting and fishing ability, and gardening skills. I’m always ready to do that again.

                  Death doesn’t scare me or concern me.

                  I will do anything to protect my wife and children.  

  2. has been a disaster.

    A decade of needless wars. The loss of so many of our freedoms. The TSA. No one this week has been touting how much more secure we are, quite the contrary. Trillions of preciouos dollars and thousand of precious lives lost or maimed. A culture of fear and division like I’ve never seen.

    This countrys response was bungled in epic proportions.

  5. the Flight 93 memorial dedication in Penn., it would be worth watching the speeches that will surely be posted.  President Bush’s sincerity, President Clinton’s ability to grasp the moment and VP Biden’s close are well worth watching when they are put on-line. Even Chris Mathews (MSNBC) was subdued at the end by the genuine solidarity that totally lacked any political partisanship.  

     

  8. A excerpt from the speech  that President Kennedy was to deliver in Dallas the day he was shot.

    We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice – the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: “except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

  9. On Hallowed Ground

    So we need to remember this: The heroes of Flight 93 were people on a plane. Their glory is being paid for, day after day, by grief. Tom Burnett does not belong to the nation. He is, first and foremost, Deena Burnett’s husband, and the father of their three daughters. Any effort we make to claim him as ours is an affront to those who loved him, those he loved.

    He is not ours.

    And yet … and yet he is a hero to us, he and the other people on Flight 93. We want to honor them, just as we want to honor the firefighters, police officers and civilians at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon who risked, and sometimes gave, their lives to try to rescue others. We want to honor them for what they did, and for reminding us that this nation is nowhere near as soft and selfish as we had come to believe.

    We want to honor them.

  10. On Sept. 11, 2001, Penney and her commanding officer were ordered to stop United Airlines Flight 93 from hitting a target in the nation’s capital. But they didn’t have any missiles or even ammunition. So Col. Marc Sasseville decided they would use their own planes to bring it down.

    He planned to strike the plane’s cockpit. She opted to go for its tail, Penney said.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

    Just one of so many stories from 9/11 but one that has words to remember.

    “We saw so much of the best of ourselves come out that day, with strangers helping strangers and many courageous acts,” she said. “We remembered something more important than ourselves, and that was the community to which we belonged.”

    1. Really, why should anyone read this?

      (Frankly, I was unable to read it through, what with the godawful and excessive use of bold and italics and clever quotes. Then there is all the flashing ads for gold and survival gear. I don’t stay long on websites or TV & radio programs or pages in the newspaper whose primary purpose seems to be selling me crap I don’t want or need.)

      What I got from the brief bit I read was that this was a diatribe by yet another under-achiever trying to pawn his failures off on “the system.”

      The piece appears to be all about the author (and fellow conspirators who have similarly failed to meet their potential but want to blame their failures on faceless supposed conspirators that must be part of “the system.”) I don’t see that it is likely to teach me anything about where we’ve been, where we could be going, or even any deeper understanding about who we are.

      This author comes across, to me, as yet another individual who lacks ability to empathize, but does know how to play the victim card. Even though he lacks empathy, and probably any professional expertise, he has a very inflated conception of his skills to psychoanalyze others.

      In other words, this author comes across as a standard issue tea partier.

      Again, I ask, brave Sir Robin, why do you think anyone should take even a few seconds on this crap?

      1. I think the message about how fear drives us to a herd mentality, and how casus belli are so regularly used to justify wars and so effectively flame the publics passion for wars, is an appropriate use of space on this 10th anniversary of 911.

  12. “This is my song, O God of all the nations,

    a song of peace for lands afar and mine;

    this is my home, the country where my heart is;

    here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:

    but other hearts in other lands are beating

    with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

    “My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

    and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

    but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

    and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:

    O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

    a song of peace for their land and for mine.”

    (From the Finlandia hymn)

    1. seem to think that it’s unpatriotic to acknowledge that other people love their countries as much as we do, are as justified as we are in doing so and that their hopes and dreams are as meaningful and count as much with God, if you are a believer, as do ours.    Even sadder than that, we have those who think that only parts of our own country are “God’s country” and legitimately American, with everything outside of that tiny parochial sphere being other, inferior, to be feared and viewed with enmity.

      But love and patriotism need not be viewed in zero sum terms.  What a lovely hymn.  

      1. all it takes is a little foreign travel and you find people just as happy, just as much in love with their way of life, and, even if many don’t enjoy the same gun rights that we enjoy, they feel just as free as we proclaim we are.

        1. could shift emphasis from looking back to our losses,not that that hasn’t been right and fitting these past ten years, to turning to the future and honoring the day, the victims, the survivors and the heroes by vowing to nurture all that the world’s people have in common and that can bind us together in peace and good will; our essential humanity, love of our beautiful world and dreams of good lives and a good future for all of our children.  

            1. that we should think of all of our personal losses, all of our county’s losses (on 9/11, in Vietnam and Korea, in the World Wars, in the Civil War, etc), and all the world’s losses in violent conflict, and in other ways.  And by keeping these losses in mind always, perhaps we can find ways to move toward more commonality and less conflict – and fewer losses from violence.  It may be more of a challenge than humankind is capable of meeting, but I believe it’s worth striving for.  

    3. One of the issues discussed above in the “everyone should read” post of mine is how, in order to go to war, whole groups of people must be dehumanized and demonized. Your wonderful hymn speaks against that.

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