September 11 2001

[Haunted]

Quoting schmod from 03:28, 14th Sep 2008
The fact that the evacuations got as many people out as they did is an absolute miracle. It could have been much, much worse.

No doubt that evacuations did help but the main reason the casualties were not higher was because the first plane hit before 9am. Had it been an hour later the toll would have been monumentally higher.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

[LonelyPilgrim]

It is often commented that due to the timing, the attacks failed in their chief desire, ie. to kill lots of people. I'm not sure that's what you guys are getting at, but it is something I've heard a lot.

We shouldn't be surprised at the lower-than-possible body-count. The point of terrorism is to terrorise, not to maximise casualties, per se. The attacks were aimed not at people, as such, but at symbols of American power and our sense of security. Terrorism is fundamentally a form of symbolic warfare. In that regard, the assult was spectacularly successful even without the fourth plane.



[hr]

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. --Giacomo Casanova

[Haunted]

True, but I have no doubt that the plotters would've opted for the "kills more people" option had they been given the chance/choice.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

[n01]

i was thinking "shit, now the government has their own screwed up justification for entering iraq and fucking everything up"

oh where was i? at high school in the library, teachers turned on the tv and it seemed just like a TV show to me. so easy to be detached when it doesn't affect you personally... until bush got a hold of things that is.

same thing with katrina - in a totally different part of the country and is just too far away and doesn't affect me in the slightest. not that i don't have feelings for human life... just entirely a different world pretty much.

[tramp]

I was living in Oman at the time. We didn't have a TV so heard dribs and drabs from friends. Nobody knew at the time how it would impact on expats in Arab countries. I never even saw any of the footage until days afterwards and, at the time when the news was breaking, I wasn't sure what to make of it at all (as a mere 16 year old).
The British School was closed for a day or two and when we returned there was Arabic grafiti all along one side of the school. The American school my sister went to was closed for about a week. A few of her classmates had friends or friends of friends who had been tragically affected.

[Duncan]

Quoting n01 from 03:59, 17th Sep 2008
i was thinking "shit, now the government has their own screwed up justification for entering iraq and fucking everything up

That was remarkably prescient of you, considering the sudden shift of focus from Afghanistan to Iraq caught most people by surprise.

My father called me and told me to switch on the TV because a 'plane had flown into the World Trade Center'. I assumed a Cessna pilot had made a fatal error. I turned it on in time to watch a Boeing fly into the second tower. Yikes.

[Frank]

At the time of happening, I worked backwards to figure out I'd been in the outdoors boy's toilets in high school (fourth year, I believe) before heading on to something then double-computing.

In double computing, however, towards the end, our teacher had heard about it and said words to the affect of "Folks, I recommend you start looking at news websites right away, don't bother with working for the last thirty minutes".

By that point we all got talking. IIRC, we were let out of the class a bit early too, so the best bits of the next hour or so was spent largely in conversation with the only other person on the school bus who seemed to know *and* give a damn about what'd 'actually' happened (as opposed to caring that they'd got out of class early). (In fairness, lots more would've been interested had they known about it by this point)

My chum only knew as he was in Modern Studies at the time and his excellent taecher happened to be a keen follower of all sorts of news (so, even by the next day, everyone in that class were still the best informed about what was really going on).

By the time we got home our minds had worked ideas in overdrive and confused some lines of information; proposing fleets of smaller aircraft flying out of Mexico and Canada to strike at other targets across the US. And, for myself, I was quite scared about an attack on the Goldengate Bridge in SF.

The next day itself involved a rather dull day in which we otherwise awaited 'more attacks', but nothing came. A chap in 'RE prayer group' mentioned Osama Bin Laden, but otherwise not much was said except expressions of sorrow, grief, despair and (most commonly) simple recognition of a fairly big tragedy.

I happened to keep a newspaper (Scotsman, 12/09/01) from the day after just as a wee 'memento' to remind me as to how things seemed to be at that point, warts and all. (Something like the Scotsman does have a degree of cynicism, scepticism and enquiry about it, as opposed to incendiary tabloid reporting!

Wow, we really do contrbute alot that people won't read. Too long, don't read...I suppose. If you did, cheers!

[hr]

"There is only ever one truth. Things are always black or white, there's no such thing as a shade of grey. If you think that something is a shade of grey it simply means that you don't fully understand the situation. The truth is narrow and the path of the pursuit of truth is similarly narrow."
Also, some years later:
"here we are arguing about a few uppity troublemakers with a bee in their bonnet and a conspiracy theory."

[maenad]

I had been at Guides with my sister and my father came out to tell us when we got home (so fairly late evening UK time). I followed him into the front room to watch the TV because I could tell from what he'd said that this was 'big'; I'd never heard of or (knowingly) seen the WTC at this time so I was clueless otherwise. It took a couple of rounds on TV for me to grasp the context and seriousness of the event.

[David Bean]

It was less than a month before I was to arrive at St Andrews to begin my studies. My mother had given me a lift into Blairgowrie to pick up my watch, which had been in at the jeweller's having a new battery fitted. When I got back to the car she had the radio on, and gave me a precis; the second plane hit as we were on the way home, and I spent the rest of the day watching the news.

I too had been up the tower with the visitors' deck recently, in April.

The Internet Archive has the live feeds from the main US networks as things were going on; as I recall MSNBC appeared to be the most on the ball in terms of figuring out what was happening and reporting it. The BBC America coverage, surprisingly, was atrocious: the presenter watched the second plane hit, and it still managed to take her about five minutes to figure out what was going on. Later - and I thought this was disgraceful - when the first tower started to fall, she called it with something along the lines of 'It now appears that one of the towers is falling down,' in a tone of voice that I can only describe as mild irritation; the whole performance was nauseating, and frankly I hope they fired the woman immediately.

[hr]

Psalm 91:7

[Bonnie]

Quoting Timata from 20:30, 11th Sep 2008 I think it was a Wednesday, and I think it was ST:DS9)

It was a Tuesday.

A beautiful, bright, cloudless Indian summer Tuesday.

I had the morning news on, flipping between The Today Show and Good Morning America, wondering about whether the Stock Market would affect the exchange rate in the upcoming week.

I was finishing my packing... to get on an airplane myself to come to St Andrews for the first time.

And then the networks started reporting about a possible airplane hitting a tower and about how a pilot hadn't made such a mistake since 1912 or something-- it must have been a small private charter plane, surely.

Buy, I got so freaking MAD! I stormed all throughout the house and yelled at the television after the second plane hit. That's how we knew it wasn't a little private charter plane by accident hitting the tower. I swear I was ready to kill somebody that day. This is a shock because I had had such a pleasant morning.

[novium]

Quoting n01 from 03:59, 17th Sep 2008
i was thinking "shit, now the government has their own screwed up justification for entering iraq and fucking everything up"

oh where was i? at high school in the library, teachers turned on the tv and it seemed just like a TV show to me. so easy to be detached when it doesn't affect you personally... until bush got a hold of things that is.

Retro-partisanism? Bush hadn't done all that much, good or bad, at that point. He'd only been president for 9 months. While it's certainly easy to judge him now, the only people that hated him then were the democratic equivalent of ann coulter, IIRC.


The first political-consequence thought I had concerning 9/11, when they mentioned al-queda was "good. something'll finally get done in afghanistan," because, at the time, the plight of afghanistan was one of the things I cared about passionately in the way you only really can as a teenager, and I had been bitterly disappointed by the weak responses to the giant buddha statues thing. It was an odd thought. The thought that of all the terrorists in the world, it was the terrorists headquartered in aghanistan meant that people were finally going to be forced to take note of what was happening there.

[hr]

Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[n01]

Quoting novium from 03:14, 19th Sep 2008
Retro-partisanism? Bush hadn't done all that much, good or bad, at that point. He'd only been president for 9 months. While it's certainly easy to judge him now, the only people that hated him then were the democratic equivalent of ann coulter, IIRC.


The first political-consequence thought I had concerning 9/11, when they mentioned al-queda was "good. something'll finally get done in afghanistan," because, at the time, the plight of afghanistan was one of the things I cared about passionately in the way you only really can as a teenager, and I had been bitterly disappointed by the weak responses to the giant buddha statues thing. It was an odd thought. The thought that of all the terrorists in the world, it was the terrorists headquartered in aghanistan meant that people were finally going to be forced to take note of what was happening there.

[hr]

Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

Well to clarify my point, it obviously isn't just Bush that is to blame. I don't really think it really matters who is the president at the end of the day - the motivations will still be the same.

The "war on terror", in my opinion, is just a guise for the US trying to hold territory and economic superiority. Oil, oil and more oil. I mean we sold the terrorists our old weapons and then attacked them for holding arms. What did it say on the receipt of this transaction? "Old farm equipment".

We gave the means to terrorist groups to overthrow the governments at the time, as they weren't useful to us - let the terrorists do our dirty work for us.

Then again, I suppose it really depends who you listen to. Information found in John Pilger's book "The New Rulers of the World" - it seems to make sense to me.

>Duncan - I had no clue of any of this at the time. Didn't know a f'ing thing. Just a platform to vent now about it all, as I didn't have a chance to when it all happened (didn't know any better)

[David Bean]

The "war on terror", in my opinion, is just a guise for the US trying to hold territory and economic superiority. Oil, oil and more oil. I mean we sold the terrorists our old weapons and then attacked them for holding arms. What did it say on the receipt of this transaction? "Old farm equipment".

With respect, do you therefore think it has nothing to do with the terrorists' determination to commit mass murder of innocent civilians on an ever wider scale, and our governments' belief that it mightn't be a bad idea to try and stop them?

There is a legitimate point of view (though not one I share) that the motivation for going to war in Iraq may be connected with oil, but to associate it with Afghanistan is fringe-minded paranoia, and completely unsupported by any respected analysis.

We gave the means to terrorist groups to overthrow the governments at the time, as they weren't useful to us - let the terrorists do our dirty work for us.

America's arming of Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion was motivated by a confluence of strategic interest and morality: they knew tying up the Soviets in a fruitless engagement in Afghanistan would be damaging, but at the same time their leaders quite rightly believed that what the Soviets were doing to those people was quite simply wrong, and that if the residents of that place could use rocket launchers to take down the helicopters the Soviets were using to rain fire and death upon them, sending those rocket launchers over was quite simply the right thing to do. The mistake the Americans made was in failing to provide for the reconstruction of the country, not checking the growing radicalism of certain sectors of the Mujahedeen; the tragic upshot of this was the rise of the vile Taleban and the oppression they themselves wrought upon their own people, along side the terrorist attacks on the rest of the world that despicable regime cheerfully fostered. America was guilty of a mistake, but not of malice, and gave no serious cause for legitimate grievance; all that happened afterwards was the fault of the Taleban and their Al Qua'eda cronies, nobody else. These terrorists got much less than they deserved.

[novium]

I think you've covered all the bases there. I certainly can't think of anything pressing to add.

[LonelyPilgrim]

I can, novium. It might be worthwhile to mention that it wasn't just America's 'mistake' in Afghanistan. The British were quite keenly active at training and arming mujahadeen as well. In fact, IIRC, the group that bin Laden was with at the time where handled by British intelligence advisers. Does American bear the brunt of the blame for the strategic error of early disengagement with Afghanistan? Certainly, but we don't bear the entire blame alone - there's still some to go around.

As to n01's point about oil and territorial occupation - absolutely not, that would be too simple. That belief completely misunderstands the neo-conservative ideology. What they believe is actually far more dangerous, in that it is even more removed from a sense of reality than a policy of territorial economic conquest would be. I suggest reading Fred Kaplan's "Daydream Believers" for an excellent overview of who the neo-cons are, how they came to power, and how they've screwed up the world since 9/11.

[David Bean]

I can, novium. It might be worthwhile to mention that it wasn't just America's 'mistake' in Afghanistan. The British were quite keenly active at training and arming mujahadeen as well.

Forgive me - Iforgot to mention that we sent James Bond over there as well.