Now that U.S. has selected Bush as the President, do you think that the international community will still be sympathetic towards America?
I remember being pretty shook up about 911, and I’m sure many international Dopers grieved for America during that time. 
However, if a second 911 (god forbid) should happen, how do you think people would react worldwide?
Equally grieved? Or would they say “you choose Bush, you deal with it”?
Well, the sequel is NEVER as interesting as the original.
Tremendous grief, obvoiusly, for both the Americans and our own (in my case Canadian) citizens killed in the attack. As with the original 9/11 we would look at the circumstances and act reasonably and decisively, which is why we went in against Afganistan, but did not go in against Iraq despite intense American pressure. No willingness to act precipitiously and compound the problem as Bush has. No need to encourage further terrorism as Bush has. No need to furher destabilize internation relations as Bush has.
I think a mixture of both, frankly. Though I doubt another 9/11 is on the horizon, at least not in the next four years. Bush doesn’t have to worry about re-election, he’ll just be carpet bombing small angry countries for amusement, if there’s even a HINT of a possible terrorist attack coming from within.
I really think our own country will be polarized. I don’t think we’re all going to rally around the President this time. It’s sad and hopelessly partisan, but it’s about as true as true can be. A lot of people are just going to say “You know what, Bush supporters, we were right, and now you have no one to blame it on.”
As for the international community, I am sure they’ll go through the motions, but I doubt any real sympathy would come from it.
It’d be a gloatfest.
“Reelected that cowboy, didya? Serves you right.”
If the international community gloated at the President after a major terrorist attacks with heavy casualties, they will have become everything that they claim to dislike about America.
I don’t think Sept 11 can technically happen again since Americans themselves would probably never work up that level of excitement twice. I think at this point terrorists could blow up the moon and Americans will be looking at each other going, “well we kind of blew our wad on the Sept 11 thing, didn’t we? What are we going to re-declare the death of irony?” That will be cute on the TV when they bring on special consultant Tom Clancy to say, “ok this time we should probably look for Osama Bin Laden, he is becoming a bit of a pest at this point.”
I don’t have the imagination to picture how America will act next time. Okay I do, they will start treating different parts of their country as if they are very remote. Like, people in Chicago won’t FEEL for people in California, it will be like they are watching footage from Barcelona. They’ll go, “fuck” and then they’ll go on the internet and argue while they eat some cheese-based snack. You can’t lose your innocence twice.
If there’s going to be another Bali bombing is the international community going to go: ah you reelected Howard, payback is a bitch? If Islamic terrorists rape and kill another couple of hundred children in a Russian school are we going to say: Putin’s to blame, what goes around comes around?
Spot on. The shock of 9/11 cannot be repeated by a similar event. Short of a nuclear blast, I find it hard to imagine terrorists acheiving it again.
Well, 9/11 kinda was the sequel to the 1993 bombing, but bigger and more shocking. Like Terminator 2.
I’d hate to say it but it would really depend on where it happens. NY is our neighbour and I would truely be worried for my American friends there. It’s also a state with a similar political outlook. It’s funny how 9/11 did not change the minds of the Dems in NY. They voted against Bush even though THEY were the centre of the attack that Bush used to ride out his reelection.
I’d be more apathetic if a bombing were to happen in a republican stronghold state. Yes, I know no one deserves to die over politics but many ‘red’ states need to wake up on world issues. If the population wants to carpet bomb another country they have to understand wars run both ways.
There will, of course, be “another 911”, several dozen of them over the course of the next century, most of them on a smaller scale, a few on a larger scale.
I knew as long ago as high school in the 1970s that it was inevitable that some terrorist group (I had the Symbionese Liberation Army in mind as the prototype those many years ago) would get their hands on a small simple nuke and set it off in a major metropolitan area to make their point. And that our ultimate fate depended on whether we got past the initial impetus to tighten down and turn the world into a police state and instead made the world a place less likely to breed terrorists.
We are not, as of yet, making the world a place less likely to breed terrorists. Very very much the opposite.
Having said that, though, remind yourself or acquaint yourself with the notion that the Al Qaeda terrorists on 9/11/01 did the equivalent of Luke Skywalker taking out the Death Star with a single shot down the exhaust tube. Most shots of that nature don’t turn out quite so spectacularly. It seems apparent that Osama Bin Laden did not anticipate the complete destruction of the towers.
But your normal everyday terrorist events like Israel sees, or like the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing, or World Trade Center bombing #1 from back when? Easier, more likely. We’ll get used to it. It’s just another risk in modern life, and it will no doubt remain true that you’re more likely to get killed in a traffic accident or a fall in the bathtub. Silly and pointless to obsess about it.
But sooner or later, probably, a nuke. Sooner or later, therefore, world government, and the question is whether its first incarnation shall be Control or Participatory Democracy, and, in the case of the former, how long it takes us to get if off of us so as to have a shot at the latter.
I wonder how it would be if we started suffering small scale attacks.
A bomb blows up in a Pizza Joint in NYC and kills 10 people.
A bomb blows up a bus in Chicago and kills 12 people.
I wonder how much sympathy we would get?