I didn’t want to shit in here. So I suppose I need to post in here.
I was told to “Never Forget” just this morning. Got me to wondering about the motivation behind the order.
Am I to Never Forget an event that njtt correctly described, although a bit rabidly, in the linked thread? Am I to Never Forget it so that I can Always Remember to distrust Arabs? Am I to Never Forget how we responded to the events by so quickly and shamelessly surrendering the constitutional freedoms so many more people died specifically for?
My heart goes out to the families and friends of those who died, and the many hundreds of thousands of others who lived in terror waiting for the second wave. But for me the worst effect the handful of murderers had was witnessing how the USA went down like we were punched in our collective glass jaw. How we did the opposite of uniting and standing up for our own principles. How we dishonored our thousands of dead by making a million more to keep them company while ripping at each other’s throats.
9/11 is the day the USA lost in the first round. Any sneacky prick can throw a sucker punch, how you react to it is a measure of your character. We can all blame and question Bush for Iraq II, we can even debate the wisdom of establishing a full-scale military presence in Afghanistan. But what is shameful is how we cowered and nodded as Congress went to work on the constitution for our own good. And to this very day we are so divided among ourselves we’d rather chew each other up than take care of one another.
Oh I know that. In fact one of my more sensible friends (liberaller than me, actually) opined to the effect, “whatever your political stripe, we’d all damned well better line up behind our president ASAP.” Regardless of where he subsequently led us (in retrospect it was maybe predictable), I keep that phrase as a reminder that we were in disarray before.
And Johnny, yeah. It’s not what you meant, but that would be a better use of remembering the day. Be happy it was limited, and use the day to refocus on correcting the international conditions that earned us the black eye.
Never forget that 19 out of 20 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia.
Never forget that Bush’s government downplayed this, and approved planes to pick up the bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. Six private jets and more commercial planes carried the Saudis and the Bin ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were spirited quietly out of the country.
My Remembrance is for the first responders. The firefighters and police who ran into those buildings are the reason I’ll never forget, their dedication and courage is what needs to be remembered.
I don’t mean to denigrate the suffering of the people in those attacks, or of the loved ones left to grieve, but the men and women who deliberately ran towards Hell and certain death deserve every ounce of respect and honor we can muster, always.
Are you talking about this one just a few dozen yards to the right of the front entrance. Yeah, I remember the Alamo tree too. There were a bunch of really beautiful specimens in the back courtyard as well.
Fuck all the recreational grieving that we go through every year. So it’s the second anniversary of the tenth anniversary or whatever. The event was used to gin up religious bigotry and start two wars that didn’t need starting. We bastardize the victims when we abuse their memories in such ways.
I work with a very nice woman who is one of those people who briefly lived in NYC and is always mentioning it. Today she told me, “I always have a hard time on the 11th of September (sniff).”
You know, I lived in Baghdad in 2006 (and not in the Green Zone) when we were pretty much having a September 11th every goddamn day, but I don’t mention that on Facebook at the drop of a hat.
