Well, for starters, “the people” are not one homogenous lump over here, you know? There are 280 million of us with a wide variety of positions on any given subject.
There is also the question of “media”, and how you define it. If you limit it to TV, yes, the obsession with 9/11 is there, which is why I stopped watching for the most part about 3 months after the attack. I got tired of it. However, radio broadcast a much wider range of views and analysis on the attack, ranging from “Kill them all” to “We richly deserved it”. Our newspapers also tended to be a little more thoughtful and analytical as well (which is not to deny the occassional excess). But abroad our media is represented primarially by TV and I assume those overseas do not get exposed to radio and print from the US to anywhere near the same degree
As for “get over it” - what do you mean by that? Forget it happened in entirely? Not a chance in hell. Get back to normal life? I started doing that on September 12 by going back into downtown Chicago to work in a skyscraper.
Fact is, some people made it very very clear that they consider us an enemy and they have no qualms about killing us. However we got into that position, it would stupid to simply forget about that. It is also a fact that the attacks, in addition to killing 3000+ people, also impacted our economy pretty badly.
(A previous poster said we’re likely to lose a major airline over it. I’d say we’re likely to lose two, and some additional crap imposed on aviation - NOT real security items but politically motivated meddling - is depressing the whole sector. Not to mention the impact on tourism, diverting of resources from one area of government to others causing disruption, and so forth).
So… you propose we “get over it” when our economy is in the toilet, Al Quaeda or some remnant of it is STILL clearly at large in the world blowing things up (and we just know they’d like another go at us), and we’re facing loss of civil liberty in our own country as part of the fall out? Sorry, bud, we’re not “over it” because it’s still causing us problems - get it? If the economy were humming along, we were reasonably sure the Bad Guys were either caught or unable to attack us, and our politicians woke up sane one morning yeah, we’d be ready to “get over it” - but not until then.
Actually, the US has a pretty good track record of “getting over” outrages and becoming allies, if not actual friends, with former enemies. Just to name a few - the UK (we did fight a couple wars against them), USA vs CSA (our civil war, for all it’s bloody viciousness, was only 5 years long and the peace did NOT degenerate into decades of guerilla warfare), and post-WWII both Japan and Germany. So yes, we are, in fact, capable of “getting over” lots of things - when we’re ready. Not when someone else wants to dictate the time.
Well, you did, but you were polite about it and it is a hot button issue. I don’t agree with most of what you posted, but hey, that’s why this is a debate forum, right?
You know, that is a very good question. Here’s my take on it:
The Pentagon is primarially an office building. It’s not a fort, it’s an administrative center that actually employs large numbers of civilians to push paper around. Yes, there are some areas that require clearance to enter, the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff work there, but although it is an important military structure it really does resemble a corporate headquarters for, say, IBM or Microsoft more than a military base. It’s a place to put lots of paper records, for example. The military ownership and use might lead people to think there are heavily armed marines at every corner, but in reality it’s a lot of people sitting at desks pushing paper and typing on keyboards.
Therefore, although it is a legitimate military target, it was never fortified to the same degree as many other military installations. In part, this is because our capital has not been invaded by any foreign power since 1812 (those wacky Brits, you know?) and for centuries the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as thousands of miles of our own territory, did serve to adequately protect our country. Obviously, times have changed.
As for the “unarmed civilian plane” - well, as pointed out, the Pentagon is about 2 minutes away from a major airport. Clearly, when we set that up, no one was thinking of civilian airplanes as a threat. In retrospect, this seems foolish but hindsight is 20/20. Unlike foresight, which tends to be severely myopic. In fact, the entire US airspace system was designed without thinking of attack by airplane. The only areas heavily watched for “invaders” were the international borders, which have long had special procedures for entering and exiting the country (and which were not as heavily enforced as they should have been). Thus, there was no one watching for an attack originating from within the country. In fact, securing our airspace post-9/11 has been a difficult problem because, as I said, the whole system was put into place without ever considering the idea of a threat from the air. It’s a complicated problem, and would be off topic to address it thoroughly in this thread so I won’t, but basically our defenses didn’t keep up with changing technology. In part, this is because it had been so very long since our mainland was successfully attacked.
As demonstrated, a “unarmed civilian plane” such as a 757 does not, in fact, need to be armed to cause a lot of damage. One phrase I heard after the attacks was “poor man’s cruise missle”.
Again, we’re not a homogenous mass over here. I haven’t been “duped” at all - the only way in which Saddam and bin Laden are related is that they are both enemies of the US. Do I think they were both dangerous? Yes. Do I think either one of them would have attacked us if he thought he could do so? Yes. Do I think they were ever working together? Hell, no. It’s like all during the cold war when the USSR and China were both communist, both are enemy, but they certainly weren’t allies of each other. Actually the USSR and China probably were more friendly towards each other than bin Laden and Hussein - which ain’t saying much.
Does invading Iraq serve the purposes of our current pseudoneo-fascist hawkish administration? You bet. Do I approve, simply because of my citizenship in this country? Hell, no. At this point, I’m far more concerned about what my government plans to do to our civil liberties and ability to move freely than I am about being in a terrorist attack myself. Sure, I could get in the way of a bomb. I could get hit by a bus while crossing the street. What the government does, however, I have to worry about every day.
There was not just one man responsible for the WTC attacks. There were a LOT of people involved, and a number of them died that same day. It’s rather simplistic to say that if Osama bin Laden didn’t exist, or was killed 5 years ago, it never would have happened. The 9/11 attacks were a group effort
In truth, the man might even be dead - we blew things up so thoroughly there were no remains left to identify. Or maybe he’s alive. Using the “might of the American military” to go after one man is rather like using arson to elminate the ants in your kitchen. Clearly, it’s not the ideal tool but I’m not sure we had anything more effective to use at the time (or even now).
It’s a fairly simple equation - if you punch someone in the nose, you’re likely to get hit in return. If you attack a country they will, most likely, retaliate if they are able to do so. The idea apparently held by these scum-puppies that by attacking America we’d somehow roll over and capitulate was entirely mistaken. If the US is attacked, the US goes to war. It’s always been that way, and probably always will be. In fact, the Japanese tried the “if we attack them maybe they’ll realize our might and go away” tactic in 1941 - it didn’t work then, either. In fact, the major difference between 1941 and 2001 is that we took over Afganistan a heck of a lot quicker than we did Japan. If someone launched an attack today from a particular country XYZ it would be a sure bet that within a very short time the US would attack, invade, and own said country XYZ. This is not going to change. If people don’t like it they can easily avoid this situation simply by not attacking our territory.
And how would you have handled things differently? It’s easy to criticize - try solving the problem.
Imagine you’re sitting in the Oval Office on September 12, 2001 - what would YOU have done?
