Marking 10 Years Since 9/11/2001 804
10 years ago today, coordinated terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. killed nearly 3,000 people. It wasn't the first terrorist attack directed against the U.S., or even on U.S. soil, but it was the deadliest, and came at a time of relative peace. Probably most people reading this remember where and how they heard the news. We've often discussed the consequences of the attack: security cordons, ID checks and metal detectors where none existed before, a reexamination of how U.S. policy affects international perception and attitudes, and the encroachment of surveillance policies and technology, to name a few. Today, we don’t want to inundate you with links to tributes and retrospectives, so we’ll offer the only thing we can: a look back at how the day unfolded here. Our thoughts are with everyone who lost friends and family members.
But (Score:5, Funny)
It's not even November yet.
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But (Score:4, Insightful)
what you propose is big-endian which is good because lexicographical sort works in the expected way. Little-endian (European style) is OK too. Middle endian is just silly.
Re:But (Score:5, Informative)
It follows the way we say it in speech. The numbers are just an abbreviation, after all. We don't say 1st September, 1990; we say September 1st, 1990. So it follows that when you use the abbreviation, you use the same order.
You can argue that it's not the best system, but to say it is not logical is just blind.
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
Start saying "1st of September" like the rest of the world does..
Re:But (Score:4, Informative)
It's not just "good," it's standardized [wikipedia.org]. It's the only correct way. Anyone who doesn't format dates per ISO 8601 is stupid. "American style" and "European style" are both stupid. I haven't used either one in ages.
Re: (Score:3)
Every time someone uses the date format "YYYY-MM-DD", Baby Jesus cries.
and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that 3000 ppl died, that happens also in car accidents every few months.
It's that USA went from being a respected member of the world community to a nation hated even among its allies. A nation that things it owns the whole world, can torture other country's ppls, can force them to act in ways it wants, and that is in everyone else's face.
It was the day that marked the beginning of the end for the USA.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Interesting)
He just made one mistake (Score:5, Interesting)
The Russians had publicity in the west against them so they pulled out of a war that was nothing but negative press to them.
The US was making that bad press and funding the war against the russians.
The Russians may be laughing their ass of at the mess the US has gotten itself into BUT they are not going to aid the taliban just to piss of the Americans.
The US may not be winning the war but they sure as hell are thinning out the Taliban. There is reason the Taliban is using more and more terror tactics in Afghanistan, they are running out of capable recruits.
What you may not have heard is that just after 9/11 the Taliban fielded a fairly capable army and was using traditional war strategies against the Afghani government. They are no longer capable of it. That is not to say the war has been won but you got to have a LOT of hatred to join up for what is practically a suicide mission. Suicide bombers you say? Count them. They have a horrific impact but are totally incapable of being used in any sensible military tactics. Post 9/11 people feared an uprising, the beginning of a new war... but where is the hatred? Just recently Libyan's were shown kissing the US flag for the aid in helping liberate their country. Oh, the US involvement there is far from clean BUT Osama cried for Muslims around the world to rally to a common cause and for 9 years, the answer was silence. There are plenty of individuals with enough hatred but terrorism is hardly new. IRA, Basks, German radicals. There are always going to be people who want to force their minority opinion through violence.
The western world has payed dearly for the war but the price payed on the side of the extremists is far far higher. Their leadership is in ruins, new plots are half-assed and stopped routinely and worsed off all. When the uprising finally started, it was peaceful and directed against Muslim rulers with so far precious little input from extreme Islam. This is not what Osama was dreaming off.
And those who cry about how the west is fighting itself... metal detectors? They have been at airports for decades. Just because the US allowed internal flights to be boarded from the runway by anybody taking anything they wanted doesn't mean that this is the norm. I was search 30 years ago on a boat trip to the UK for crying out load. Maybe the US just needed a wake-up call in general.
As for hatred against the US? There seems to be more hatred amongst rich white boys from the American suburbs then say in Egypt or Tunisia or Libya. Remember the protests in Iran. The ones happening in Syria? Against the evil imparislists! Oh, wait no... they are protesting against their own leaders, leaders who try to use the US as the great Satan and their people are rejecting it.
No, 9/11 saw big changes in the world but I doubt Osama is very pleased with them... even if he was still alive.
But kiddies like you wish to see the world burn and use their own fears to put hatred into other peoples mind, even if those other people got far more important things to worry about. Read the real news for a change, not Fox or the BBC, both are extremists wishing to color the news to suit their agenda but the real news. What real people living real life are thinking.
Re:He just made one mistake (Score:4, Informative)
On these subjects, if you read "news", or even *real* news , you're probably already unknowingly subject to various propaganda campaigns, unless you read a *really* wide range of news from various agencies and countries, in different languages.
The picture painted (for example) in the news in the Muslim world is not as rosy for the US as the whatever news you read.
Re:He just made one mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Thinning out the Taliban? What are you talking about? The pourose border with Pakistan means the Taliban can move with relative ease to escape NATO forces. What's more they're receiving aid from Pakistani security services, so it's not like they don't have important allies.
The minute NATO leaves, the government will be overrun, collapse and everyone will be back where they started.
Re:He just made one mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
The US may not be winning the war but they sure as hell are thinning out the Taliban.
Evidence, and over what time period? In 2009 it was reported [aljazeera.net] that "Taliban-led forces fighting US and Nato troops in Afghanistan have increased nearly fourfold since 2006, according to a US intelligence estimate". In the last few years the Taliban have managed to spread their influence (or, at least, philosophy) to largely destabilise the tribal regions of north west Pakistan, suggesting that their power over the last 5 years has increased rather than decreased. This graph [wikipedia.org] of coalition casualties in Afghanistan shows that most deaths have occurred in the last two years, further suggesting that Taliban power isn't waning.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Robert Fisk is, was, and always will be uber anti-american. Quoting him on this day just makes you look like the idiot you are.
My post was not intended as anti-American, since I am not anti-American. I was summarising an interview with Osama bin Laden on why he planned to attack the U.S and what his motivations were. Is that not relevant to this discussion? Why is interviewing Osama bin Laden considered anti-American? Why, "on this day", are we not allowed to state the reasons that he gave for attacking the U.S.? Would it make you feel better if we all pretend that he was just a crazy guy who never tried to justify his actions?
Yes, life under the Taliban sucked. Yes, killing thousands of civilians is bad. Yes, Al Qaeda is not a conventional military of a nation state (although the Taliban could have been considered that way in 2001). I have no idea if they have a functioning legal system, perhaps Sharia? Regardless, I really don't see how these points are relevant; they do not refute Osama bin Laden's statement that he intended to draw the U.S. into a protracted war in Afghanistan, and that he stated some reasons, which is all that my original post said...
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, no. Car accident statistics dont get worse if you ignore them.
On the other hand ignoring something as big 9/11 would have emboldened OBL and invite him to make the next one even bigger...
It would have made us look like paper tigers. The appearance of weakness is the sort of thing that tempts our enemies to start wars.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The US faced down the fucking USSR. The USSR could literally destroy the world, and we had a policy of going toe to toe with them if they messed with us or our allies. We were just as ready to jab the 'blow up the god damn world' as they were, if not more so. We went nearly a decade in that mindset without pissing away our civil liberties.
9/11 comes along and one of the least scary threats to Americans, a threat that ranks well below eating McDonalds food (which actually DOES kill Americans), and we piss ourselves.
Our actions didn't scare away OBL. OBL couldn't do it again because as soon as we installed $100 security doors and airplanes and passengers decided to beat the shit out of anyone trying to take over the airplane, it made that attack impossible. The US could eat a 9/11 10 times a year, and if we didn't act like fucking cowards in response, terrorism still wouldn't even make it into the top 10 most likely ways to die as an American. Eating your fat American ass to death would remain safely on top by over two orders of magnitude.
I am all for beating the piss out of Afghanistan post 9/11. It is a friendly reminder to other nations not to harbor enemies. I was okay with dropping a couple hundred on security doors for airplanes and telling passengers to beat the shit out of anyone trying to take over and airplane. Absolutely everything beyond that was a complete fucking waste of money and much of it a violation of civil liberties we managed to keep even when facing down the fucking USSR.
Seriously, consider that. The fourth amendment meant something when facing down the god damn USSR, an world ending threat. When faced with sheep herders who are as likely to blow their own dicks off as they are to blow up a single airplane (of our many thousands), we promptly rip up the constitution and use it as toilet paper to help clean up the mess when made we shit ourselves in cowardly fright.
Anyone who fears terrorist in the US is a fucking coward, pure and simple. Anyone who fears them enough to mew and bleat to politicians to strip their fellow Americans of civil liberties and constitutional protection is not only a complete and total fucking coward, but a sniveling traitorous coward of the worst kind, as they have the nerve to bleat for politicians to strip their fellow citizens of freedoms that 200+ years of Americans fought and died to build and protect. If you are going to be a coward, do it quietly, and don't be a traitorous piece of filth working to undo freedoms bought with 200+ years of sweat and blood by men and women far more deserving of those freedoms than your sniveling pathetic ass. If the thought of dying really causes your bowels to loosen, eat less fucking food.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The US faced down the fucking USSR. The USSR could literally destroy the world, and we had a policy of going toe to toe with them if they messed with us or our allies. We were just as ready to jab the 'blow up the god damn world' as they were, if not more so. We went nearly a decade in that mindset without pissing away our civil liberties.
The USSR could destroy the world, but they DID NOT WANT TO. The commies were corrupt dictators, but they were rational people who loved their lives and that of their children. They wouldn't attack the west with terrorist sleeper cells that used airplanes as bombs, or with suitcase nukes in NY harbor. With people who love life, the "mutually assured destruction" deterrent works. The USSR had the capability to destroy the world 10 times over, but they didn't use that capability for 40 years. Islamic terrorists do want to destroy the world. If you gave the nuclear arsenal and launch sites of the USSR to Al Qaida, western civilization would cease to exist the next day.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, the Religious Right also wants to destroy the world. Go see Rapture Ready forums: every time something bad happens somewhere, the news is met with jubilence; because, after all, it hastens the day when Lord Jesus returns and drowns the world in fire while the righteous - meaning people who'll enjoy watching everyone else burn - watch. And if Lord Jesus might seem to be taking his time in returning... Well, one could always help God's plan along by causing some bad news, right?
Basically, we have two bunches of omnicidal maniacs, one with nuclear weapons, and both are trying to goad each other to get on with it.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:4, Insightful)
The US faced down the fucking USSR. The USSR could literally destroy the world, and we had a policy of going toe to toe with them if they messed with us or our allies. We were just as ready to jab the 'blow up the god damn world' as they were, if not more so. We went nearly a decade in that mindset without pissing away our civil liberties.
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I also think it's important not to gloss over history.
The truth is that more than a few people had problems during the Red Scare [wikipedia.org] (both of them), but even more so as a result of McCarthyism [wikipedia.org]. While we may have done better then than we are doing today, the US didn't weather the Cold War without any blemishes on civil rights or liberties.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
You have it exactly backwards. The only reason people do terrorism is to get attention.
Look, the whole point of terrorism is to be an effectiveness multiplier. The purpose of flying the planes into the twin towers wasn't to kill people. It was to get the US to spend billions of dollars on counter-terrorism measures.
You'll occasionally see in sports games, people who strip naked and run onto the field. When that happens, the TV broadcasters point the cameras away. Why? Because they know that the cameras is what the guy wanted. By putting him on TV, they're giving him exactly what he wants, and encouraging more people to do the same. By talking about the game and ignoring him, they're sending a message: Your little stunt will be largely ignored.
If the media did that with terrorism, then terrorism would not exist: there would be no point. But the fact is that terrorism is very good for the media. It has people glued to their television sets. The media are an integral part of a terrorist attack; it wouldn't function properly without it.
Now, I'm not saying we should just ignore terrorism. We need to find out the root causes and see what we can do about it. But one of the biggest things we could do is just not make a big deal out of it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bin Laden said what? (Score:5, Informative)
Summarized excerpt from "Al Qeada's Strategy to the Year 2020":
bin Laden's stated goal, before and after the terror attacks in Kenya and on the Cole, was to draw the West into an intractable war with the Middle East. He was an evil fuck, but like some evil fucks in the past, he wasn't crazy or stupid. He got the idea from us in the late 80s when the same policy bankrupted the Soviet Union.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life." --October, 2001
"All we have to do is send two mujaheddin... to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qaeda" in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses." --2004
Re: (Score:3)
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but wasting over a trillion dollars and ten years to find and kill him and turning your precious Constitution into toilet paper in the process certainly was.
Re:and the saddest thing (Score:4, Insightful)
It was the day that marked the beginning of the end for the USA.
even I don't believe this.
its the beginning of a dark period, to be sure. but the whole WORLD has gone 'down hill' along with us. this is not a USA issue but it shows what people are like. more specifically, it shows what people IN POWER are like. world wide, all countries have take the same liberties away from its citizens. this isn't an american issue; its about all world leaders and how human beings react to threats and threats on their powerbase.
if you can't see this, you are as foolish as the people you accuse.
Re: (Score:3)
UID doesn't mean much--just that you're probably older. Sometimes older people have the dumbest ideas. They get more frightened and paranoid the less life they have left.
Nice summary, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I try to remember the thousands upon thousands of civillians in the Middle East who have perished, as well as the poor souls in America.
I'm sick of that aspect being completely ignored so often by Western Media.
My hat is off, hand on heart - to all of the victims of the event, and the consequences.
Would love to be able to fly without being treated like a criminal though.
Re:Nice summary, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice summary, but... (Score:4, Informative)
True. Of course, I also remember Palestinians cheering in the streets after the attack. Almost everyone in the world could be better behaved and more humane.
I remember that one too. I also remember that it was a fake, footage taken from some different event.
Re:Nice summary, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember that one too. I also remember that it was a fake, footage taken from some different event.
You remember incorrectly. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
We hardly ever remember the millions of Middle Eastern civilians who died in the past century at the hands of European countries. Why make an exception now?
Re:Nice summary, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, wait, wait - the parent points out that there are thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed or injured by US forces and he's modded "Troll"?!
Yeah, and you get -1 for questioning them. Huh. There's a lot of "Dumbth" in this thread so far, and I've only seen a third of the posts. "America, right or wrong!"
I do think hundreds of thousands of innocent casualties are far worse than a few thousand Wall Street Banksters (but I'll admit, I've developed a prejudice against the latter in recent years).
I'm not sure I'd blame the Iraq war on "*cough* oil *cough*", though. I blame it on Bush's arrogance, narcissism and naivete. That, and wanting to finish the job to make his pop proud of him.
OBL was a sh*thead, just as are all those who followed him (ask any *real* devout Muslim). That said, the US believing that ~3000 innocent (US based) civilians easily justifies hundreds of thousands of atrocities committed elsewhere is horrifying, to say the least.
My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually I was reading /. when I heard about it.
My thoughts are with everyone who lost friends and family members in the attack.
Fuck religion! This is what happens, over and over.
Re:My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:4, Informative)
"Religion may have been played a small part in convincing the attackers to commit suicide, but the motivation for the attacks themselves was political."
That "small part" is lethal.
Re:My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
If you can't think of something you'd willingly die for, even without an afterlife, then you need more life experiences.
Here's a tip: If you have ever lived comfortably, especially if you've never really tasted the hard side of life, the side of life you can never escape because society doesn't give a crap about you, then you aren't on the suicide bomber recruitment list. There are people in your country, no matter what country you're in, that have no future, and perhaps never will--and who know in their h
Re: (Score:3)
Re:My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
The guy believed himself a Knight Templar and wanted Catholicism restored in Europe, not to mention getting rid of Muslims in Europe. I think religion was very much a part of his ideology.
Re:My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree it's wrong to blame religion in general for this, But the attacks were religiously motivated.
They were conducted by a religious fanatical group, al-Qaeda.
The stated reasons from al-Qaeda for the attacks were threefold:
1) U.S Support of Israel
This could be religious or non-religious, but for al-Qaeda it was probably a religious reason)
2) U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia
This was definitely a religious motivation. al-Qaeda believs that the Koran forbids a long term presence by non-Muslims so close to Mecca.
3) U.S. / Western sanctions against Iraq.
While al-Qaeda had no love for Saddam Hussein, they still listed this as a reason. I've never heard an explanation for why this is a reason, but I presume it's because they perceived the sanctions as harming Muslims living in Iraq.
So religion played more than a small role in the motivations. These statements were made before the attacks (years before) and after.
That said, as an atheist, I still can't make such a sweeping statement that religion is *always* bad, or that it causes things like this. It can motivate people both ways, like politics and lots of other things.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your understanding of certain critical elements is flawed.
We didn't invade Iraq unprovoked (the first time). If you're referring to the second time, yes, that invasion was unprovoked, but that occurred years after 9/11, so it couldn't have been a motive.
In fact, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, we had the entire world on our side. We were virtually unopposed in the campaign to grow a coalition within the U.N.
Also, what fewer people realize: Bin Laden offered his help to Saudi Arabia at the time.
Bin Lade
Re:My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion doesn't cause war, but is used by people who aren't religious but pretend to be. All wars are for power and wealth, started and waged by sociopaths.
Re:My thoughts are with everyone who lost anyone (Score:4)
The two are not mutually exclusive. It was about foreign policy, yes.
But al-Qaeda (a religious extremist group,first of all) objected to three foreign policy points on religious grounds.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2422714&cid=37367802 [slashdot.org]
They weren't upset about general foreign policy points like trade policy or environments policy, or monetary policy. They were upset over things that they perceived to violate tenants of Islam.
You can make secular arguments for all three of their main stated reasons. But that isn't the route they took. Their reasons were explicitly religious.
That's not the first memorable 09-11 (Score:5, Informative)
In 1714, the Spanish army crushed the Catalan resistance and imposed their barbarian culture upon them. A whole nation obliterated.
In 1973, the US-backed Pinochet overthrew the democratic government of Chile. At least 3,197 died.
Re: (Score:3)
Fact: there was a war of sucession, in war people die. So I can hardly make the point that people didn't die in Catalonia during the Sucession War.
Fact: Catalonia wasn't a nation then (otherwise they wouldn't have taken part in the war to choose Spain's next king, would they?) nor was it in any other point of time before (it was a conglomerate of counties which came to be under the crown of Aragon). Even then Constitutions of 1535? (this picture [wikipedia.org] carries the c
The terrorists won, beyond their wildest dreams (Score:5, Insightful)
They got us good. They caused the equivalent of a cytokine storm, a massive autoimmune response. We lost important freedoms, likely for good, and bankrupted ourselves financially and otherwise. The world hates us, our economy is in the toilet, the government is hopelessly corrupt, and we STILL haven't won, because no one really wins asymmetric warfare short of turning the insurgents and their country into a smoking glass crater. They did to us what we did to the Soviets not 20 years ago, and we fell for it.
Re: (Score:3)
Nailed it.
The terrorists lost (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Many security experts have proved, and the Oslo shooting case is another proof of this, that the counter-terrorism measures that have been taken are just ridiculous and would not stand in the way of a serious, motivated and well funded enemy. Most graduate students today could come up with a plan
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair enough, but I can still blame Bush for ignoring his counter-terrorism team (eg: Richard Clark) practically screaming at him to take notice of Al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks. And I can blame Bush (and particularly Cheney) for railroading the country into a second, unnecessary war in Iraq, based on false information (eg: Downing Street memo). There's plenty more to mention, but you get the idea.
Yes, I also blame the Dems for going along with it. But there's no denying it was pushed by the neo-cons from
Re:The terrorists won, beyond their wildest dreams (Score:5, Interesting)
The Onion has an article joking that Americans enjoy remembering 9/11 more than we enjoy remembering the 10 years since. It's true, and you can hardly blame us. On 9/11, despite the pain and fear, we saw scenes from around the world of people weeping along with us, or standing firmly in solidarity with us, because they saw this attack on the US as an attack on civilized people everywhere. Sure, there were some assholes cheering here and there, but there was also the Queen of England having "The Star Spangled Banner" played at Buckingham Palace, and countless makeshift US flags and signs saying things like "we are all Americans today" being waved at vigils in the streets around the world.
Then George W. Bush – with the support of the American people – pissed all over that goodwill, to the point that the Nobel committee eagerly handed the Peace Prize to the new guy when "regime change" finally happened.
I wrote this [toddverbeek.com] on 9/12/2001. I sent it in to the local newspaper, and they ran it on the front page of the Opinion section the following Sunday, next to a big picture of Osama Bin Laden and an article about what America would do in response. As my words were being read, they were already being ignored. Fear and Hatred won.
The original thread (Score:4, Interesting)
10 years later (Score:5, Interesting)
I sure didn't think i'd be spending the ten year anniversary of 9/11 in Afghanistan... but here I am. strange how life works out. i remember on that day, i wanted nothing more then to find the people who'd done it and make them pay... i wasn't in the military back then.
now, i'm here, they know they've won, we've announced our intentions to leave(surrender) and they attack almost daily. their(Islamists) resolve is stronger then ever. ours(average US citizen) is pathetically weak and short sighted. though, it's not like we have any direction or a plan to get behind.
nope, never thought ten years later, this would be happening.
Re:10 years later (Score:5, Insightful)
First, thank you for your service to our country.
Second, fuck you for joining out of bloodlust. Service is a duty, not an excuse to become a heathen. Our military doesn't exist to settle feuds. It exists to uphold principles and rules of law, and to protect our nation from existential threats. Do you honestly think terrorist attacks from a landlocked nation that hasn't had a stable central government in three decades is capable of destroying our national sovereignty? Our failure to use restraint and common sense has cost this country its principles, the lives of your fellow soldiers, and trillions of dollars, all without making the world any safer from terrorism.
In short, your ignorance is more dangerous and has done more damage to this country than fundamentalist Islam.
As a citizen who is paying your salary, I wish I could fire you. You don't represent me or my values.
Re:10 years later (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe he'll come back with some humanitarian understanding, as Mike Prysner. This is, or should be, an iconic speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8 [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Thank you, well said. I myself went to Afghanistan in 2003 but to help not to kill. Since the CIA created and funded Osama, would it not have been cheaper to bomb CIA headquarters? 99% of Afghans want help from anywhere - they will accept the Taliban ( as they did ) to get minimal security. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. The ongoing struggle between Pashtun and Northern Alliance has nothing to do with us. Osama was our chicken coming home to roost.
wow, on the oklahoma city bombing day (Score:5, Insightful)
who did you want to invade and kill?
My thoughts are with... (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is (Score:3, Informative)
that the terrorists have won.
Rerun (Score:3)
I had an FPS site then. My journal today is a rerun of what I posted on that day.
I was reading slashdot that morning... (Score:4, Interesting)
For some reason, this is the only place that it doesn't bother me to see the 10-year anniversary stuff. I can very clearly remember reading slashdot in an office when news of this began to spread.
What a terrible tragedy the event was.
And what a terrible tragedy the last ten years of response to it has been.
Huh? What? "Reexamination"? (Score:3, Insightful)
But keep in mind that unlike the others, Paul as ALWAYS been saying these things, for 30 years, while those others are just trying to get your vote, then will do whatever the hell they want if they get in office. Kind of like Obama.
Also Denis Kucinich (Score:3)
Don't forget Kucinich as well. Most of the left of the country oppose the Middle Eastern wars. The reason that Paul stands out is that he is pretty much alone on the right. I remember Richard Gere standing at that New York support event and getting booed off stage for daring to suggest that war wasn't the appropriate response. It was a mini-McCarthy era from 2001 to around 2008 or so -- if you didn't have a yellow ribbon on your car, then you supported the terrorists.
And now the same kind of demagoguing
Day of Mourning (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be a day of mourning, not just because of the people who died (one of my managers at the time, Vladimir Tomasevic, I am lucky not to have been there too), but it's a day of mourning for the liberties and freedoms lost across USA but also across the entire freaking world. The entire world today looks more and more like a crazy toon town, with cops with machine guns everywhere, insane laws, TSA, just general loss of privacy, liberty, decency, everything, and this should also include the economic calamity that obviously worsened due to the insane response to the events.
This kind of response is not about fighting crime, which terrorism basically is. This kind of response is about destroying the human rights and freedoms, if that still means anything to anybody.
I wish to see return to normalcy and government non-intervention, so I think voting for Ron Paul is the obvious good first step. If the man understands one thing - it's liberty and the other thing is economy.
Also, WTF, USA? Where are 10 towers in place of those 2, 10 that are 5 times as tall?
Re: (Score:3)
That was something that always bothered me. You get popped in the nose by a bully, you get right back up and sock him in the face. Building anything less magnificent than what was already there is like crawling away crying while the bully kicks you.
Redesigned towers? Sure. But there should have been two of them, and they should have been bigger and better.
Some recollections (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in 10th grade German class when we got the announcement. I remember not grasping the significance of the news until I saw the look of fear on my teacher's face. I hopped on the school network to try to get updates. I was moderately successful... most sites were down, CNN was a 50/50 shot, and so much of my news that day came in through reading updates and comments on Slashdot, at least until we were allowed to go to the library (the one place in our school that had cable TV).
I'm fearful that we've squandered quite a bit of the opportunity (not the right word, I know) that the tragedy bought us in the following months and years. Instead of making amends with the world, I fear we've gotten involved in three endless wars and brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy, both fiscally and morally.
As one commenter put it, in perhaps the most chillingly precognitive Slashdot comment of all time [slashdot.org]: "The biggest casualty will probably be our Constitution. Whenever a tragedy likes this occurs, the government always announces a get tough on terrorists policy that will have no effect on the psychopaths who do this, but will severely limit our rights.
"The huge loss of life is bad enough. The subsequent loss of what truly represents what this country stands for will be intolerable."
Keep Calm and Carry On (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that a referrer link? Are you really trying to make a quick buck off 9-11?
Re: (Score:3)
What was also interesting about the IRA thing was just how much funding from various irish interest groups in the US basically dried up after 9/11, as people in said interest groups suddenly had it brought home to them just what the money that was "supporting the cause" was going towards. To be blunt about it, the message that "Terrorism is not big and clever, it's unpleasant and nastyt" was beaten into the US in the worst possible fashion. The fact that all those new laws about funding terror and so forth
The initial bulletins. (Score:3)
R.I.P. for the people that died that day... and the thousands more that had to die in other countries that were since then invaded by the US...
We do all this for 3,000 dead (Score:3)
Yet we still allow 18,000 or so people to be killed each year by domestic drunk drivers and don't really do anything about it.
Not True (Score:4, Insightful)
Not True. The number of deaths from drunken driving has been steadily reducing for many years. What we've done about it has been very effective. We've treated it as if it were a crime.
How effective do you all suppose it would have been to have declared "WAR" on drunk driving? My guess is that we'd have spent our treasury dry and had to borrow money from China. Probably would have ruined our economy. Sure glad that didn't happen.
Re: (Score:3)
The Supreme Court has created an exception to my 4th amendment rights to stop every vehicle on a road to check for drunk drivers. You call that doing nothing? I call it doing too much.
I was using Yahoo! News at the time. (Score:3)
The first I heard about this was a news article that simply said "Plane hits World Trade Center."
The first thing that went through my mind was "some dumbass in a Cesna" I didn't know for another hour or two that it serious. An hour or two after that they were evacuating down-town Houston, the buses to the park and ride were so full I took the local Greenspoint Bus instead since it went to Greenspoint mall which wasn't far from my intended stop, even if it did take a lot longer to get there.
Security down town got stupid strong after that. I had to show my ID to simply use the ATM in the tunnel system across the street from the building I worked in. They locked down most of the stairwells in most of the down town buildings, you could only go downstairs, not up, if you could even do that after the attacks. So much for that stay healthy method.
It still saddens me to think back to that day. I don't think W. did the right thing, but for the life of me I don't know what the right thing was. Everyone cheered him on at first and supported the whole open up a can of whoop-ass idea, but when we didn't know where to stop they pointed the finger at him without actually offering a good what solution as to what we should do next. Even Obama is still doing what Bush started, Nobel Peace prize in hand. I think it's time to stop and completely leave the Middle East. We have plenty of oil here we're not allowed to get and we're rapidly developing technology to reduce our need for it. Get the government out of the way and we can cut our demand to quarter of it's current amount in the foreseeable future. I think Ron Paul is right, leave them alone and they'll leave us alone. We made our point, leave with a note saying "do it again and we'll be back" and GTFO out of their affairs. The key to prevention is to get out of everyone else's business and fix our own affairs.
Re:I was using Yahoo! News at the time. (Score:5, Insightful)
No we don't.
Yes we are.
No we can't. I run the tech for an energy management equipment/network/software/support company in NYC that cuts energy consumption an average of 20%, mostly in heating oil/gas. The notoriously greedy building owners never pay the upfront costs, even when it pays back in under a year - that's close to 100% ROI, and rising with energy costs. The only way they do it is when there's government money and/or requirements to do it. Until NYC's law kicked in this year, building owners refused to even measure their energy consumption, let alone reduce it. This is the reality, not the "Mayor of Sim City" Ron Paul LARPing Ayn Rand.
The right thing would have been an "Apollo programme" for energy efficiency/alternatives to get our money, and the troops that always follow it, out of the Mideast. By now, a decade later, we could have cut our energy consumption by at least 30%, maybe more, and set trade policies to get all of our oil/gas from our biggest sources: Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean (and some gas from the Pacific). Instead we invaded Iraq, sending oil to $100:bbl for most of a decade, while promoting SUVs and even Hummers that get 1/3 the mileage we should require from cars. We could have interconnected regional and commuter rail, built more cargo and passenger interlinks. The $3 TRILLION [washingtonpost.com] we spent in Iraq so far could have bought us an energy, transit and building infrastructure that got the Mideast and much of the global corruption out of our hair permanently. Instead we spent the time, money and lives making things worse.
We don't need to do wild science fiction to solve our core economic/political problems. We need to do straightforward science and engineering. Which should be the easiest politics of all. Instead, we wanted a flight suit, a megaphone, and blood. We sure got it.
Re: (Score:3)
Listen, three generations back my family was in the oil business and they passed the torch down the line. I'm the first in succession since then to not go into oil, and my dad is still in it. If he tells me there's plenty of oil here, his brother backs it up, and all the oil field workers I know personally, including the ones I've worked with through my technology jobs at various oil companies here in Houston (hint, more than three) tell me there's plenty here on U.S. soil for us we're not allowed to get
Re:I was using Yahoo! News at the time. (Score:5, Interesting)
The trucker union, the Teamsters, has some power, but it's not even enough to protect their pensions - let alone force the US to choose roads and airports over rails. The power is in the vehicle makers: car and truck makers, airplane makers. And of course the oil corps. Those corporations have been calling the shots since Henry Ford, and are the ones who tore up America's rail [wikipedia.org] to replace with roads and cars. Those are the orgs that set up Houston, Oil City, the way you hate - not the unions.
You can tell me about how your family oil business knows there's so much oil left to drill, yet despite getting royalty-free drilling land practically wherever they ask, their industry doesn't drill. Except maybe when getting Federal money from the rest of us to multiply their profits. The actual unlimited supply is self-serving lies about where oil is or isn't coming from oil companies with agendas to maximize profit by increasing demand and decreasing supply. I know they're your family, but if they're like mine or any other family I know, they'll tell you the same lies they tell themselves that protect what they do that they know is wrong.
I can tell you from direct experience that NYC building owners don't invest in their operating capital even when the ROI is, as I told you, close to 100% or better, except when the government both forces them and pays them to do it. It doesn't make sense. But that's because economics is not like electronics, where consistency and actual value rule the actors. Economics is a measure of people's exchanges of value with each other and their environment. Which means it's governed by human social psychology, not primarily by the potential and limits of the material being exchanged. Despite their deserved reputation of being the worlds most determined capitalists, NYC building owners refuse to make rational investment decisions all the time. It's not because of property/zoning laws/regulations. It's because they are used to increasing profits only by cutting immediate costs (like cheaper maintenance workers) or by reducing the supply of real estate against the constantly increasing demand for it. Purely rational people would change despite what they're used to when there's double or triple digit ROIs from investing in necessary costs they have to pay anyway (boiler upgrades and fuel). Building owners don't change, because they wait for everyone around them to change, or to be forced to change, or to be paid to change - or all of them usually.
Again, this is not some kind of guess at what might happen. Also, your statement that the rich in NYC are taxed so much that they flee to other states is just a lie. Except for the extremely rich who move across the state line to Connecticut. It's not that they're taxed so much in NYC, but that they're taxed so little in CT. So when rivers overflow in predictable storms, they're surrounded by a moat their private airlifts have to get across with food and diesel for their generators. Because without taxes and working government their infrastructure, like roads, powerlines and drainage, can't withstand the changes their businesses are making. They are the tiny minority. NYC is full of the richest people in the world, not despite the taxation but because of the services it pays for. And every day more rich people come here, to pay the taxes and consume the services.
FYI, NASA is not a good example to contest government leading energy efficiency, because building efficiency is not rocket science. NASA as run by either a Republican president or Congress or both for the past couple of generations is like any other large government procurement system: corporate welfare for those who sell by the part# through their DC lobbyists. NYC law, like practically all energy efficiency regulations these days, requires only performance standards and energy improvement results (or just standardized reporting in physical units).
I'm always fascinated by the people whose entire career
Re: (Score:3)
Dang.
You nailed some very good points there. This one particularly stuck out " I don't think W. did the right thing, but for the life of me I don't know what the right thing was."
How do you approach the next evolution of war? It reminds me of the transition of formal warfare into guerrilla warfare. Those who don't get a clue and adopt similar styles typically end up defeated.
What's interesting is that with every new stage of warfare we take one step further of removing the "humanity" from it. Like the step
Religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
Still at War in Iraq (Score:4, Insightful)
The main consequence of the attack was that Bush/Cheney invaded Iraq. It's now over 8 years later, and we're still at war in Iraq. No WMD, no Binladen connection, or any of Bush/Cheney's other lies were ever proven anything but lies. Like "the war will pay for itself [boiseweekly.com]". The Iraq War has cost us well over $3 TRILLION [washingtonpost.com]. It has cost us almost 5000 dead Americans [antiwar.com], over 100,000 wounded Americans, and hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqis. Not to mention the severe costs of Americans torturing so many people.
We'll memorialize 9/11/2001 for a long time. But 3/19/03? What's that? It's the date the US invaded Iraq. Nobody wants to talk about that, so the war never ends.
A sad day for many reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no doubt this was a tragedy and a sad day for the American people but from an outsiders perspective (an Australian perspective) this is what we saw happening to you guys.
Why has no forensic investigation ever been carried out and scrutinised? Why wasn't OBL tried and humiliated, and made to face his worst fear in front of the American public? I strongly feel that Americans have been denied actual justice and have instead been given a serve of McJustice by media/military. The true strength of Western democracies has been that they are countries run BY RULE OF LAW that has been refined over a roughly 800 year period. If we look at it from that perspective the military look like a very blunt tool, by comparison. Yet it was the tool of first resort. What does it say about our democracy that one of the strongest was so easily subverted?
The consequences of not applying those principles have drawn the U.S into an asymmetrical war that has cost trillions, without actually being able to hit a target of any meaning. I believe many forth amendment rights have practically been abandoned, you have a domestic spy policy now and bills introduced to protect the freedoms of everyday people are slowly being whittled down.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin "The constitution in it's current form will not save the United States from Despotism". The American people have been lied to and deceived, I'm ashamed to say in part, by an Australian Media mogul who learned how to do what he is doing to America in my homeland.
Justice delayed, Just denied.
The war that was being waged on America began when the Towers were hit but the enemy has attacked in such a way that the freedoms that protected US citizens have been hit far more severely than those Towers. The institution of democracy was weakened from within at one of the modern cradles of it's creation and now I see it more compromised than it has ever been. Human rights, the bedrock of your enviable Bill of Rights, the true strength of your nation were treated as an inconvenience to circumvented. Yet it's the only weapon capable of disarming a martyr.
Know your enemy, Know yourself, and whilst the truth must be painful for you to hear will you bludgeon to death the friend who has the courage to look you in the face and tell it to you? The one who says, "hey mate, yer acting like a dickhead". How can you possibly win in Iraq and Afghanistan when the real war is in the cathedrals of your institutions by an enemy who is manipulating you so skillfully that you dance willingly to the tune. Stop, friend, before you destroy yourself and ask who the real enemy is, what the true theater of this war is and what forces are at play?
How many of Ben Franklins warnings will you ignore? Why do I, an Australian, have to point out the wisdom of your own founding fathers whose words have been paraphrased ad infinitum;
Those who trade an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither security nor liberty
Then why America why, do you keep doing it?
9/11, reflecting on Americans acting the Cowards (Score:5, Insightful)
The anniversary of 9/11 always pisses me off. No, not because 3000 people died. 3000 people dying was a tragedy to be sure and the relatives of the victims certainly have my condolences. What pisses me off is the cowardly way that we as Americans reacted and how we continue to behave.
After 9/11 we had a decision. We could either have been brave or cowardly. We chose the path of cowardice. Cowardice is submitting to terror by stripping ourselves of civil liberty, creating a department of "homeland security", and installing pr0n scanners in airports. Cowardice is secret no-fly lists and domestic spying. The worst cowardice was Americans mewing to their politicians to strip them of their liberties to save them from the oh-so-scary terrorist. Cowardice is the path we picked. We gave up essential liberties for a trivial amount of security.
The path of bravery would have been to have by clinging to our essential freedoms and liberties. The nation that stood down the fucking USSR, a REAL threat, managed to go half a century without surrendering their freedoms and running away screaming like cowards. Seriously, consider that. 9/11 stripped away freedoms that we had even when the US was facing down a nation armed with a nuclear arsenal big enough to wipe out the world multiple times over. We faced down a world ending threat and didn't balk, but when a couple of sheep herders managed to knock down two buildings in a manner that they can never repeat again, we promptly shit ourselves and surrender those liberties we guarded when facing down the existential threat that was the USSR. Talking about acting the part of the fucking coward. If there was ever a time to piss ourselves and wipe our ass with the constitution, it was during the Cold War.
Just think about it for a moment. In a time when it was our policy the literally destroy the world if our allies were attacked, you could get on an airplane unmolested and the fourth amendment was still actively enforced.
If you are an American, you are going to die by stuffing your face with too much fucking food. Fucking deal with it. You are not going to die in a terrorist attack. The food you stuff into your god damn face is going to be the death of you. That, or your own body is going to murder you with cancer. If you are really lucky, you might die in an exciting car accident. The fucking terrorist are not going to kill you. If you believe so, you are a god damn coward and an idiot.
Look here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm [cdc.gov]
Fucking food bacteria kills 10x more people every year than terrorist did in 2001. It kills 300x more people than terrorist have killed Americans in the past decade. Terrorism in 2001 didn't even make it to the top 10 most likely ways to die. It falls well below chocking on your own god damn food over the past decade. That is right, stuffing food into your fat face is literally more likely to kill you than a terrorist.
So what pisses me off about 9/11 is that it is not a time for memorials and what not. What pisses me off is that we sit around circle jerking each other over how scary the terrorist are as we stuff our fat Americans asses with McDonalds food. We mew and bleat to politicians to protect us from one of the most unlikely ways to die imaginable, as we work on scoring a heart attack before the age of 60 by eating ourselves to death.
We could have a 9/11 style attack every single MONTH, and we would still have more people dying to being fat asses. Despite this, I don't see us cowardly begging the government to strip us of our civil liberties to save us from eating ourselves to death.
9/11 pisses me off each and every year because it is a sore reminder that when faced with a minor and petty threat to ourselves, we shit our pants, pissed ourselves, and picked the path of the coward. We gave up our civil liberties and elected asshole politicians who promised to rip apart the constitution. It pains me to think
Re:9/11, reflecting on Americans acting the Coward (Score:4, Interesting)
Terrorism as practiced by groups like Al Qaida is much different. Al Qaida is a military organization with a global reach that has essentially declared war on the United States (as well as dozens of others governments, it seems). One of the core responsibilities of government is to defend its citizenry against military threats. But terrorists don't stop at attacking our military installations; by definition, they aim to kill thousands of civilians at a time as part of a campaign of psychological warfare. To say that we don't need a DHS, greatly increased security at airports and subway stations, etc. is ridiculous. Al Qaida would love it if we went back to our pre-9/11 levels of security (which was mostly aimed at common criminals). They would continue with their 9/11 style attacks on airplanes, the shoe bombing attacks that Richard Reid blew the cover on later, the London subway bombings, the Mumbai hotel massacre, etc, with the goal of getting Americans to believe that government was incapable of protecting them. Like a schoolyard bully, they will continue until they are effectively confronted and stopped.
Americans poured out their blood and tears over the past 200+ years to gain essential freedoms and liberties. Ripping up the fourth and fifth amendment because a bunch of sheep herders can on rare occasion kill a few Americans is pure cowardice. We don't respond violently to each and every little trivial threat, and terrorist fall firmly in the 'trivial threat' category. For the same reason why I would HOPE that Americans would be against random warrantless searches of their homes in attempt to capture more normal criminals, I would hope that they can get a handle on their mewing cowardly fright of an extremely rare way to die, and respond in the same way when confront with terrorism.
There are lots of things we could do to marginally increase our safety. We don't do most of them because it isn't worth the cost. A brutal Soviet style police state has less violent crime. We reject that sort of police state because we are willing to tolerate a little more crime in exchange for liberty. Our courts are biased to let guilty people go free because we don't want to jail innocent people. Terrorism is not magically different. Sure, it is the responsibility of the government to make reasonable efforts to stop terrorist. It sure as shit isn't their responsibility to do it at any cost. The amount we pay in terms of money and liberty to defend against terrorism needs to be balanced by the fact that it is an absurdly rare way for anyone to actually die.
The US has a 200+ year history of bleeding to grow and defend its liberties. We faced down the Soviet Union with one hand tied behind our back in terms of counter espionage because we were so insistent about preserving the liberties that we were fighting for. It is sad and pathetic that when faced with fucking sheep herders that are a couple of centuries behind what the USSR was in terms of population, resources, and technological capability, we promptly shit ourselves and couldn't surrender our liberties against a trivial threat fast enough.
If you want to be a coward, fearful of death due to the absurdly rare chance of being struck down by a terrorist (rather than eating yourself to death), do it quietly. Don't mew and bleat for politicians to piss away MY money and liberty because you can't control your bowels. I appreciate the blood and sacrifices that Americans have made over the past 200+ years to grow and defend their liberty. I don't appreciate sniveling cowards rushing to surrender away what other far more deserving men and women have built.
It is not asking much that you honor the blood and sacrifices made by better and braver men and women than you by making your own tiny and nearly effortless sacrifice of not pissing yourself and bleating to politicians to save you on the rare occasion that a terrorist manages to kill a trivial and minuscule portion of the population. If previous Americans co
Hunter S Thompson on 9/11 (Score:5, Interesting)
The best writing I've seen on 9/11 was by Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter knew how the US government worked, and foresaw just about everything that has happened since right from the start:
Marking 10 years since US Revolution overthrown (Score:4, Insightful)
I was once attacked by a dog. Since then I have carried around a solid gold tiger. It has made me the object of ridicule, my limbs are aching and I can barely afford to eat. But at least I haven't been attacked by any more dogs.
God bless your betters!
Media coverage of anniversary. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's shameful that the media coverage is merely a flashback back to 9/11, and I here nothing about the subsequent fear, paranoia, and loss of freedoms that have engulfed the country. It was certainly a horrible day, but the aftermath on our country has been tens of thousands of times worse.
We got into two wars that we're STILL it., We have this lovely patriot act, which continues to be renewed with little debate. We have a continually fearful public, cowed into submission to The Official Reaction. We have ever increasing security theatre at airports. But yet no coverage of any of that. It's all about the day, and nothing about the disaster afterward.
Re:fuck the usa (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed.
100,000 civilians died already in that war and you NEVER hear the USA mentioning them. Even though they started that war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
It's always "Thanks to our troops for your service" but the civilians of Iraq are not even acknowledged. I'm not even saying the US should apologize but they never even mention those civilian victims, as if they didn't exist!
Today the USA want the whole world to pity them. Well no, 9/11 was a tragedy but I won't have any sympathy for people who constantly ignore the innocent victims of their war. It's sick.
The responses OP received (and no doubt I will receive) just show how the US are callous, have no respect for foreigners whose lives they destroy, and never, ever admit any wrongdoing whatsoever. You don't want us to spoil your day by talking about people dying in Iraq, do you? Today should be all about America day, right? And those Iraqi civilians they can be mentioned any other day of the year, just like they have been so far, can't they? Oh wait, they have never been mentioned by the USA... Guess today is their day then!
For the rest of the world, 9/11 should be Fuck America Day and it should be so until the USA own up to their responsibilities towards the victims of the Iraq War.
Re:fuck the usa (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a little more complicated than that. There are those of us in the USA who recognize that our government takes actions on its own behalf, often unbeknownst to most citizens, that cause strife, violence, and suffering. The US citizens are currently under economic assault from the same banking/government cartel which has launched full wars on the citizens of other countries. Some of us try to raise awareness, but as many have found through history, it's much easier to get people to hate than to get them to look at the failure of their own actions (or inactions).
Ron Paul, for example, is a presidential candidate who is largely mocked by the media, but he has explained publicly and repeatedly that US foreign policy creates the very conditions that foster terrorism - by interfering in other sovereign nations' governments, by having belligerent and aggressive foreign policy, and also by exporting our inflation by taking advantage of the dollar's reserve status. There are many, many things we do that are wrong, and most happen simply because the schools, media, and government don't see it profitable to make sure that the average Joe (who is too busy either working or watching TV) understands these issues. But the two big parties and the media have already decided that nationalism is our country's pastime, and anyone who questions it must be mocked. Other nations have had similar, if more heavy-handed, cooperation between government and media to suppress dissent, no?
I, for one, as an American, have made it a priority to educate my fellow citizens on such issues. I recently explained to a coworker why the Egyptians who revolted against our satrap Mubarak were also angry at us (our support of his regime through money, training, and weapons). He was shocked. He's not a bad guy, he's just too busy to take any serious steps to get the CIA/Pentagon under control.
When you consider how easy it is for the powers that be to quash real change in our democracy (again see Ron Paul), it becomes a question of whether the American people, even if they woke up to the evils our government does, could do anything to change it. We're not unique as a nation, whatever people believe.
Re:fuck the usa (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a theocracy. Nobody can win a major seat in our government without professing to be a person of faith.
Secondly, what legislation are you thinking of specifically -- I'd like to read it and see if it says what you say it does.
Finally, if it takes a whack job to stop burning people and money around the world, that's a whack job I'd prefer to the scum currently dictating policy.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I think on all issues he has repeated kept his faith personal and his policies firmly in the separation of church and state category. He wants to legalize drugs and eliminate government restrictions on who can marry whom. That is not a theocratic point of view.
Perhaps you would do well to spend some time quietly contemplating why you feel the need to suppress open exchange of ideas and launch personal attacks. After 9/11 I had a lot of anger, but I found that thinking about the reasons why it happened to
Re:fuck the usa (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:fuck the usa (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:fuck the usa (Score:5, Insightful)
afghanistan absolutely was the fight for 9/11 and continues to be.
How so? Afghanistan was invaded because talibs refused to unconditionally hand over Osama, but they themselves didn't play any significant part in 9/11. So eventually they've got Osama in Pakistan - what's Aghanistan about, now?
Also, let's see what the track record of U.S/NATO there has been so far:
1. Replaced autocratic theocracy with sham democratic theocracy. Beheading for apostasy and stoning to death for adultery are still the law in "liberated" Afghanistan.
2. Taliban-controlled areas, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, became the breeding ground for terrorists. Now that they are attacked by the U.S., it's a good and easy way to be "martyred" for those looking for it.
3. Poppy production is through the roof again, and floods Russia and Europe. Taliban used to burn the fields and kill the growers; the new government almost entirely consists of those people who cash in on selling drugs.
Re:fuck the usa (Score:4)
Today the USA want the whole world to pity them.
No we don't. This is a day of national remembrance. We don't want your pity and didn't ask for it.
Don't forget France, those murderers (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems if we accept that 9/11 occurs every day in Iraq, then we must also accept that 9/11 happens every day in Libya. So, fuck those terrorist countries too for causing civilian deaths in a war zone.
Let's see... fuck Denmark, fuck Italy, fuck Netherlands, fuck Norway, fuck Sweden, fuck Spain, fuck Turkey, fuck Jordan, fuck Qatar, fuck UAE. Fuck them all.