Six years have passed. Say what you will about the war in Iraq, George Bush, or religion. America was attacked. The last time this happened was Pearl Harbor. The result – the USA demonstrated it’s political will and military might.
That makes the US 2 for 2. Two attacks on US soil = two foreign military powers and their allies utterly destroyed.
It would be madness to believe that attacking Americans would ever result in anything short of devastation for the attacker. This has nothing to do with the American people or their attitudes and philosophies. It is the nature of humanity.
If you attacked Alexander the Great, you died. If you attacked Rome, you died. Throughout history it has repeatedly been demonstrated that attacking a superpower is suicide. So here again are the reasons – good or bad – we are where we are.
The First WTC Plane
The Second WTC Plane
The Pentagon – Impact at :25 seconds
United Flight 93 Crash Site
The lesson to be learned… if you are weak, your only option is diplomacy.
I was living in the US at the time – managing a gas station on NW Highway in Dallas, if you can believe it.
I’d gotten home from my night shift, and was sitting down at my computer with a coffee, and had just found a Half-Life server to join…guy in the game says “you guys watching the freakin’ news?”
So, I went out to the lounge room, turned on the TV – just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center live.
It was a weird apocalyptic feeling. I’ll never forget it.
Rest in peace, and God bless the USA.
I was living in Germany when the US invaded Iraq and, frankly, they were pretty upset about the whole affair. Germans, for those who don’t know, love America on the whole. They think of us as the people who helped them rebuild a democratic nation after WWII. They think of the US as a power for good in the world – a peace-keeping nation that goes to war only when it has to.
The thing that troubled the Germans, and troubles me to this day is: you’re right – a super-power under attack will fight back. The problem, though, is the collateral damage. Many people not even remotely involved with the attacks were hurt in the retribution process. So while I agree that the American response could have been predicted, I still wish we hadn’t responded as we did. Peace would be nice :/
I was here in the Philippines on the way out to a party with some friends, I walked by an outdoor bar with a TV, and saw the CNN coverage in the corner of my eye, I ended up staying there for a long time just watching the whole thing in disbelief.
Kim
I was in school at Michigan State. Waking up a bit late I rushed to my morning class. I remember on the way to class, the thought passed my mind, am I crazy? Isn’t this a school day? There were very few people outside that I saw on the way to class. I arrived at class, large lecture hall over several hundred that was only half filled that day.
The teacher then made an announcement; he said, “While President McPherson (the schools president) feels that classes should continue, due to recent even I have decided to cancel this class. You may go home.” (Looking back I can’t believe all classes weren’t canceled.”
I was stunned; I had no idea what was going on. So I turned to the student closest to me and asked, “what does he mean ‘recent events’?†The student just turned to me and said “You know the twin towers in New York? They’re gone.”
I was kind of dumbstruck by his statement. I didn’t know what to make of it, and he didn’t explain what happened. He just slowly got up and walked out of the class.
Needless to say, when I got home and turned on the TV I quickly found out what he meant.
It makes sense that you attack someone, you’re just provoking them to action. How far do you think you’d get if you kept bugging a kid bigger than you? Even if they were passive and calm for much of the time, each irritation is moving them closer and closer to punching in your face. Imagine the response if you do something that actually hurt him.
That was a surreal day, that is for sure.
If you’re talking about provoking the US into action, I don’t know that we ever really got to punch them in the face. We punched Saddam in the face, but Saudi Arabia is still our good ally (even though they held the majority of spots on the 9/11 hijacker crew), Bin Laden is still posting time-relevant videos (confirming he’s been alive at least up to mid August), and Al Queda membership has gone UP not down :(
Perhaps the bigger analogy is more of a wasp stinging a big fat slow half-blind kid. Sure he can go smash the next beehive he sees, but it wasn’t a bee that stung him. The wasp goes off unharmed back to it’s nest, some bees got taken out of commission, but in the end, justice was never served.
I love America, but by now it’s becoming crystal clear that even if the government insiders didn’t cause 9/11 (not gonna touch that one), the administration sure as hell benefited from it. As a matter of fact, for folks like Guliani and Bush, 9/11 was the best thing that ever could have happened for their careers.
We not only lost thousands of lives, we’ve also lost dozens of freedoms, rights, and privileges afforded to us under our very own constitution. And yet not a single person has been held accountable :(
With that off my chest.. I remember where I was. My daughter was just born a month ago and as I was 20 minutes into the 30 or so minute commute to work, my gf called me and told me what happened. Not quite grasping the scale of it all, it wasn’t until I got into work and realized that cnn.com was going down it was getting hit so hard, that this was indeed a huge deal.
I wasn’t old enough to remember Challenger, any assassinations, or that sort of drama, but I’ll definitely be able to tell my kids where I was on 9/11.
I’m hopeful we can jump out of revenge mode (as it has obviously done NOTHING but create more anti-US terrorist groups around the world) and seriously think of possible solutions. We need to avoid words like “pull out” and “defeat” and forget our own damned ego and think long term what would be best for a nation brought to it’s knees by an enemy we were never able to find and punish.
I hope we see that day.. I really do :(
“The lesson to be learned… if you are weak, your only option is diplomacy.”
And if you are strong, your best option is diplomacy.
Couldn’t agree more with MG and Catbert… My condolences to the families of both the victims of the WTC and the victims in Afghanistan and Iraq… I’m sure you all heard this, but in case, “Fighting for peace is like f*cking for virginity”, it just won’t work…
Despite the tragic loss of life, is it REALLY worth throwing away the lives of thousands of troops in an ILLEGAL war – does eye-for-an-eye justice REALLY work?!?!?
And to clear up one point – the invasion count is actually 2 for 3… Americans tend to easily forget the war of 1812 (or the “second war of independence”), but us Canadians are proud of our 1/1 record for invasion ;););)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
IM LOVE MANY THINGS OF US ,BUT THE WORLD IS IN PAIN AFTER 9/11,BUT MAYBE,MAYBE THE ATACK COME FROM INSIDE , JUST MAYBE DONT, CLOSE THE EYES