Would George W. have given a damn if the victims of the 9/11 attack, & those endangered by the attack, had mostly been the poor & powerless, rather than stock brokers, commodities brokers, generals & the US Congress? (The third plane, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania, probably was aimed at the US Capitol).
I don’t think it would have made a difference. The terrorist attack was, first and foremost, an attack - it doesn’t matter who the victims were. I have no high opinion of your President, but I can’t believe his response would have been any different.
I’d go so far as to say that if Dubya didn’t react the same way, his top staff would have sat him down and showed him Kevin Costner in JFK going, “Back and to the left. Back and to the left.” until Dubya got it through his skull that he was damn well going to do something.
Yes, he would have done something. The scale and monstrosity of the attacks frankly exceeded any relevance in terms of the identity of the victims. The victims were mostly not rich people, anyway; they were mostly ordinary schmoes with office jobs.
The symbolism of losing a famous national landmark certainly meant something, but I have no doubt it wouldn’t have prevented the invasion of Afghanistan hd a less famous building been the target.
Yes, the response would have been the same, but the terrorists wanted high profile targets, so they picked the Pentagon, the WTC, and the Capitol Building or the White House as their targets. With all the money and training they bastards undertook to do this to us, it would not have been worth it to attack a Harlem hospital. They wanted maximum impact and horror.*
It reminds me of a story I heard shortly after the attack, that a school had cancelled a pumpkin picking event for fear of a terrorist attack. Pentagon, WTC, and Washington are high profile targets. A pumpkin field and a city hospital are not.
*I do not intend for this to come across as racist. But, I think it did more for their prestige and martydom for the terrorists to take out the world’s tallest buildings and the world’s biggest building and the seat of power in the US than to attack a hospital. This was done as much for symbolism as anything else.
Absolutely. He would have responded the same way to any attack on American soil, anywhere. I’d say that a guy like him might have even responded that way to an embassy attack such as the ones that occurred in Africa in 1998.
And, of course, there were no $7.00 per hour file clerks or $10 per hour janitors or $5.00 per hour deli workers in any of those buidlings. One of the reasons for all the charity outpourings was because so many affected did not have any savings or life insurance.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t donate based on how big someone’s income was.
I donated because I had to do something, anything at all. It was such a horrific thing, and I needed to help. To make the evil go away, somehow, by doing good.
I think the premise of the question is incorrect. While true that a lot of rich stockbrokers and lawyers and so forth worked in the WTC, the vast majority were just regular working office stiffs. Most of those people who were killed were not particularly rich or powerful.
Bosda, I think you’re missing the point. The terrorists wouldn’t have attacked a low priority Money/Power/Politics community as you put it. It would not have served their ends, and would have been a waste of their time and resources. They had one shot at this, and they had to make it big.
Wow. You seem to have not read the responses so far…
I think the big issue is the massive loss of life. 3,000+ people. I don’t think it would have mattered where they were from, how much they made, what their political leanings were, etc. I find it hard to believe anyone could actually think that, BTW. 4 hijacked aircraft crashing into any buildings is a horrible thing. As mentioned before, those targets were chosen for a specific reason. Yes, I think Bush’s response would have been the same, no matter what buildings were hit.
And if you think those buildings had only rich, white, republicans in them, you’re sorely mistaken.