Official 9-11 Thread

And in one of the greatest displays of twisted logic I have seen, which illustrates the dire need for tort reform:

Crashing of hijacked jet ruled a ?foreseeable risk?

NEW YORK, Sept. 9 ? The crashing of a hijacked jetliner was the kind of ?foreseeable risk? that the airline industry should have guarded against, a judge ruled Tuesday as he permitted lawsuits related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to proceed.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said that while it may be true that terrorists had never deliberately flown airplanes into buildings, ?airlines reasonably could foresee that crashes causing death and destruction on the ground was a hazard that would arise should hijackers take control of a plane.?

American and United Airlines, the Boeing Co. and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey all are named in the lawsuits.

If you think airline travel is restricitive now, what do you think is going to be the result of this decision?

Airlines are going to have to guard against every single type of contingency or disaster.

I suppose we can kiss popular airline travel goodbye.

It is going to become either prohibitively expensive for any company to operate in the US, or ticket prices are going to be so high that only the extremely wealthy will be able to afford them..

 

You know, I'm looking at all of the stuff that has happened to this country since 9/11 and I can't help but wonder if maybe, in some twisted way, the terrorists did win.

Travel has been crippled. We are even more polorized by party than ever before. We are fighting in wars which are unpopular here and abroad. We are trading liberty for security.

And if this is true, the tragedy is far worse than the 3000 people who senselessly lost their life on that day.

 

...Except that the list you provide, even granting half or full-truth to the claims, don't really mesh with the stated goals of al Qaida and the fantasy-ideology of Islamism. Losing in Afghanistan and Iraq, having their own governments come down on them, well over 1/2 of its leadership imprisoned/killed...and nary a bloodbath or momentum for 12th century Islamic caliphates or retreat from the Middle East by the west and western values. Or even the destruction of the zionist conspiracy.

So to say that maybe the 'Terrorists won' is trite and misses the point.

Certainly we need to watch our liberties (and there are threads to discuss this), but to claim that our free society and travel have been seriously infringed upon is quite a sheltered outlook, and comments about partisan US politics seems to forget the 2000-1 party warfare that preceeded 9-11.

 

Good point, I will amend.

Maybe the terrorists wounded us, but didn't "win" I still can't help feel like we are walking down a bad path that started on 9/11. That saddens me.

 

2 years since 9-11 tomorrow

has the world changed since then?

not really except get more violent

 

not really except get more violent

Not really.




Anata Baka?!

 

How do you mean more violent? ?

 

How is it getting more violent?

Our "president" is invading countries that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Even though we won that "war"...many of our troops over there are still dying.

 

Just because we finally realized there was violence in the world, doesn't mean the world is more violent now, or that the U.S. is responsible for it.

 

So you are proposing that there should only be a trade off where violence is concerned?

Action should only be taken when displaced by inaction?

Do the 1,000's of Iraqis who were being killed every year by the Baathist party deserve a say?

I still don't follow..

You realize that there are 33 current situations that meet the UN defintion of armed conflict between 2 or more nation/states..

The US has a direct role in 4 of those...

Since its inception, the UN has documented 153 incidents of armed conflict, or a little more than 2 a year, every year since it was created..

That doesn't even include small scale incidents..

But somehow you are blaming Bush for violence in the world? That seems to be either incredibly shortsighted, or at least unwilling to look at the nature of the world from anything other than an Western view...

 

9-11 andd what happened afterward has made me lose a lot of respect for america's actions in general

and the attitudes of some americans on hered does not help

it's two years since today, has anthing changed? will anything change? i hope the world will eventualy stop becoming a smoking gun but i;m not that optimistic
BTW, i think and so do many other Australians that i tak to, that Bush is the biggest ****er that ever walked the earth.

 

Change how?

And I don't know how strong the term "****er" is, but whatever attitude you are generalizing Americans with, I haven't seen any insult your government with it...

 

for a definition of the word, which is a bit to derigitory to put on here, visit this link and look it up

i know i'm generalisting, but everyone is these days, i still find it amazing fow much influence the media has on the way we think. there are differen versions of the truth it seems

 

Just realize that such a determination is a generalization, and there are facts for every situation..

 

i couldn't agree with you more Mr44

 

HOW NOT TO REMEMBER SEPTEMBER 11TH

Unless I have badly mistaken the mood of everyone I know and almost everyone I meet, practically nobody has any particular use for the second anniversary that will soon be upon us. But it is vaguely felt in many quarters that something ought to be done by way of an observance. The first mentality is in my opinion the right one, even if people feel bad about harboring it, and the second one is defensible but somewhat sickly and likely to suffer increasingly from diminishing returns.

IN MY SMALL WAY, I tried to anticipate this two years ago. I didn?t at all mind what some critics loftily dismissed as ?flag-waving.? Indeed I was surprised that there wasn?t more of it than there was. But I never displayed a flag myself and argued quietly against putting one up over the entrance to the building where I live. This was for a simple reason: How will it look when the effort tapers off? There?s nothing more dispiriting than a drooping and neglected flag and nothing more lame than the sudden realization that the number of them so proudly flourished has somehow diminished. (The one over my building went away, nobody can quite remember how or when, and it hasn?t been restored.) In the meantime, I refused to accept an invitation to a memorial service for the many murdered British citizens, which seemed to me to miss the same point in the same way.

There were other reasons to oppose flagification. (Very many of the immediate victims were not American, for example, and most of those murdered and enslaved by Islamic fascists have themselves been Muslims.) I was glad for similar reasons when the order was announced that ?coalition? flags would not be flown in Iraq. What is required is a steady, unostentatious stoicism, made up out of absolute, cold hatred and contempt for the aggressors, and complete determination that their defeat will be utter and shameful. This doesn?t require drum rolls or bagpipes or banners. The French had a saying during the period when the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were lost to them: ?Always think of it. Never speak of it.? (Yes, Virginia, we can learn things from the French, even if not from Monsieur Chirac.)

This steely injunction is diluted by Ground Zero kitsch or by yellow-ribbon type events, which make the huge mistake of marking the event as a ?tribute? of some sort to those who happened to die that day. One must be firm in insisting that these unfortunates, or rather their survivors, have no claim to ownership. They stand symbolically, as making the point that theocratic terrorism murders without distinction. But that?s it. The time to commemorate the fallen is, or always has been, after the war is over. This war has barely begun. The printing of crayon daubs by upset schoolchildren and the tussle over who gets what from the compensation slush fund are strictly irrelevant and possibly distracting. Dry your eyes, sister. You, too, brother. Stiffen up.

I think about it every day, without fail, even though it?s difficult (because of the aforementioned and enfeebling ?sensitivities?) to see a replay of the packed civilian jets slamming into the towers or of the men and women who jumped, in flames, to their deaths. It?s perhaps a little easier for me to be reminded than it is for some others: My apartment has a direct view of the flight path to Washington National Airport, and I go past the White House or the Capitol several times a week. But never ? quite literally never ? without imagining how things would be if that flight from Newark hadn?t been delayed and if the United Airlines passengers hadn?t got the word in time and decided to make a fight of it.

If our Congress or our executive mansion had been immolated that morning, would some people still be talking as if there was a moral equivalence between the United States and the Taliban? Would they still be prattling as if the whole thing was an oblique revenge for the Florida recount? Of course they

 

Essay from 9-16-01
109 Minutes

...And the aftertaste of the bitter pill of my character flaw was the sad realization that such angst was Osama's primary objective. Buildings and airplanes and, yes, even 6,000 lives, were just the collateral damage. Despite the metaphoric value of last week's bricks and mortar targets, the real core of the Western economy isn't a skyscraper or a government building. It's the can-do swagger of the American worker. And bin Laden's soldiers cut deep into that swagger.

So he won.

Or did he?

I thought so ... until Friday night.

Friday night I watched a Jane Pauley interview with the family of Jeremy Glick. Jeremy Glick was a 31-year-old who flew as a passenger on commercial airplanes for a living...As the interview unfolded, I realized something I didn't know before: Jeremy Glick and the people on United Flight 93, bound from Newark to San Francisco, knew what was happening on the ground.

...Jeremy Glick then told her that the passengers were about to take a vote and decide if they should rush the hijackers and attempt to foul up whatever evil plans they had.

He put down the phone and a commotion was heard by those on the other end of the line. Then nothing. A dead line. An aborted missile launch against the town where I live.

That was 10:37 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11... just 109 minutes after Mohammed Atta rammed the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism -- the most deadly yet invented -- came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective.

Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted, and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes.

And in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn't a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.

United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. It did not terrorize a city, despite the best drawn plans of the world's most innovative madmen. Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who'd had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction.

And the next time a hijacker full of hate pulls the same stunt with a single knife, he'll get the same treatment and meet the same result as those on United Flight 93. Dead, yes. Murderous, yes. But successful? No.

So I think the answer I come to is "yes, but at least not for long."

They did whip us...But they only had us on the mat for 109 minutes.

 

All I have to ask is do you want a safe country or another 9/11? I would not mind standing inline in the airport if that means getting on a safe plane.

 

I do not have time to read the whole thread, so forgive me if this has already been brought up...

Is anyone else annoyed by patriotic bandwagons? It took 4 plane crashes and well over 3,000 deaths within a few short hours for people to show pride in their country. It shouldn't take something like that; people should always be patriotic.

Any flags that I may have made more visible were already in my room, just moved to a different location. Instead of being on one wall, they were on another.

And now, only two years later, people want a memorial. Do they want it just for the sake of having one? It's not like war memorials went up two years later... the Vietnam one took about 15 years, IIRC (though there was a lot of tension there).

And I've heard some people talk of wanting it to be a holiday... WHAT? Why would someone want to celebrate it? The most we could do holiday-wise is to make another Memorial Day, which IMO would be pretty pointless.

People should always be patriotic and supportive of their country, no matter if they like the government or not... there are soldiers fighting for our freedom, and people sit and worry about the California governor election.

I guess I'm just sick of hearing all this 9/11 stuff... I think people should just move on with their lives... I'm just as sad as everyone else that so many people died that day, but I know how to move on and not jump on the 9/11 bandwagon.

 

I agree with ousley.

After the attacks, it seemed like you couldn't look anywhere without seeing an American flag or a 'Proud to be an American' or 'God Bless America' sign or something else equally patriotic.

Are the people who buy these things saying that they weren't proud Americans or that God should not have blessed America before that September day?

Frankly, it was a good idea at the time, because after such an attack, we'd like to present to others that we are supportive of America and not ashamed to be citizens of this country, but it's been overdone. The number of flags and patriotic items in my own house (purchased by my mother) is starting to make me a little ill inside.

I'm not saying that the sight of the American flag sickens me, but seeing three or four or five in the same room is overkill.

Before the attacks, it seemed like we knew we were Americans, and we weren't ashamed of what this country has done, but after, a lot of people jumped on the patriotism bandwagon. The terms 'un-American' and 'unpatriotic' seemed (at least to me) to make a comeback.

We should be proud of our country no matter what happens. We should be proud in both victory and defeat, and despite our mistakes, proud to come from the country we do.