Any thoughts on the Anniversary of 9/11?

[DrummerDeanna]

Originally Posted by Johnny Stew

My thoughts on the eve of the fifth anniversary are the same as my thoughts for the past four... we haven't learned a single thing since 9/11/01. We're not better people -- we haven't learned how precious life is, or that we shouldn't be so cold and callous towards others. We're still just as self-centered, narrow-minded, materialistic and arrogant as ever before. Perhaps worse.

We haven't learned anything from those lives lost so tragically, and that's the greatest tragedy of all.

"I cannot pretend that the heartache falls away...."

A true and sad point. And I am guilty of this too. You know, after seeing the Movie "World Trade Center" I was struck with how people came through for each other - that movie just touched my heart so much and made me want to do better...it reminded me of the wake-up call 9/11 gave me as well. To try and do better.

Sadly you're right - people have learned very little since 9/11. It's become such a distorted political tool - it makes me sick. Just the sheer number or people who STILL believe that sadaam and the Iraq war are linked to 9/11. It's alarming.

[The Tower]

The terrorists and those that were behind them accomplished their task and succeeded.

A small group of individuals killed thousands of people and scared the bejeezus out of hundreds of thousands of people, which allowed an evil administration to take advantage of that fear and kill tens of thousands more innocent lives, with the added bonus of majorly disrupting and destabilizing a section of the world that was already shaky to begin with.

There were terrorists before September 11th and there are terrorists after that date. Anyone who allowed the horror of what happened to convert that horror into retribution played exactly into the designs of the terrorists. The only way for extremists to bring in more followers is to have something drastic to fight against. Now there are many people out there that now have a reason to do exactly what the terrorists did on September 11th.

Violence begets violence. It's a never ending cycle. As it continues, the adversaries just sink lower and lower.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by DrummerDeanna

. . . Just the sheer number or people who STILL believe that sadaam and the Iraq war are linked to 9/11. It's alarming.

I know - and that is IMO because most, but certainly not all, Americans do not care which Muslims pay for 9/11. Sad - very true.

I mean if we extrapolate that logic, then all Christians are terrorists beased on their relentless attacks on the Muslims over the last say three thousand years.

That mirror is hard to look at when the refelection is not one you want to see.

[estranged4life]

the local news (KWTV Channel 9) was reporting from the National Memorial in downtown OKC and at the "Survivor tree" were a few visitors from NYC (In the past I have seen NYPD & FDNY members at the Memorial)

Tonight there will be the "Freedom Walk" in downtown, but we'll miss it since Deb has to work tonight, otherwise we would be down there to participate.


"We'll never forget..."


Terrorism Prevention - MIPT - The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism located in Oklahoma City

http://www.mipt.org/

[DavidMn]

I still remember waking up for work that morning and hearing the news on the radio.

[mikeschmike]

I remember in the weeks after the attack that people DID come together, and were united if just for a little while. It was moving to see all of the people waving flags on overpasses and bridges, the gathering of great singers and artists raising money for these lost souls, and a feeling that we would get through this and be a great nation once more. Sadly, 9/11 is nothing but a political pawn these days. It gets brought up in debate and campaign slogans to inspire fear, and to put blame on one political party or another.

Stew is right, we haven't learned anything.

[irishgrl]

If we havent learned anything, I think its due in large part to the inept leadership, the wanton waste of resources just to grab at another country's oil.
The Vulcans were willing to commit any crime, allow any horror, subvert any process, smear any dissent to realize their goals. (The Vulcans are the Bush/Cheney inner circle)

I personally think Americans as a whole ARE capable of rising above as long as we have the right leader in place to be the best kind of example (see Brian J's 9/11 alternate reality thread).

No innocent life should be lost, be it Muslim/Christian/Jew.

[jkmaletic]

I remember trying to process it all, as it was all going down, as I was on my way to work. While at work, I remember thinking, should I even BE at work right now?? But I stayed, as most of us who had jobs did. I remember feeling scared, sad, and angry all at the same time. I had to fly shortly after it happened (to go see a Stevie show) and I had my doctor prescribe me something for nerves for the flight. It didn't help much. I remember the nightmares I would wake up to at night. I remember looking out my window everytime a plane would be flying a little too low.

I still have deep sadness about all the tragedy of 9-11. I WANT to go see the movies that have been coming out about it, but I know I wouldn't be able to sit through them without crying almost the entire time. The pain is so strong, isn't it? I can't even IMAGINE what it would be like to have actually lost someone as a result of those horrific attacks. God Bless them.

Today Howard Stern re-broadcast his show from 9-11-01 that he stayed on-air for, despite the attacks going on in their city. It brought so much back - the confusion of why the first plane hit, then the anger when the second one hit. And then the sadness and anger as the rest unfolded. I think we all pretty much had the same kinds of emotions going on during the whole thing.

Is our country safer now than before 9-11? I don't feel it is.

~jamie

[Nixxxed]

OUCH:

"This Hole in the Ground"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

[irishgrl]

That was a blistering masterpiece of truth telling. Right ON Keith!
particularly pithy excerpts:

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Nixxxed

OUCH:

"This Hole in the Ground"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

Wow! That was cathartic. Matt Lauer gave it to him pretty good this morning. He didn't even give Chimpy a chance to sit down. It gets really good at about six minutes in to the clip.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/default.cdn...splaymode/1157

[irishgrl]

First Keith Olberman, now Matt Lauer? wazzup?? (not that Im complaining mind you)

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Wow! That was cathartic. Matt Lauer gave it to him pretty good this morning. He didn't even give Chimpy a chance to sit down. It gets really good at about six minutes in to the clip.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/default.cdn...splaymode/1157

What, Lauer growing a pair? Whoa. I must see this. He used to be edgy in his younger days but got all soft.

[skcin]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

What, Lauer growing a pair? Whoa. I must see this. He used to be edgy in his younger days but got all soft.

Maybe when Katie left he reclaimed his balls from her mantle?

[becca]

Hey y'all.
I know this is a bit late but wanted to add that I think I've pesonally learned a ton since 2001. I've learned to put it in perspective better for one thing, which is kind of sad in a way. Almost 3,000 deaths directly from the terror attacks... almost 3,000 coalition soldiers in the middle east, a lot more civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, all eclipsed by African Aids deaths. Things happen with nobody videotaping them in this world.
I don't think people should ever forget either. The line where dwelling too much on an event measured in an hour and a half skews your view of things is up to each person to measure. If the English in London during the blitz had stopped everything whenever someone died in a terrible way I think they'd be speaking German these days. I am liking that No.7 is open now and that they are dreaming new dreams and building new buildings on the site.
The best documentary I saw was the two hour Frontline from a year afterward about people's questions and doubts about faith and hope. I didn't catch the CBS one unfortunately.