Looking back on 9/11/2001, yes, it was a shock and around 3,000 people were killed tragically. But from the standpoint of us as a nation, might we have been better off if we had done not nearly so much, or even nothing? Even leaving aside the Iraq war, and looking at everything everything else that came in reaction to the events of Sept. 11, including the “patriot” act, the dept. of homeland security, and even the Afghanistan war: could it all be characterized as an overreaction?
Where would we be now if the government had done nothing in response to 9/11 except rebuild and console the survivors? Does anybody suspect that we’d be better off?
Which is to suggest that the events of 9/11 in and of themselves didn’t actually harm our country or economy all that much, and (if somehow psychological issues could have been addressed) we should have recovered quite quickly: whatever harm that’s been done on a national level has come purely through our own reaction to the event?
If we had done literally *nothing, *for sure there would have been many more attacks by now. We had to take decisive, preemptive action; otherwise, what’s the point of having a Defense Department? That being said, our government certainly did react in some very wrong ways, especially the Iraq war and the Patriot Act.
Would we be better off doing nothing? No, we’d be better off with different people in charge.
I feel the idea that “9/11 changed everything” was an over-reaction. It was used as an excuse for doing a lot of things that were not a direct response to the attacks.
A better response would have been equivalent to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 or the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. We should have identified the people responsible and apprehended and punished them. (Which, under the circumstances, probably would have encompassed the Afghanistan invasion.) But there was no need to make any broad changes in American society.
But do you want Mom and Dad going to PTA meetings and demanding sweeping changes in the school system in order to make sure that another bullying incident like this never happens again?
They should have rapidly rebuilt the towers just like they were. They should have shown that attacking us would not change us. We should have shown that we were too big to be substantially changed by terrorist tactics. That would have been a victory.
If my son was killed by a drunk driver, would that mean America should ban alcohol? Or cars? If my son was shot, should we ban all firearms? If my son died of lung cancer, should we ban cigarettes?
IIRC not too long after 9-11 there was an article in some fairly major magazine or newspaper that collected the 9-11 aftermath reactions of various elite, well known American writers and artists living in or near New York, and the “we deserved it” tone and utter detachment from the national reaction to the events from several of them was pretty astounding. You got the definite impression there was no love lost for the United States.
As on the overreaction: also yes. I should have been sufficient to make sure that this does not happen again: reinforce security on the airports, lock and strengthen cockpit doors.
But At the same time, she is famous enough to stir controversy.*
I assume you mean you wanted comments by someone of some import.
** Finding the Text on the article is proving harder than I thought. The link above is another message board, that apparently, has an article copylifted.
We should’ve acknowledged why it happened and made at least some attempt to address those issues, and at the same time found the dogs who had anything to do with it, including prior knowledge or providing harbor after the fact (this includes the Taliban) and made an example out of them. And something should’ve already been built on the site, years ago.
The problem with your argument is this sentence. The loss of 3,000 people was not the end all criteria to the response. let me refine this sentence further:
The United States was attacked in a manner that involved the downing of 4 wide body aircraft directed at the seat of economic, political and military power. The destruction brought down the WTC and grounded every civilian aircraft in the US. Had the WTC collapsed sooner, or the Pentagon not been a hardened building the death toll would have been significantly higher. If the passengers on one of the aircraft had not fought back then either the Capital building or the White House would have been destroyed. To this day, the airlines have not recovered from the economic damage.
Because we live in an open society we are vulnerable to assault from within. Not only was this an asymmetric attack, the entire cost was borne by Visa and the airline industry. It greatly exceeded the attack of Pearl Harbor from the standpoint of attacking the heart of the country and it was done without the use of any military equipment.
There is a big difference between the two. One was an isolated attack, the other, an attack in a series (culminating with 9/11) against a relentless enemy.
If 9/11 would have been isolated. Yes, the correct response would have been to treat as Oklahoma city. Which, is what we did after the other Al Qaeda attacks against multiple US Embassies, USS Cole (yes, we responded, but weakly and not publicly).
I seriously doubt it. Terrorists, actually, aren’t really all that out to get us. Simple fact that if they were, they would’ve been pretty successful by now, whatever precautions we “took” after Sept 11. (I remember a book or article about all the ways terrorists could fuck with us, like drive around in vans sniping people out. Don’t tell me the DHS or the patriot act have saved us from that.)
investing in intelligence-tracking the Al Quda leadership and watching them
working with allied intelligence services to isolate the funding of Al Queda
once we had a good idea of where the top operatives were, we should have attacked their positions with airstrikes, and murdered the others using secret agents
Instead, we got into to endless wars, which after 8 years have drained our treasury.
and Al queda is still at large.