Last fall we had an excellent thread on that question.
His last words gave me a visceral emotional reaction. Chilling.
Those poor people.
Fuck.
I also think many have forgotten.
Not forgotten the incident, that is forever a part of our world.
Not forgotten the images, those are burned in our minds.
Not just forgotten the crippling emotions, the anger and hatred.
The resentment that our lives had forever been violated.
No, we have been so overexposed to the exploitation of all of these things that we have forgotten even the basic feelings associated with that day.
We have forgotten the sickness in our stomachs when the second plane hit and we realized it was not an accident.
We have forgotten the emptyness we felt inside watching the towers fall.
We have closed that door in our hearts that was once a wide open passage for a greaving nation (indeed, a greaving planet) to share. We have once again embraced animosity, exchanged a near national fraternity for mundane tolerance.
I have not forgotten, nor will I ever.
Whether we support the war in Iraq or not, the bottom line is our soldiers are hunting the “murderous bastards” mentioned above that committed that crime. Whether we support moving into Pakistan without their “permission”, the bottom line is they have several of our enimies, including the top person taking credit for the act safely within their borders.
Whether or not we support the Bush administration, congress’ decitions (or lack or decitions) or anything else about the government and the war, we need to support our troops. They are the ones whose asses are on the line every day, chasing the ass hats that attacked us and trying to eliminate the threat. Seven years into this post-9/11 era is a bit late for any currently serving soldier to claim they were “just in it for the college money”. Every man and woman in desert camo holding a rifle is there on purpose, with a purpose. If we forget why they are there in the first place we disrespect their position and undermine their mission.
We cannot forget, for the sake of our children who are dieing for the sake of our security.
(Sorry for the long rant, carry on then)
I couldn’t watch the whole thing. I got to the part when the FD said “We’re on our wy, we’ll get to you, sir” and the guy replied “It doesn’t feel that way. I got young kids” and I had to close it. 
Noble sentiments, nd_n8, even though it is disturbing to see how effortlessly one can drift from lingering rage about 9/11 to a justification for the Iraq war, couched in hagiographic platitudes about “the troops”—even now, over six years later, even after the avalanche of evidence demonstrating that our invasion had precisely fuck-all to do with getting the “ass hats who attacked us” that day.
Frankly, I’ve retained more than enough of the horrorshow images and sounds of 9/11 in my brain to last a lifetime, and I’ve no interest in voluntarily submitting to periodic replays just to keep the anger freshly stoked. Our leaders willfully used the event to divert us down their own preplanned route, and succeeded in part by using exactly the sort of scattershot appeal to emotion exemplified by your own post. I’m sure you’re sincere, but I think just as important as remembering 9/11 is remembering that 9/11 was used to sell us a bill of goods. Neither tragedy should happen again.
Vinyl Turnip, that was going to be my reply, almost word for word.
Word. If only they’d gone after the bastards that did it.
Not as dig on US troops by any means, but the staggering discrepancy between the number of troops in Iraq v. the number of troops in Afghanistan says it all. I don’t think the current administration is interested in catching the bad guys behind 9/11.
But perhaps that’s a rant for another day and another place.
No, they aren’t. Iraq had no connection to 9/11. In fact, the invasion of Iraq diverted resources from Afghanistan where we really were hunting the “murderous bastards”.
Agreed. The invasion of Iraq was to search what we now know to be non-existant WMD.
If we had stayed out of Iraq and used every methods available then perhaps OBL would now be either dead or languishing in a prison cell
I agree with you. I think the only business we had in Iraq was to get in, flush out al-Qaida , smash them, then get the hell out. The whole Hussein business was an administration agenda that has cost us quite a bit of time, resources and unfortunately too many lives.
Any action taken in the future in Iran, Pakistan or anywhere else needs to be this clearly defined. We ordered a bag of justice and received a bag of bullshit that we have spent the last 6 years trying to return. We may never be able to get a refund on the bag of BS but the cashier is changing next year, maybe we can re-order the bag of justice and get it right this time.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Gut wrenching.
I just hear people talking and read various opinions that seem to follow along the lines of “Because 9/11 was used as an ad for the Iraq war and other political BS it has lost it’s meaning. We are jaded to the emotion because we got fucked the first time around.”
That’s where the above rant came from.
I agree. “9/11” as a point in tired and overused, but the events of that morning are almost a different entity at this point, and the way its memory has been hij- er, co-opted by those with agendas, it’s easy to let one’s mind get led away from what happened.
Before we invaded Iraq, Al Qaeda had a tiny presence there. There was nothing to “flush out”.
Garrison Keillor wrote a piece for Salon about the tapes and the war: