People die every day in accidents and natural disasters. Buildings get demolished for various reasons. I had a very hard time feeling sad about the victims, and I immediately knew that there was going to be a terrible backlash against Muslims. I had no idea what our president was going to do, and I feel utterly ashamed.
The loss of life and property is nothing compared to the loss of worldwide sympathy based on our government’s subsequent actions.
And if you don’t, the current total is looking to be around the six-figure mark.
“Documented civilian deaths from violence: 96,813 – 105,563” (cite).
That’s okay - it wasn’t you not explaining it, it was me not thinking about it properly before I answered. “It’s not you, it’s me”.
Option B.
What happened on 9/11 was a tragedy. Scratch that - it was 2,995 tragedies. But what came after was worse, because it meant that the terrorists had won. Terror had won. We were afraid, and in our fear we hurt ourselves more than anything they could have done. How many soldiers have fought and died over the past two centuries to preserve the liberties that some are now willing to cavalierly discard in their hysterical panic?
Well, yes, but I wanted to point that out in a more polite and roundabout fashion. 
Also sometimes I have a tendency to assume that other people make all the same mental connections I do, which occasionally leads to problems when my brain goes off in some odd direction.
I chose B, on the basis that the thing that disgusted me/upset me the most was the political haymaking afterward, by my own party as well as the opposition. It’s a large part of the reason I’m a Libertarian now.
C) There was no plane hitting Wall Street.
That’s a pretty disgusting thing to say.
As someone sitting in NYC that day I’m deeply disheartened to hear people minimizing what happened to my native city as “merely” the deaths of 3,000 people.
I was lucky. Unlike the neighbor down the street with three little kids I didn’t lose my firefighter husband or anyone I knew directly. I wasn’t her sitting in her small front yard keening for hours and staring across the river at the ashes of her dead husband who literally ran into a burning building and died a hero’s death.
I was just one of the millions of New Yorkers that day (and for many days afterwards) scared out of my wits.
I was in Staten Island the day it happened. From a not so far distance Manhattan was on fire. I’ve never seen anything more terrifying. My husband was on the ferry and saw the second plane hit. He had nightmares for months after he walked back home. For an entire week all Staten Islanders were literally unable to leave the island as the ferry was not running and the bridges were blocked off.
We went to sleep to the sounds of car chases and the smell of dead bodies. We awoke to the smell of burning flesh and hints of chaos on the streets. The phone lines were down for a week so information was hard to come by. When my husband finally went back to work it was to threats of bombing and anthrax infestation. When I dreamed it was that they had come back this time with nuclear weapons.
I hate Bush with a passion. I’m glad he’s gone from office and at some point I hope he dies a very painful death. I opposed the invasion of Iraq although the Taliban remains one of the world’s most evil organization.
9/11 allowed W. to ignore the true concerns of the people he was elected to serve and use the pain of a city that hated him to claim reelection.
But can we please stop ignoring the sheer terror visited upon millions of people that day and for a long time after? When you sit there santimoniously downplaying just how bad that time was for millions of people well frankly I think you’re behaving just as badly as W. did.
Thank you!
And if you were an Iraqi that had their family killed and was made homeless, you’d feel differently about the hundred thousand+ Iraqi deaths too. People value things close and familiar to them over things distant and unfamiliar.
Your conclusion, that being distant and logical about the relative costs makes us Bush-like, is the exact opposite of the truth. It was the scared, angry, irrational people that supported Iraq and all of the post-9/11 policy changes, not the people who kept events in perspective and didn’t make it deeply personal.
I am not downplaying the Iraqi deaths. I am asking that people grant the firefighter’s wife a little more respect than simply comparing her huband’s very brave death to the stupidity of someone dropping dead because they were hooked on cigarettes.
I am asking people not to pretend that 9/11 was simply all about the death of 3,000 people (something bad enough) but had serious reprecussions for months afterwards on the lives of millions of people.
Pretending otherwise is simply both ahistorical and inaccurate.
Saddest? The deaths, absolutely.
I think all the et cetera stuff was just an evil waiting for an excuse to happen.
Well, except the demolition of the towers - some of us still thought that was a good idea, we just would have preferred them to be empty.
Awwr, poor thing.
It’s a justified thing to say, taking into consideration all the misery your speculating cokeheads have caused to the world.
You understand the blowing up “Wall Street,” whatever that means, wouldn’t actually stop any of the stuff you don’t like, right?
If the 3000 people (of more than one country, by the way) hadn’t died, the rest wouldn’t have happened, or at least wouldn’t have happened anywhere near as much as it has happened.
The bullet is the one that kills, but it doesn’t do shit without the trigger. The 3000 deaths were the trigger. The US had been the target of terrorist attacks before and hadn’t had this kind of reaction; what caused the different reaction was more the difference in the attack (succesful beyond the sick dreams of its planners) than in the players.
That’s just bullshit. Bush had the gun… He wanted Saddam dead… HE PULLED THE TRIGGER. the rest was incidental and the Second Sparrow. He never had a resolve to find Osama, that has been left to Obama. And I give Obama credit for fighting this war… maybe we can finally win. Time stands still for no Nation.
For me personally, the saddest thing was the two friends of mine who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. One of them usually brought her baby to work, since there was on-site day care. The morning of 9/11, the baby was sick, so she left it at home with her husband. So although my friend died, her baby survived.
No, the difference was the people in power, who were lusting for a war with Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, therefore a different leadership wouldn’t have attacked Iraq because of 9/11 even if it had been ten times more successful.
As far as emotional responses go; our reaction to it, especially the Iraq war has pretty much destroyed my ability to care about 9/11. We’ve basically spent nearly a decade trying to make ourselves look like we deserved that and worse.
Although B is the logical choice, I had to choose A. What I remember most from 9/11 is having my kids run up to hug me when I got home from work. It made me think of all the kids who would never hug their fathers again.