Remembering 9-11

[hypatias mom]

I find it vital that the horrible happenings of that beautiful, clear sky morning of September 11, 2001, never be forgotten. Wherever one stands politically, the United States was attacked by terrorists flying airplanes into landmark buildings in New York and Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3000 people from many nations, mostly from the United States. I am flying my flag this week in front of my home, in respectful recognition of those people who lost their lives then, and for those whose sacrifice since that day have kept us from additional attacks by similar groups of determined enemies, foreign or domestic.

[Jess]

Oh, say can you see,
By the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars,
Through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.
O, say, does that
Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?

[Gilrean Treebane]

I was on the bus back from my first class when my friends and I realized it was 9:11 on 9/11, we had a short moment of silence on the bus in honor of those who fell on that horrible day.

[Jonas]

I remember me that horrible day. I was a lot younger then, and my parents gave me their permission to stay awake to look to the news (like I said: seven years ago I was younger and my parents were strict about my sleeping hours). When it happened I was on school but it was (ofcourse) on the news, the whole evening.
It really impressed me, it was the first time in my life that I remember that America had suffered such a loss).
And after looking to a reconstruction yesterday... I can say that the people who gave their lifes to rescue some others were real heroes.

May this sad day never been forgotten.

[Oroigawa Koreyasu]

My school blatantly lied to me that day...

"You may have heard rumors that jet airplanes flew into the World Trade Center..."

Then teachers started turning on the TVs in their classrooms because they were a whole lot smarter than the school administration, who thought it best to leave us ignorant until we got home. >_>

[Gilrean Treebane]

My school blatantly lied to me that day...

"You may have heard rumors that jet airplanes flew into the World Trade Center..."

Then teachers started turning on the TVs in their classrooms because they were a whole lot smarter than the school administration, who thought it best to leave us ignorant until we got home. >_>

Yeah I remember the administration telling the teachers to NOT turn on the televisions... only some of the teachers had already had them on so it was kinda pointless. I suppose they did it to avoid a panic that they thought would be inevitable if they came right out with what was happening. I know a lot of parents came and took kids out of school that day. Even though I knew that something had happened it really didn't sink in until I got home and saw it on the television.

[Daniel Dravot]

May a long and protracted slaughter befall al-Qaeda, the Taliban, their ideological fellow-travellers and all other enemies of England and America.

That said I feel no lasting sentiment with regards to the attack, indeed I almost found myself nodding in agreement with a colleague at work today who said "I just wish they'd bloody well get over it. It's been seven years. We've had to put up with terrorist attacks for years, half of which the bloody yanks paid for." A tad harsh but she does have a point.

I was in a hospital waiting area when the news first started to filter through, afterwards I went to a nearby pub and watched the looped news footage with a friend of mine from my uni days, she confessed that she found the footage of the "jumpers" almost comical. I didn't disagree but I just told her not to say it too loudly as I went to the bar to get another round in. And you know what, in the end I found it rather enthralling, history at its best is both informative and entertaining - and this was history in the making on an epic scale. I texted a Tory friend of mine to say that this would lead to a major war. It did, but it was alas not the war I had expected. I thought that, after getting retaliation in against the Taliban, the war that was initiated a month later in October 2001 would lead to the destruction of the vile regime in Saudi Arabia, as that was where the majority of the swiftly-identified culprits had originated from, and the granting of a free hand to Israel to solve the Palestinian problem in whatever manner it deemed appropriate.

As it was we attacked Iraq instead, and that went really well...

[hypatias mom]

"Daniel"--

This is a day for remembering an unprovoked attack and its fallen heroes. Please leave ugly partisan comments about this on your side of "The Pond." We are still suffering deeply, and the war against terror was only begun in earnest after that attack. Whatever mistakes and shortsightedness occurred are obvious to most of us as well. That said, the pain and horror will remain with us forever, and we don't find it amusing. Not one bit.

And as on that day, we ceased being partisans and remembered we were, most importantly, Americans first. You may not believe it, but we mourn the losses due to terrorist attacks , in whichever place they occur. We are not blind to the pain others suffer. Politics have been put on hold today while we remember all lost to this cause.

[Daniel Dravot]

Carol,

I support the War on Terror, although it is not so much a war on terror as a war against an ad-hoc coalition of Jihadi groups who use terrorism as a signature tactic. What I would point out is that for many of us in Europe there is the sneaking suspicion that many Americans tend think that 9/11 is a unique event in world history, and that no massacre or atrocity has ever been visited on an unsuspecting population before this occurrence, anywhere, ever. History is littered with horrors inspired by man's inhumanity to man but America's righteous indignation at what transpired on the 9th of September 2001, while being eminently understandable, is not sacrosanct or eternal.

You may not believe it, but we mourn the losses due to terrorist attacks , in whichever place they occur.

Wounded Knee then? Come on, you Americans only decided terrorism was a problem when it outraged the sovereignty of your nation. The PIRA sets of bombs in London back in the day and as far as a sizeable chunk of your population are concerned its a blow for freedom loving Paddies against the evil Brits. It is all subjective and based on who is doing what to whom. Ultimately terrorism is just a tactic, a reprehensible tactic deserving of retaliation of the utmost severity, but a tactic nonetheless.

Clarification: I am quite prepared to believe that you are astute enough to mourn the casualties that are a consequence of the manifest evils of terrorism, it is your less-reflective compatriots I have an issue with.

[Prodigy Almighty]

¬_¬ I actually had to ASK why the kid next to me in Chemistry was wearing his firefighter's uniform... He just told me to look at the date, and it was one of those "Ohhhhh, right..." moments.

Honestly, I fucking hate politics. Our buddy "Daniel" got it right. If things went as they probably should have in the first place, we'd be kicking the snot out of Saudis right now, not Iraqis. But NAH, the Saudis are TOTALLY still our friends, yeh? No reason we'd wanna point fingers at THEM... *whistles guiltily, trying to hide the oil drum behind him*

[Chrimigules]

I was a freshman in high school in 2001.

I remember hearing about a plane flying into one of the Twin Towers in Math class. By the time I had made it to Latin class, we heard the announcement that both were hit, and one had collapsed. We were corralled into the parts of the high school where they had televisions, and we watched the second tower go down. After that, we went back to class, but it was kind of difficult doing anything productive. A friend of mine hadn't gone to school that day, so I went to see how she was on my way back from school.

She said that she had had a terrifying nightmare, and was so shaken that her parents insisted that she stay home. She couldn't remember the details, except that it had to do with one of her father's friends. In the time leading up, her father was working to get this friend of his to come work at his office, rather than down in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. Because things were still in planning, that friend went to work that day.

[hypatias mom]

At shortly after 6 AM, it was not quite time to get up that morning. My daughter came rushing in and reported that my friend had called, telling us to turn on the television. I asked which station, and she just said, any one. Just about the whole dial was wall-to-wall live coverage of this horrible accident (or so we thought it to be). Five minutes after we turned on the screen, the second plane hit Tower 2, and we were chilled to realize we were at war. The Pentagon followed soon after. For days, most stations covered all aspects of the horror, until we had to just turn it off. We had thought that we were safe here behind our oceans, but we had to grow up a lot that day.

Some people have brushed the implications of unprovoked attacks by outside forces under the rug, or tried to persuade us to "get on with it," but leaving these attacks unanswered merely emboldens evil people to commit greater horrors.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I was still asleep when it happened. My parents woke me up early and started blabbering incoherently about something. I was very tired and only gathered that everyone was very scared over something. I got down to the TV and fully conscious just in time to see the second tower get hit. Everyone was in a panic. I remember there were rumors that the Sears Tower was collapsing, and many of the public buildings in my city were closing because they were afraid of being attacked. Now we know that it was "just" two towers and the Pentagon, but back then no one knew what was going on or what the final extent of it was going to be. It just seemed like everything was coming apart around us. People say things like "Why remember 9-11 when the Iraq war killed three hundred times more people than 9-11 did?" I think part of the answer to that is that feeling of everything collapsing into chaos. People need to remember that feeling so they can be grateful for a normal life when they do have it, and so they can empathize with people all over the world whose lives aren't or have never been normal.

Some people have brushed the implications of unprovoked attacks by outside forces under the rug, or tried to persuade us to "get on with it," but leaving these attacks unanswered merely emboldens evil people to commit greater horrors.

Oh, come on. Can people PLEASE not politicize this thread for at least a few more days?

[Demon of the North]

And let us not forget the third plane which went down in Pennsylvania, or the bravery those men and women showed when they decided to fight back.

[Jonas]

Oh, come on. Can people PLEASE not politicize this thread for at least a few more days?

I agree with Scott. This topic is made to remember this sad moment in human history and tot to talk about politics.

[Kaiser Loki II]

I was getting ready for work. My wife called to me that a plane had flown into the WTC. I thought some moron had plowed a Cessna into one of the towers.

The personal odd moment was that I was in the Newark airport on Sept. 9th, 2001. Since we'd visited NYC earlier that year, and I'd missed the WTC, I called home, musing whether to reschedule my flight and spend a few days in Manhattan.

She was adamant that I return on schedule. Thank God.