9/11 Question

Apologies as I’m sure this has been done before, but search isn’t being my friend tonight.

A quick and easy one:

What’s the general consensus on the date and the US emergency telephone number being the same? I seem to recall the answer was “there is no connection”, but I’m not certain now. Bin Laden didn’t use it symbolically, did he?

Lack of evidence would suggest there was no symbolism. You can also infer from am’t of planning needed by Al Qaeda that concerning themselves with a very specific date wouldn’t be worth the trouble (as opposed to setting of street bombers, which has been done on symbolic dates or as a precursor to an election).

While there is no offical connection, the suicide bombers had lived in this country for years and would have had to have known the connection.

I think it was said that they planned a day (such as a Tuesday) that would have fewer people on they planes to deal with. Perhaps they picked that particular Tuesday because of the excellent weather.

I’d be surprised if they even noticed that the date they chose was the same as the emergency number. I had planned a seminar for that day, and I didn’t notice it in my planning. It’s normal to refer to a future date as “September 11th” if it’s months ahead, or within several days, something like “next Tuesday, the 11th.” Even on those times when I’d write it as “9/11,” I don’t think I would notice that particular connection.

They apparently picked a Tuesday because of passenger traffic, and that day did have excellent weather, which was likely no coincidence. Cloudy weather would have interfered with their plans. So the particular date was probably settled on just days in advance, at which time it would have been referred to as “next Tuesday, the 11th.”

I believe that in Europe (and perhaps in the Middle East as well) it’s more common to refer to the day of the month first, so they might have thought of the date as the 11th of September or 11/9/2001 and never make the 911-9/11 connection.

Picking a specific date for the symbolism is more a hallmark of random, psychotic mass murderers – like the Columbine shooters (4/20 was Hitler’s birthday) or Timothy McVeigh (who blew up OK City on the anniversary of Waco).

For terrorists, killing people is not so much personal revenge as it is a “business”. All that matters is the jihad (and getting those 72 virgins) so they concern themselves solely with the most efficient way of killing people. Sept. 11th was chosen because it was the least travelled day (Tuesday) in the least travelled month for air traffic (actually, January is less travelled, but then you have major weather issues to deal with.) If something went wrong on 9/11, and they had to abort their plans, we’d just as easily be talking about 9/18 or 9/25 instead. I doubt very much that the 9/11=911 connection ever entered their scrawny minds.

Which makes me wonder about the other major Al-Queda incidents…is there any special connection with 7/7/05, or 3/11/04?

Is it a coincidence that this was asked on the 9th of November? 9/11, as I noted in my lecture notes today.

Instead of speculating about the terrorist’s reasons for choosing 9/11, why not ask ourselves about our reasons for calling it “9/11”?

The media invented that tag-- “9/11”-- mostly because of our own confusion about how to label that day.No other major events in history are known by their dates–they all have names, which we use to emphasize how we remember them.

==D-Day is not called “6/4”
==Pearl Harbor is not called “7/12”
==Hiroshima is not called “8/6”
==Armistice Day is not called by whatever date it was.
==The evacuation at Dunkirk is not called by its date.
(The only exception is the 4th of July—but that is always called by its proper name --Independence Day-- at formal ceremonies.)

Historical events get named by some sort of general consensus about what happened and why it is important. In a formal war, like WW II, everyone knew immediately that the events I just listed were important milestones in a known process. The final results of that process were of course unknown on the day each even happened, but the process itself–a declared war with a known enemy–was well understood.

But Sept 11, was a new, totally confusing process. For days, we didn’t have any idea who did it. (It was so confusing, that we all had trouble just learning to spell Al Qaeda, let alone understand their motives) And we all wondered if there were another 19, or 200, or maybe another 1000, terrorists waiting to attack us whenever the airports would be allowed to re-open.

But the news media had to give a name to all this confusion. Headlines need pithy, catchy names. Unfortunately, nobody came up with one in time, so they just settled on using the date.

And now, we are so used to calling it by the date, so that we think those numbers have hidden,mystical meaning.

(oops, sorry for posting a rant in GQ. …But I feel better now.) :slight_smile:

I don’t see how McVeigh was specifically not a terrorist. Drawing a distinction between foreign terrorists and domestic terrorists does not make a lot of sense.

Yes, there were 911 days between 9/11/2001 and 3/11/04.

Really. But by “days between” I mean not counting either of those two days.

Yes, McVeigh was a terrorist, but he was a lone whackjob terrorist. The difference between him and Al Qaeda is that he wasn’t funded by anyone, had no accomplices (aside from Terry Nichols), and really had no clear-cut agenda except for obeying the voices inside his head…or the microchip in his ass, if you like.

I was just thinking the same thing, especially the # / # # format. That method of referring to a specific day appears to be invented specifically for Sept. 11th – nobody refers to the Fourth of July as 7/4, or Christmas as 12/25. The only time I’ve seen that format used is when the year is added (i.e. 9/11/01) or when balancing my checkbook.

So it would seem, before the attacks, no one would have associated any September 11th with “9/11”, or “9-1-1”. As you said, that label’s a media invention.

Terrorism in its common usage refers to the use of terror and violence against civilians with the goal of advancing political or religious goals. The way I understand it, the Oklahoma City bombing was motivated purely by vengeance, after the events of Waco and Ruby Ridge. You hurt me so I will hurt you is not terrorism, it could be simple violence or war, but self-satisfaction is not a political or religious goal.

Also, the date is “nine/eleven” while the emergency number is “nine-one-one.” Subtle difference.

In the case of Timothy McVeigh, you could call it the Oklahoma City Bombing, because he attacked just one site. However, the 9/11 bombers attacked multiple sites. If it had just been the two planes that hit the WTC, it might have been the Second World Trade Center Attack. However, they hit the Pentagon, and presumably had another target in mind with the fourth plane. So there wasn’t much to unify the event except the name of the day.

(If the Japanese had simultaneously attacked Oakland and San Diego when they attacked Pearl Harbor, that attack would have had a different name).

Actually, Armistice Day is 11/11 – the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Also known as Veterans’ day now, and for today (11/9) only, known as the day after tomorrow.

The human mind looks for patterns in everything, and usually finds them, even if they’re not really there.

Nawww, my co-workers and I were speculating that day whether there was a connection between the date and the number before any media speculated on it.

Then your co-workers need more work

Umm…maybe you were just a toddler then, so you wouldn’t know, but most people didn’t get a lot of work done that day…

Thanks everyone.

I’d never given this a lot of thought, but a mate of mine on another board asked, and I got to wondering. It does seem to make sense that if they knew about the 911 emergency number or not, at most it’s a symbolic bonus, but couldn’t have been seriously considered given the enormous amount of technical planning involved.