Folks… **Nava **apologized in post #105 of this thread. Let’s knock it off, and not make this sad day any sadder. I’m not big on these “9/11 Rememberence” activities, but I would think that on this day, of all days, we’d at least be able to recognize that we have more in common than we have differences. Poor choice of words by someone who is not a native English speaker just isn’t all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.
Politicians behave badly, in all nations as far as I can tell. And people over react from time to time in the face of great tragedy, such is the human condition.
But isn’t it our humanity that keeps us from enjoying their antics? Isn’t it our empathy for their loss that keeps us from finding ‘fun’ in their misfortune?
That this was an honest opinion hardly excuses the baseness of character it reveals. To use the over reaction of American politicians as an excuse to diminish the suffering of innocents is just that, base.
Dude, you spent all this time more and more ridiculously willfully misinterpreting the “chickens” thing, and you’re telling anyone else to shut up?
You know, I’m about the least Pollyanna-ish person alive, and it *never for a second * occurred to me that she actually meant that watching people running for their lives from collapsing buildings was fun. Do you know why? Because I’m not hysterically looking for things to be offended by.
ETA, what **John Mace ** said. I understand that people are touchy today, but this is just ugly.
The Dope hasn’t changed at all. The Dope still understands the difference between making fun of Bush and 9/11 interests similar to his, and making fun of shocked people, running around in panic, whose vacant eyes betray the terrible fear that they are about to die from a calamitous act of violence. Get it? In this hand, Bush. In this hand, terrified innocent people choking on noxious smoke. Not same same at all.
I’ve tried searching, but couldn’t find it. There was a GD thread while back about why Americans and the West in general were not all up in arms about Darfur or the Tsunami or some other third world tragedy-du-jour while all this ink was being spilled about Paris Hilton or whatnot. One (I presume, American) poster gave a very simple and eloquent explanation about how it is human nature to be more concerned about things that are local than things on the other side of the planet, and while it was a lamentable state of affairs, it just can’t be helped. It was a good enough explanation for me.
So Americans, sorry if some of us in the rest of the world don’t still walk in the shadow of 9/11 6 years after the fact. Sure, it was a bummer and we’re all sorry it happened to nice folks like yourselves, but you know what, it didn’t happen to us, and we have our own problems to worry about, not to mention a dozen other far more serious and costly humanitarian disasters that have occurred since then. The rest of the world is no more worried about it than Americans are about any number of the other shitty things that happen in other countries to non-Americans.
The sooner you guys come around to that, the better.
Her American bosses maybe?
Blow me.
I can’t think of one either - maybe we don’t HAVE the right word. Morbidly bemused seems to sort of get there.
It seems to me to be related to recreational outrage and add the entertainment value of watching a trainwreck.
Schadenfreude doesn’t really seem to cover it - at least not for me, but perhaps for you - since I’m not sure we brought 9/11 on ourselves or deserved it in the way Schadenfreude seems to imply - although I’m certain there are plenty who think we did.
Whatever it is, its human nature and not one of our better attributes.
And I’m not sure if our government really overreacted on that day. Sure, with hindsight we didn’t need to ground everything for three days and keep people from their families. Later, we’ve done all sorts of stupid things and justified it with “war on terror” and claimed other nations just can’t understand. Of course they can - on some scale or another everyone understands random violence created by hate. Every country has been victim to it. If they haven’t had our “exact” experience - so what - do we need to make this into a dick measuring contest? Do we get to say that someone who lost home and family during the Blitz or the carpet bombing of Dresden doesn’t “get to” understand because that was war? Do numbers really make that much difference? Is 3,000 dead in one day that much better than 40 dead on a bus in Palastine one day and 20 from a subway bomb on a different day? Or 3,000,0000 Jews in the Holocaust. I don’t care if the random violence is some guy broke into your sister’s apartment and murdered her or if its the carpet bombing of Dresden or if its a bomb in a nightclub in Tel Aviv or a shooter at Virginia Tech - its still the intentional killing of someone who didn’t sign up to risk their lives by doing anything other than living them. The only thing that makes it more horrific is the scale - and the scale that day was horrific, but we really don’t want to get into “who gets the biggest body count” and “who is responsible for it.”
Damn.
I’ve heard some cruel things, but that entire post from the snide comment about the washed underwear, to the dismissive childish term ‘ouchie’ for the destruction of the WTC and the horrific deaths of nearly 3000 people whose greatest crime was that they stood on American soil (no matter their nationality, skin color, ethnicity - remember, many foreigners and immigrants would be in the WTC any given day) to referring to it being ‘kind of fun’ to watch ‘americans [sic]’ run around like ‘headless chickens’.
I don’t buy the cries of ‘That’s not what I meant!’ either. I believe you meant what you said originally and have now spent four pages of this thread attempting to fish your reputation out of the toilet. People don’t just spout that kind of shit out unless they mean it, Nava.
You were merely annoying with all your ‘In Spain we…’ and ‘Middlebro Littlebro Bigsis’ and ‘My grandfather’ and ‘I told P to tell M to give it to J to give to K to leave with R’.
Now, in my mind, Nava is irrevocably linked with ‘jerk’.
I’m unconvinced that anyone here has done the latter.
.
Okay, I’m still not getting what the problem is with the American bosses (sorry to beat this dead horse). From what I remember Nava saying (in unrelated threads), her company either has its headquarters or at least an office in New York (where she worked when she lived here). Her company had a meeting of Logistics Managers in London on 9/11. I don’t know why they were kept in London (and I’m guessing Nava wasn’t given a phone call from the CEO explaining it). I’d bet a lot of money that I don’t have that they were asked to sit tight so that they could either do some sort of logistical thing that may have arisen from the attacks, or so that they wouldn’t be dispersed and unable to get back due to possible flight groundings in the future, or to decrease company liability in case the attacks turned out to be on an even larger scale than they were. In regard to the last point, nobody knew what the hell was going on or who was responsible.
I’m wondering who the Chicken Littles were in this case - the American managers or the employees who wanted to get back to their Spanish homes so that they could hug their kids after a very emotional day.
By God, hell has frozen over–I agree with catsix!
And here’s why:
My God. Yes, I am back from CPR training, on my way to the doctor for my son.
This says it all right here. You are an ass. You have a fucked up view of Americans. And most Americans have indeed been more than 100km away from home–that being a whopping 60 miles or so–we drive that far to go shopping or out to eat.
You arrogant, condescending Eurotrash fuck. This reveals to me how you truly view America. You know us not at all, but I suppose you believe what you see on the TV shows we send to you. :rolleyes:
Unbelievable. There are VERY few here (or in RL) that stand by USA’s foreign policies without reservation. I am one of the most critical of the current administration and of USA’s FP in general–we have indeed reaped the seeds we’d being sowing for years.
How many of your own government’s do YOU support wholeheartedly? Scratch the sufarce of our response to 9/11 and you will find deep dismay, fear, shame and frustration in the majority of people.
Mock our sorrow and grief for an unprecedented level of attack and you will get shit for it. Your apology is tepid at best.
You know, if I were headless, I’m pretty sure I’d be in extreme panic. 
I always thought of the term as a mix of both definitions, actually.
I’ve accepted that Nava’s intent wasn’t to say that the people running from the buildings were the headless chickens. I think a lot of us are a little sensitive and may have had friends or loved ones who were amongst the people running from the towers* and had a knee-jerk reaction to her statement. I apologize for jumping the gun, but it hit a nerve.
*My cousin, 17th floor of the first tower hit
Dear me! Did she do that? I read her post and came to a completely different conclusion, but since we already have a mob all gathered here, and they won’t go home, I say we burn her at the stake.
I meant the people from my hometown who have never been more than 100km away from home. Some of whom did have that feeling of schadenfreude.
I don’t think most of us expect non-Americans to worry that much about 9/11 at this point. There is little reason to. However your valid point, really does not excuse what **Nava ** originally posted. Her apology and explanation don’t do much either.
BTW, Americans contributed a very large amount to the Tsunami, that one caught our attention for some reason. Unfortunately Darfur is probably largely unknown to most Americans. That is sad, but not unexpected. You will also find most Americans will know about the PLO and IRA and know nothing about ETA. I might have missed it, but did **Nava ** provide any kind of cite to her claims that ETA had a lot of money support for America?
Jim
I’m relieved you said this, Nava. It seems to me that both Nava, in her original comment, as well as several of the reactions in this thread to that comment, suffer from the same problem: identifying oneself too much with the nation-state within whose arbitrary, historically contingent borders one happens to have been born.
Only someone who thinks of themself as a Spaniard first and a human being second would gloat over one “country” getting its comeuppance in any way – but, equally, anyone who thinks of themself as an American first and a human being second would react to that gloating as some of you have.
Nava, I have always rolled my eyes at how you LOVE TO SCREAM THAT YOU’RE FROM SPAIN in just about every post. Okay, we get it! YOU’RE FROM SPAIN! Whoopdie-doo, now I’m having “fun”!
Oh, and one other thing – a few posters have fallen for the old myth that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortened World War II and saved lives. Good historians have shown that that probably isn’t true, and have documented how the myth began and spread, and why.
You probably skimmed Nava’s post a little too quickly.
That’s certainly your interpretation. I don’t find the “evidence” that the government tried to put the blame on the ETA for political reasons to be credible, and unless most of the Spanish people were stupid, they probably wouldn’t either. In the early days after the attack it was not clear who had committed it, and blaming the country’s preeminent terrorist group isn’t exactly unreasonable.
Even if that was the case, I don’t believe that it explains the downfall of Aznar’s government. It is not even my contention that Aznar’s party would have won the elections if not for the terrorist attacks. Rather, it is my contention that the terrorist attacks had the effect of entrenching within the minds of the Spanish population that the only answer to dealing with Islamic terrorism is to hide and throw rocks at the United States. If the Spanish people had any respect whatsoever they would have responded forcefully in dealing with Islamic terrorism. Instead, they decide to bail on one of the key battle grounds in the war on terror (it is widely accepted now that Iraq is a key battleground in said war–for the record I do not think it was prior to our invasion, which is a possible negative side effect of said invasion, but that is mostly irrelevant as the fact stands that currently, and in 2004, Iraq was a key battle ground for the war on terrorism.)
The simple fact of the matter is, the Spanish people are cowards who cave to terrorism. You’ve done nothing to refute the fact that Zapatero was cheered on by the Spanish people as he committed one of the greatest acts of cowardice in world history. Spain was once a mighty and proud nation, and it has been reduced to little more than the lapdog of extremists barbarians who rely on cowardly attacks against the civilized world. I can’t necessarily fault the Spanish for not wanting to be involved in a tough war in Iraq that they felt they shouldn’t be involved in. However after the attacks, they should have realized that withdrawing would be seen as a sign of cowardice. Furthermore, it should have shown the Spanish that they were intimately involved in the war on terror, that Iraq was a key battleground in said war, and that despite how hard the path was in the face of terrorism they had to stand strong. Instead they laid down in a pathetic display that almost makes me sick to my stomach.
Al-Qaeda won a victory not because the attacks were successful, but because of Spanish cowardice, it was hailed as a victory by radical Islamists every where and used to further entrench the idea in the Islamic world that the West is “weak.”
For Christsakes people, Nava has apologized.
There’s really nothing left to be gained from rehashing the point of how jerkish that particular comment might have been, but I can assure you all that I have heard much worse, much more immediately after the actual September 11th attacks, from Americans that were much closer in terms of lost relations and actual proximity to the attacks.
Why don’t we save that one for our next rehashing of this subject in GD. It comes up at least once a year anyway.
Jim