The anniversary post is always the hardest one to write. This year, I think I won't do it. It's hard for me to contemplate, and one wants to do writing worthy of the magnitude of the thing and I'm not sure I can.
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Six Years Later
11 Sep 2007 09:01 am
Comments (20)
If I had to summarize my take on today, it would be that everything that can be said at this point has been said, and that a moment, or an hour, of silent reflection by every American on the events that day might be more appropriate.
FYI, I find that John M. Ford piece too-clever-by-half in a way that's annoying (and, frankly, bordering on offensive).
After 6 years, the situation is:
a) The US news media STILL has not told US citizens WHY the attack occurred.
b) The Big Lie Bush put out in the days after the attack has not been exposed
c) The censorship Condi Rice imposed upon our TV networks has never been challenged
d) The special interests whose acts in the Islamic world provoked Sept 11 have never been confronted
e) Because of a-d , the perps are still at large
f) Bush used Sept 11 to serve other agendas -- and has since inflicted more damage on the US than what Al Qaeda inflicted on Sept 11 --including killing more US citizens, inflicting greater damage on the US economy, and destroying the Bill of Rights
g) A large portion of the electorate is too stupid to realize a-f
h) Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh are far more prosperous than they were six years ago
i) Meanwhile, the country is almost $4 TRILLION deeper in debt
Have a nice day
james gary--
110 stories annoying? well, that's an aesthetic judgement from far left field, but de gustibus etc.
but bordering on offensive? i can't begin to imagine what you even mean by that.
are you claiming it is exploitative, or vulgar, or abusive, or what? what are you taking offense at?
i think it is a pretty moving poem, and i don't even like poetry that much. nobody has to like this poem, but your decision to be offended by it just makes me wonder if you understood the damned thing to the least little degree.
weird.
9/11 became almost immediately a political fetish. It's a measure of how marginal we are as a species that the venality of those wielding the fetish isn't treated the way that the thieves of extra rations of rice in "King Rat" were treated. In that movie, when the theft was discovered, there was an informal drumhead court-martial, and *hey presto* the thieves were buried alive, head down in maggot-filled jakes.
I agree with Jeff Davis. I was certainly a spectacular attack and deserved an immediate military response, but in the grand scale of things, it wasn't that big a deal, really. Nothing on the scale of the civil war or the influenza epidemic (or any of the other epidemics) or even Pearl Harbor. I think it was basically a lucky shot. No one could have predicted that those building would have collapsed. Of course it was terrible for the people who died or were injured and it deserves mention, but all the fake angst and scenery chewing...
What I really wish, when I see all these people speaking in professionally somber voices and tearing up about 9/11 is that there would be a thought balloon over their heads showing what they really feel.
Let me take a moment to remember two heroes: Billy Burke and Dave Fontana. Both were FDNY. I had the pleasure to work with each as a Jones Beach Lifeguard.
Billy Burke was one of the greatest guys I have ever known. He was a tremendous athlete, a devoted uncle to his countless nieces and nephews and a great officer on the beach. Let me repeat a story told at his funeral.
The summer of 2001, just before 9/11, Billy was on the mainstand when he saw a man in his 50s supporting an elderly man getting onto the sand (which was about a 1/4 mile walk to the water). Billy jumped down and asked the men what was happening. He was told by the elderly man that he had been one of the original Jones Beach guards in '30s, that he had a terminal disease and he had asked his son to bring him to the beach to say his good-byes. With that, Billy scooped the man up, carried him to the water and volunteered to take him into the surf. After a short while, the elderly man had made his peace and Billy carried him back to the parking lot.
On September 11, Billy was a Captain on the scene. When the evacuate order was given, Billy got all of his men out. Not a single one of his men were lost. Billy, however, went back in to warn others to evacuate. He died when the Tower went down.
Dave Fontana is best memorialized by his wife (Marian) in her book, A Widow's Walk. He was a great firefighter, lifeguard, husband and father. September 11 was his wedding anniversary. He was just coming off shift on the morning of September 11 and preparing for his anniversary date, when the call came to respond to the WTC. Dave, already off the clock, went, because that was the type of guy he was.
I knew these two men. I, along with countless others, mourn their loss. We should all try to measure up to their standard of bravery, patriotism, duty and honor.
Rather than think about 9/11 itself, think about today's anniversary compared to the first anniversary. What's one difference? You are probably a lot less worried about an attack today then you were back then. I remember how everyone kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, since Al Qaeda was known to launch attacks every year, or 18 months, or whatever, and I remember having to drive across a couple of major bridges for work that day (the George Washington and the Throgs Neck or something), and seeing extra cops on those bridges. If someone told me we'd go another five years without an Al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil I wouldn't have believed it.
"My old standby is the Jon Stewart video on his first day back"
Watched the first minute or two of Stewart's awkwardness. Not impressed. The best post-9/11 show, IMO, was the first Saturday Night Live afterwards. That show had sucked for years, but Lorne Green nailed it with that one. First Paul Simon singing "The Boxer" and then Lorne Green walking up to Giuliani (standing in front of a group of FDNY firemen on stage) and somberly asking him, "Can we be funny?". And then Giuliani's pitch-perfect deadpan: "Why start now?"
Of course Stewart gets much better as he keeps going.
The Giuliani thing was very good, and I loved it at the time, it's hard to continue to love it as my perspective on Rudy is so different. And you mean Lorne Michaels
Re "If someone told me we'd go another five years without an Al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil I wouldn't have believed it. "
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If someone had told me that we could spend $2.5 TRILLION on defense in the 1990s --only to have 20 goatherds pull off the Sept 11 attack on a budget of $150,000 -- I wouldn't have believed that either.
Or that 6 years later, no one in that Republican-controlled Congress, White House, Pentagon or Intelligence Community has paid a personal price for that fiasco.
Or that we would double down -- and give the same defense establishment responsible for Sept 11 an almost 100% increase in budget. Thereby confirming the wisdom in Washington that you get paid a lot more for fixing train wrecks than you do for making the trains run on time. Or for keeping the tracks maintained.
Or that 6 years later, we would still be letting Republicans tell us what to do.
I've always thought Dave Letterman's reaction was the best that I saw from the media post-9/11.
What's one difference? You are probably a lot less worried about an attack today then you were back then.
Another difference: The administration's ability to keep us worried about another attack has greatly diminished. We see through the fear-mongering better nowadays.
Even so, I'm not sure there are good grounds to be less worried today. For one's own personal safety, sure -- those odds were always vanishingly small anyway. (Though I now live in the NYC suburbs so my own odds have probably inched up slightly. And I have more to lose now.) But for the country and what another attack might drive its leaders to do -- be worried, still.
"The administration's ability to keep us worried about another attack has greatly diminished."
In this respect, they are a victim of their own success.
It is impossible, just impossible, to take the measure of the damage this country has inflicted on itself in reaction to 9/11.
I remember, in the immediate aftermath, feeling scared--I work in Manhattan--but also inspired by and proud of the national response. Now all that has been cheapened.
But for the country and what another attack might drive its leaders to do -- be worried, still.
There will be no attack when Republicans are in power, because it would be a waste of effort. Why use up your resources getting in the way of someone determined to commit suicide?
There will probably be more attacks if Democrats gain power, not because the Democrats are any softer on terrorism, but because OBL prefers the ultra-refined stupidity of the Republicans. There doesn't need to be any overt conspiracy. The interests of OBL and GWB coincide without the need for consultation. They're a match made in Heaven.... or maybe somewhere a lot warmer.
Me: The administration's ability to keep us worried about another attack has greatly diminished.
Fred: In this respect, they are a victim of their own success.
Whether that's true depends on what you mean by success. Do you mean success in making people *feel* safer? Then yes, there's some polling evidence to support that, though fully half of Americans say we're no safer than in 2001, and in any case it's doubtful to me that this administration's goal has ever been to make people feel safer. (Certainly at election time it hasn't.)
But if you mean success in making us *be* safer, it seems to me that jury is out and will continue to be out until either another attack on the U.S. happens or another major attack on the U.S. is foiled. Have the administration's policies lowered the odds of such an attack plot succeeding? It seems to me the general public does not have access to the kind of data -- on jihadi numbers, ambitions, and capabilities, e.g. -- needed to make that determination, so we end up falling back on very rough reckoning. Obviously, lots of bad guys have been killed or locked up and interrogated, but lots have also probably been created and energized. There's more surveillance, but its efficacy is doubtful, and there are still vast unsecured borders and port security is a joke. And as we know, it only takes small numbers to pull off something big.
And anyway, Fred's positively-spun 'victim of their own success' construct ignores the administration's larger failure (misconduct, really) which has been this: instead of fostering a nation of intelligently vigilant citizens, informed about the many public policy questions related to their security, it has politicize and lied, obfuscated, deceived and misinformd them about all of these. It has actively sought to encourage ignorance and fear, and in so doing has generated profound cynicism. I suspect that of those who -- like Fred -- feel safer today than on the first anniversary, a great many do so not because they believe the admin has done much to make them safer, but because they realize in retrospect that back then (and afterward, and still) it was working to make them more scared than was warranted.
Another terrorist attack already happened: the anthrax attacks, which President Bush described as "a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country." Five people were killed and 17 people were injured by what in the Bush Administration's terms are weapons of mass destruction. (Iraq's alleged possession of anthrax was one of the false justifications for invading Iraq.) Like the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration failed to prevent the attacks and has failed to punish the people responsible.
Don't forget that first issue of the Onion. That's when I thought, "OK, we're going to be all right."
(anthrax) Like the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration failed to prevent the attacks and has failed to punish the people responsible.
Posted by croatoan
Do you honestly think all attacks in war can be prevented? That, outside Jihad War, that whenever a crime in America happens it is the fault of some government entity that fails to protect your happy ignorant ass from harm?
Moreover, that once unlawful enemy combatants do a 9/11, or 3 criminals kill 7 in a restaurant lobby and flee to Mexico and hide out there for the last six years - that it is all the fault of "government who should guarantee our safety!!"
Do you mean the government that:
1. Takes away or wants to take away "precious terrorist and criminal civil liberties"? Like the privacy right that lefties believes we owe Islamic Jihad so they can plan without "snooping"?
2. The government that is supposed to be completely ignorant of the plans of people around the world from data-mining, but is supposed to be all-knowing when it comes to a certain plot of 30 people outside the US plotting an attack? On any one of 200,000 targets here that can be hit with relative ease in our Free, Open Society???
3. That somehow, when we confront a thinking enemy or when we accept the existence of stupid thugs yet to commit a crime in our midst - that we somehow should expect Zero American deaths or casualties in war against enemy as intelligent as us determined to kill for Allah - or know the precise moment when a brainless thug will grab a coed and rape and kill her opportunistically?
Get real.
Get a gun, because it is not government's fault when you want a society where Jihadis and thugs have relative freedom to go after you.
The way you get safe is go after enemies abroad and kill them 1st. The way you make America safer from thugs is eradicate inner city culture and values, work to prevent domestic violence, and use 2-3 strike laws to get the worst and lock them up for decades.
Comments closed September 25, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
My old standby is the Jon Stewart video on his first day back:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.glumbert.com%2Fmedia%2Fstewart911&ei=a5jmRu30J4Teep7ztJIK&usg=AFQjCNFW8SiLDr2Eo31b3MUl2PzcjNhheQ&sig2=jDBiFXztTH1oO99IABkheQ
Posted by Joel W | September 11, 2007 9:30 AM