It's The Eleventh of September, Two Thousand and Eight of the Common Era

[elfs]

I've been reading my friends and some of them have despaired that nobody's mentioned 9/11 yet, and the few that have all says more or less the same thing: "Today is not the day for partisan rancour. Today is the day we remember."

I remember that we figured out who did it, and seven years ago he and his friends hid in the hills of Pakistan, and they're living there still.

I remember that gas was less than two dollars a gallon.

I remember we were sold a war that, among all the other reasons proposed by administration mouthpieces, "stabilizing the oil supply" was whispered now and then.

I remember that four thousand soldiers, good men and women, have died in a war for which the incidents of that day were merely an excuse.

I remember that there was a middle-eastern faction that didn't hate us so much then as they do now.

I remember that, seven years ago, I lost nobody to the flames.

I remember instead that day as the beginning of the end of my country as I had loved it. I live in a "new reality" now, one in which, citizen, you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and have nothing to be ashamed of if you're good and law-abiding, citizen.

I remember living in America.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Point.

Dunno if any of your comments were pointed at me...

I will say that freedom doesn't seem to *have* a party at the moment. Maybe we should fix that.

[(Anonymous)]

Looking in from the outside I remember a United States I could actually take seriously 90% of the time. Well all those UFO nuts in Nevada count for a lot of that other 10%.

Now I have trouble taking the US seriously 10% of the time. When it isn't a political circus being waved round the media and internet it's talk of invading yet another country (Iran anyone?).

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

I remember what was taken from all of us that day, and I also note that no evil even close to its treachory has befallen us since.

I realize now that life before 9/11/2001 should have been lived in fear instead of ignorant bliss... we could have stopped it 3 distinct times during the Clinton years if only we took the threat seriously then.

We no longer have the luxury of turning our backs on those who wish to steal not only our freedom, but our lives. Now that the shadows of the towers linger in our memories, along with the memory of that sudden realization when flt125 hit tower #1 that the first plane hitting the tower was no accident, and that we were actually under attack on our own soil.

Life is much safer now that we are wary... and gone are the days where we could ignore the danger in favor of "feeling" safe.

Sadly... we are much safer now that our eyes have been opened... but we will never feel as safe as we did before then.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

It's more like a Ponzi scheme than a trade.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that; I'm not sure what LJ did when I tried to edit my comment to fix the URL.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Your trade is unacceptable. (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Sourced)

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

It's not *my* trade of liberty for safety... I was making a statement of the times we live in.

Franklin was a brilliant theologian, and in general I agree with the principal of his catchy phrase... but at what point is the price of liberty too high? Would you rather be terrified to go into any populated areas or public events, or would you rather find comfort in knowing that someone is watching out for your safety so you don't have to?

[(Anonymous)]

Fortunately, those aren't our only only two options.

How about: I'd rather live in a country in which the government takes preventative action to monitor and address the actions of groups who would use terrorism, especially terrorism against the United States, while respecting both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution upon which this nation is founded.

The Constitution is not a document which says "Void if inconvenient."

Ben Franklin's saying is more than a "catchy phrase", it was a warning... one we should be listening to.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

It doesn't help if you can't trust the one who is supposedly watching out for your safety.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

To paraphrase a catchphrase from the Vietnam War, "We had to destroy your freedom in order to save it."

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

we could have stopped it 3 distinct times during the Clinton years if only we took the threat seriously then.

When, specifically, were those three times you talking about?

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

In the months following 9/11/2001 after it became clear that OBL (who was already ont he FBI's most wanted list as a terrorist criminal because of the USS Kole bombing in Yemen, the earlier WTC attack, and other incidents) it was revealed that our special forces knew on 3 occasions where OBL was located... virtually had him in their sights... but was not given the authority to do anything about it.

I don't blame the Clinton administration for not being clairvoyant, though. There are other political reasons for not attacking him, but another president might have given the okay where he did not... The real blame is that we just weren't scared enough back then to stop him when we had the chance.

I remember that this was also documented in the voluminous 9/11 commission report, but I don't have any links to it right now.

[(Anonymous)]

We should have lived in fear? I don't see why. Informed awareness, well-reasoned forethought, sure, but fear? No. Fear is counter-productive.

Terrorism has been around for a long time. Seven years ago, we became a major target for the first time, and that made us sit up and take notice... and overreact, and go after the wrong culprits, and do time-wasting, feel-good things like ban corkscrews from airline flights, rather than do something productive.

It may be that "no evil even close to its treachory has befallen us since", but I certainly don't give the current administration much credit for that. If anything, our actions in Iraq have made us less, rather than more safe.

No, we are not safer now... not by a long shot. But then, I'm much more concerned about the harmful actions of the current administration than I am over the possible harmful actions of terrorists.

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

Let me start by saying that we obviously disagree on whether or not we are safer now, and let that issue aside so as not to start a flamewar here.

...but I did not say we *should* live in fear. I just think that we should have been more afraid before 9/11 and maybe it would have been prevented... and the fact is that since we (as a society) are much more aware now that we were then of the dangers of international terrorism, we now take stronger measures to ensure that we do *not* have to live in fear.

Fear is a survival mechanism... it is necessary at some levels, lest we be caught unaware and suddenly become extinct. Fear is alleviated by increasing safety, and there is some balance at some point.

We obviously disagree on where that point is or where we are today.

[sqlrob.livejournal.com]

I also note that no evil even close to its treachory has befallen us since.

Pardon my French, but bullshit. We haven't had an event causing that many deaths, but we have had treachery out the wazoo. What Bin Laden did was horrible and low handed, but far from treachery - where was the trust.

Plenty of evil treachery has occurred since then -
Patriot Act
Diebold
Katrina response
"WMDs"

[danceswithlife]

Unnecessary and unhelpful "airport security."

Ignoring protections to other routes of entry (ships, for example).

Sending the national guard we will need for national disasters of any kind to Iraq to fight--and not taking care of them when they come home injured in body and mind.

The loss of Habeas Corpus.

Threatening to take us to war with Iran and Georgia.

Our Democratic congress critters and senators not impeaching Bush.

Lots and lots of treachery from both sides of the aisle.

Approval of torture.

[danceswithlife]

One more act of treachery: telling first responders and recovery teams that the air was safe and then not providing health care for them when it turned out to be toxic and they became ill.

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

Watch out for those black helicopters, and be sure to stock up on plenty of tin foil for your head.

Paranoid much?

[danceswithlife]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/nyregion/06health.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_arising_from_the_September_11,_2001_attacks (see the references at the end of the article)
http://www.nc911truth.org/responders/#links

Paranoia? Not. Some of my local first responders are sick because they went to ground zero to help.

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

I wasn't taking issue with the statement that people are sick from the air... I was taking issue with your claim that they were told the air was safe.

I seem to remember all kinds of reports at the time that were warning recovery workers should be wearing respirators. Where's your evidence that they were told the air was safe?

(or is it just convenient/easy to parrot that lie because it puts a bad light on the current administration?)

[danceswithlife]

I was between jobs on 9/11 and watched TV pretty continuously the next few days (as did many others, I'm sure). My memory (could be faulty, I admit) is that Rudy, asked repeatedly if the air was safe for people to breathe, said that the people testing it said it was. The few responders at ground zero, who would speak on camera, when asked if they were worried about the air would shrug, and say that they were told it was not toxic. Granted anyone working in those conditions wants to wear the appropriate equipment for dust and smoke--those are bad enough to breathe. So given that the air seems to have toxic enough to make people sick, were the people testing the air and giving the information to Rudy mistaken, incompetent, or were authorities distorting the truth to keep people from panicking?

But you know, what, Darrel, that the air was toxic enough to make people working at ground zero sick--and whether they knew it or not--isn't as important as the fact that at least some of them are not being given the health care they need for illnesses that happened as a result. The same way the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are not being cared for by this administration.

I welcome documentation to the contrary. What lies are *you* swallowing whole?

[sqlrob.livejournal.com]

Troops getting electrocuted in the barracks because of no maintenance.

The list keeps going on and on. I agree with Elf - what happened to my country?

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

You're comparing the administration's response to various actions to violent acts of terrorism?

Wow. That's a stretch.

[sqlrob.livejournal.com]

It's a stretch? Go look at the definition of terrorism. Now tell me that they aren't using fear for their own means.

They are also bound by oath to the Constitution. Purposely violating that oath is no less than treason.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Did you see today's spin from the White House press conference?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080910-1.html

Q But Osama bin Laden is the one that -- you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 --

MS. PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he's sitting in jail right now.

Q Well, what, in this White House's opinion -- what was the role of Osama bin Laden, then, for 9/11?

MS. PERINO: Well, obviously, as the leader of al Qaeda, he is somebody that we want to bring to justice. He was the one that asked his deputies to plot and plan and carry out attacks. And that's why we've been aggressively going after them, as well.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!

WTF.

Also, a choice bit in there about how Bush thinks of 9/11 from the moment he wakes up with morning wood to the moment he turns on his night-light. NEVAR FORGET.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

I will confine my remarks to "Dude, where's my country?" and leave it at that.

[icebluenothing.livejournal.com]

the Pentagon (and why doesn't anyone remember that one?)

.... Because the WTC was a civilian target and the Pentagon was a military target?

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

No... because live footage of the Pentagon burning was not available en masse (for obvious reasons of national security).

The nation watched as the 2nd plane hit the WTC. They only *listened* to the reports of the plane hitting the pentagon and the mysterious crash over Pennsylvania.

The defining point was when that 2nd plane hit the towers and it was no longer possible to rationalize the event as "maybe it was an accident" or "how could it be a plane crash?"... when the whole world was watching LIVE and that 2nd plane crashed into the towers, THAT was when it became real, and that is the image burned forever into our memes.

The point was further accented when the towers suddenly ceased to exist and there was only smoke where they once stood. All the remaining reports of the pentagon attack and of the brave sacrifice of the passengers of Flt93 were hitting us while we were already numb.

[tagryn]

The Pentagon attack isn't remembered as well because there were a lot more people affected by the WTC attack, both in casualties and people who could actually see and taste the attack (NYC being much bigger than WashDC). I think having the major news agencies headquartered in NYC may have had something to do with it, also.

Also, with respect, Shanksville is in western PA and closer to Pittsburgh than Philly...though much closer to "middle of nowhere" than either of those places, frankly, which is why its remembered as the distant third of the three tragedies that day.

[danceswithlife]

Not by me.

[jenk]

See also Dave Horsey on the 9/11 anniversary.

[tagryn]

I'm reminded whenever this comes up that Eric Rudolph hid out for over five years in North Carolina, and probably would still be out there if he hadn't gotten careless. How much more difficult to hunt someone down halfway around the world in another country, among a tribal populace for whom he's the hero and we're the evil outsiders? I thought Austin Bay's take on it was also legit: despite the satisfaction killing or arresting Bin Laden would have had, isolating him to become forgotten rather than turning him into a martyr and legend may have actually worked out for the best.

I think it was Biden who posed this question some years back: "If you as President had definite intelligence on where Bin Laden was, but also knew it would likely cost hundreds of U.S. casualties to go in there and get him, what would you do?" That's actually a good question for the debates, it would cut through some of the get-him-at-all-costs BS the candidates have been engaging in.