[Timo]

Originally posted by voodoo:
Compared to my friends and most people I know I am a really understanding and sympathetic person when it comes to 9/11. I may sound callous but that drama queen thing some (not all) americans need to play out every time they see a photograph of... <sniff> before ... .... <sob>



People die every day. Ain't nothing you can do about it. We don't like to hear it. But it *is* true. Unless you know of someone with superpowers to resurrect the dead -s*?

Ohe here I go again being callous. Tsk tsk. Shame on me. Death is a part of life. We should respect it even embrace it when it comes. You shouldn't fear it. Besides bein plain conterproductive it isn't right to fear nature. Embrace nature and life. Enjoy it while you have it.

Apparently our man on the Rekjavik to Bergen ferry has found "americans" (I wonder if he means all of us) a tad too whiny for his nordic tastes when it comes to the ways we (I wonder if he means all of us) refer to the destruction of 260+ floors of buildings with 2700+ people gone, in an hour.

Are Americans too melodramatic regarding the destruction in New York and Washington? Should we all just collectively "get over it"?

Discuss.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Timo:
the destruction of 260+ floors of buildings with 2700+ people gone, in an hour. . .

Should we all just collectively "get over it"?

Discuss.

Get over it, or get used to it? It's the latter argument that I really find hard to swallow.




BTW, I don't agree with singling voodoo out. It was a crass comment, but he isn't the only one to say similar things. I think we could discuss it without what will certainly be regarded as a personal attack.

[christ]

I personally have a lot more sympathy with the dramatics relating to 9/11 than I had after the Challenger explosion. Real people were killed, real people that hadn't volunteered for a dangerous job, and who didn't know that they were putting themselves in harm's way. The death of Christa McAuliffe (sp?) was viewed as an event that required great outpourings of grief and national counselling. I think what voodoo was trying to draw attention to was this apparent national trait.

It seems that there is something in the American psyche that means that counselling, and dramatic expiation, appear to be a necessary part of the healing process. In the UK 'stiff upper lips' are still thought of as the way to do things, and that probably is no better way to deal with grief, just different.

Each of us should be allowed to deal with their grief in their own way, 'drama queen' or no. (as long as it doesn't involve vengeful invasions of other countries, but that's for another thread) It is not our place, as non-Americans, to criticise Americans for their attitude to healing.

[DBursey]

I took the comment, critical as it was of an harmless intimation on the pic poster's part, to be insensitive and disrespectful.

Neither the intentional mass slaughter of innocent civilians, nor the grief stirred in its wake, should not be so callously dismissed. Respect yourself. Respect your fellow man.

Edit: The rest of this post was and is best left unsaid. Prattle from the gut and all ...

[Timo]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
BTW, I don't agree with singling voodoo out. It was a crass comment, but he isn't the only one to say similar things. I think we could discuss it without what will certainly be regarded as a personal attack.

My idea was to use his comments, which he spontaneously needed to include in a thread about people pictures, as a starting-off point.

My thinking is along these lines:

Last week, I was 3000 miles away from NY in LA, where I was repeatedly asked by natives there how "we" (New Yorkers, I took them to mean) were dealing. The overwhelming question was "Are things getting back to normal?"

Don't have a good answer for that question. But I also understand, from previous trips this year to Europe, that the mentality regarding "how are things in New York" is from what I can tell inexplicably bound up with American military adventures currently unfolding abroad.

Floating over all of these quasi-observations is my own introspection on the point about just what would be getting back to normal. In difficult to articulate ways one really does get the sense that while not even a few moments a week are spent thinking about WTC, the whole climate here is different. Really different. People's internal landscapes have shifted, and that's of interest to me.

Voodoo's original post was in regard to this post

Originally posted by NYCFarmboy:
Taken 10 months before...

To which he replied

quote:

..before what?

PS. Quite being so dramatic about some terrorist act in NY. **** happens. Every ****ing day.

So I thought we could take Voodoo at his word and beg the question: are we all just drama queens, or is there an interesting psychological shift that's happened by people here on the ground, and others outside who feel somehow (by nationality, or sympathy, or imagination) connected?

[eklipse]

5,000 plus Iraqis, all with families, friends, careers, dreams, hopes. All snuffed out in a few moments of evil, of previously unimaginable horror.

I don't see any 'collective trauma of the civilized world' over that.

[Timo]

Hmm...maybe the answer is:

Yes there has been a psycological shift. No, not like the abolishment of gravity.

And what does it mean? Grief of course is personal. What is perhaps of broader interest is how the destruction of that September is or is not being appropriated to justify things today.

And regarding that last point, I'm sure we could see a wide range of opinions.

[daimoni]

.

[daimoni]

.

[Timo]

Originally posted by eklipse:
5,000 plus Iraqis, all with families, friends, careers, dreams, hopes. All snuffed out in a few moments of evil, of previously unimaginable horror.

I don't see any 'collective trauma of the civilized world' over that.

Could you unpack this for me? Do you mean, "so what, more Iraqis died, so what?"

[thunderous_funker]

I guess the thing about 9/11 that made me want to say "get over it" was all the talk of how the whole world was changed and nothing would ever be the same again.

Despite the Hollywood style special effects and shocking footage, I consider that horrible crime to be just a drop in the ocean of human suffering that goes on around the world on a daily basis.

Perhaps its our national fixation with the sensational. I'm constantly amazed at the utter fascination people seem to display over lurid court cases and scandals. Why do we need 20 hours of Live Team Coverage of the Laci Peterson trial? How many murder trials are currently ongoing in US courts? What makes this one so worthy of endless scrutiny and speculation? Because its just so damn shocking, I suppose. We just can't help our morbid fascination.

So the spectacular death of 3,000 innocent people on that awful day "changes the world" while millions slowly starving to death or rotting from AIDS doesn't. Or the thousands killed in brutal wars raging all over the world.

Perhaps its just the natural order of things for us to consider our national tragedies to be "world changing" while the endless parade of tragedies around the globe don't quite invade our consciousness the same way.

If Rwanda or Bhopal didn't "change the world", I'm not sure why 9/11 should.

[BRussell]

Originally posted by eklipse:
5,000 plus Iraqis, all with families, friends, careers, dreams, hopes. All snuffed out in a few moments of evil, of previously unimaginable horror.

I don't see any 'collective trauma of the civilized world' over that.

I don't buy the WMD argument particularly, nor the Iraqi link to terrorism, nor most of the other arguments for the war in Iraq. If I had been president, I wouldn't have done it. On the other hand, it's hard to deny that Saddam Hussein was a barbarous sonofabitch who mass-murdered people based on their ethnicity, tortured political dissidents, attempted to annex neighboring countries, etc. It's unfortunate that it took a war to get rid of him, but I hope and believe the lives of Iraqis and their neighbors will be much better off with him gone and a sound, responsive government in his place.

Can you say that about the 9/11 acts? Can you really compare them, as much as you might disagree with the war in Iraq?

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Timo:
Voodoo's original post was in regard to this post

You know what I thought was funny? I saw the picture when it was originally posted in the picture thread. I did not notice the Twin Towers picture in the background. Exactly who is it that is obsessing?

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
If Rwanda or Bhopal didn't "change the world", I'm not sure why 9/11 should.

I wouldn't put Rwanda and Bhopal in the same sentence. Bhopal was a horrible industrial accident. Rwanda was deliberate genocide. Intent matters.

[Timo]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
Despite the Hollywood style special effects and shocking footage, I consider that horrible crime to be just a drop in the ocean of human suffering that goes on around the world on a daily basis.

Didn't see any coverage -- downtown, we didn't have any cable for awhile. Afterwards didn't want to. I guess it really is different -- the things you see with your own eyes.

[Timo]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
You know what I thought was funny? I saw the picture when it was originally posted in the picture thread. I did not notice the Twin Towers picture in the background. Exactly who is it that is obsessing?

I saw 'em right away. I still look for 'em down Sixth Avenue, but of course I have to remember to look for them.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
I wouldn't put Rwanda and Bhopal in the same sentence. Bhopal was a horrible industrial accident. Rwanda was deliberate genocide. Intent matters.

They are both examples of horrific tragedy. Intent isn't everything.

And personally, I find the intent behind the horrors committed by the likes of PG&E or Monsanto to be more chilling than the ruthless barbarism of Al'Queda. But that's just me.

Perhaps the greed motivation for committing horror I find so much more inhuman than the radical philosophical motivation for committing horror.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Timo:
Didn't see any coverage -- downtown, we didn't have any cable for awhile. Afterwards didn't want to. I guess it really is different -- the things you see with your own eyes.

Of this I have no doubt.

I'm not saying no one should feel changed by it. I'm just questioning the constant refrain that everyone was changed by it. And changed in the same way.

[Lerkfish]

Not defending or attacking voodoo's comments, or those like them, but just discussing the issue:

I think 9/11 caught US up with the rest of the world concerning terrorist acts. We'd had them before, and in that same building before, but just like little children are fearless because they think they'll never die so they do dangerous things thoughtlessly....so, too, america operated in a fearless mode, irrationally thinking in the back of their minds that things like that couldn't happen on our soil.

Understandable, because like to consider themselves safe rather than the alternative, but irrational because there was no reason to expect america to be immune....and in fact there was plenty of precedent proving otherwise.

But just like the guy who kept snapping his fingers to keep the tigers away, we believed there could be no tigers. So, when there we are, snapping away, and a tiger runs up suddenly and rips off our foot, leaving a bloody stump, we have several things going on in our minds:

1. Disbelief
2. Grief
3. Collapse of our irrational superstition of invincibility.
4. Realization that the vulnerability is impossible to completely reverse, due to the complex nature of the world, tigers, and the fact that we don't live in secure cages.
5. Fear for friends and relatives, who we know now can be suddenly ripped away by random unseen tigers.

It was more than ripping away a few thousand people, two buildings and a couple of blocks. It was the shattering of an irrational, but treasured archetype of the invincible country, the place no one would DARE attack.....that sort of thing.

Its very complex, and made even more complex due to the disagreement of people over what was the correct course of action in response.

Similarly, I don't think its easy from afar to tell the Irish to "get over" their little spat between the IRA and the brits. They're being too "melodramatic" when they rememeber their fallen sons...Nor should we tell palestinians and israelis to "get over their grief and outrage"....it doesn't work. Yes, moving on is preferred, but it doesn't sit well for outsiders to tell them that.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
They are both examples of horrific tragedy. Intent isn't everything.

No disagreement about the fact that they are tragedies, but I disagree about intent. As a matter of fact, that was one of the things that drove me crazy after 9/11. For several weeks afterwards, people (at least here in DC) kept talking about the tragedy of 9/11. For example, I was a coordinator for the Combined Federal Campaign charity drive. They had a special way to contribute for the victims of the tragedy of 9/11.

I really objected to that. A tragedy is an earthquake, or another accidental or natural event. This wasn't a tragedy, it was an attack.

I think that phenomenon was part of the shock that people went through. People were used to thinking about tragedies. They were not used to dealing with the idea of a deliberate attack. But it wore off and I noticed that after a few weeks the tragedy talk went away, and people started calling 9/11 what it really was.

[Shaddim]

Originally posted by Lerkfish:
It was more than ripping away a few thousand people, two buildings and a couple of blocks. It was the shattering of an irrational, but treasured archetype of the invincible country, the place no one would DARE attack.....that sort of thing.

Yeah, it'd been a long time since Pearl Harbor, and most US natives aren't even aware of the results the Japanese attack had on our culture for several decades. Strange thing is, my great-great-uncle, after seeing the NYC attacks, just said, "someone's gonna get an ass-whippin' for that". He was in the navy during WW2, and despite his age, those memories are still very clear.

[xi_hyperon]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
No disagreement about the fact that they are tragedies, but I disagree about intent. As a matter of fact, that was one of the things that drove me crazy after 9/11. For several weeks afterwards, people (at least here in DC) kept talking about the tragedy of 9/11. For example, I was a coordinator for the Combined Federal Campaign charity drive. They had a special way to contribute for the victims of the tragedy of 9/11.

I really objected to that. A tragedy is an earthquake, or another accidental or natural event. This wasn't a tragedy, it was an attack.

I think that phenomenon was part of the shock that people went through. People were used to thinking about tragedies. They were not used to dealing with the idea of a deliberate attack. But it wore off and I noticed that after a few weeks the tragedy talk went away, and people started calling 9/11 what it really was.

umm... it was an attack, but it was also a tragedy. The two are not exclusive of each other, at least by the definitions I learned. i.e - It was an attack which resulted in tragedy on many levels, for both the victims and their families. In the context in which you read "tragedy" during the charity drive, it makes sense to me. It was a charity to help those deal with a catastrophic loss, not a charity for terrorist attacks.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by xi_hyperon:
umm... it was an attack, but it was also a tragedy.

By the dictionary, yes. But the use of the word "tragedy" there as a noun rather than an adjective was clearly a euphemism. I know that partly from the way people winced when I asked to use the word "attacks" instead.

Basically, I think it just took a while before people were ready for that.

[voodoo]

Well.

First of all: theolein said "Don't be like that person that everyone loves to hate, who doesn't know when to stop or when to start." in the pictures thread. I don't really know how to respond to that. I am delivering a certain feedback from Scandinavia here, but of course it should have been posted here in this lounge. So thank you Timo for making that possible. So if that is ok with you theolein, I'll respond here in this thread. (ps. theolein I know you'll always love to hate me )

Second: I'm not posting here at MacNN to offend anyone. I do that at the BBQ.
When I saw the photo NYC Farmboy posted I hardly even noticed the WTC. I did notice it in passing. Now NYC Farmboy wrote as his caption "Taken 10 months before..." ... nothing else. The drama filled the air. Now I appreciate that 9/11 must have had some effect on NYC Farmboy, judging by his nick he lives in or near NYC. But this was over 2 years ago and dammit still going all sobby over it is bordering on obsession. 9/11 affected all of us. Even if we didn't live in the US or NYC. CNN and BBC saw to that with *constant* seemingly endless reruns of the two jets colliding the towers and the towers crashing to the ground. It was a media spectacle and it was horrible. But it was no less horrible than things that happen untelevised in the world. While many find it tactless and cold I was simply asking that particular member to come to terms with what happened, try and learn from it and REMEMBER - ALWAYS remember that this is happening in one tragic form or another all over the world. Great injustice is being made every year in smaller or greater scale. The only thing from the POV of a distant spectator such as myself is that this one was televised almost live. So much blood is being spilled and nature being raped that I have almost become numb. I don't want that to happen.
I didn't say that all americans were drama queens. If you check my post that is here at the top you'll see I wrote 'some (not all)' and I wrote that for a reason. I mean it. Some not all Americans are still carrying a huge emotional scar. Fear has become the essence of their lives and they'll never forget. I'm not asking them to forget, but come to terms with what happened. The world didn't change over night. If anything changed it was the NYC skyline. How many people were killed in retaliation for 9/11? How many of those killed were at fault for causing 9/11? It makes my heart heavy. The reaction of the Bush administration was stupid beyond comprehension not the least because it made a dangerous precidence. That is no less tragic IMO than 9/11. Does anyone really think that the victims wanted thousands of innocent people killed as a revenge for them? Honestly?

Whatever. I asked NYC Farmboy to 'get over it'. That was out of line and I apologize. His caption just hit a nerve. We need to learn from the past we humans not dwell in it. Had he writen something like "Taken 10 months before the towers fell" I'd have said to myself :"Here is a New Yorker that can face his fears and say them. He may have learned something from that terrorist attack. Then the 3000 innocent people didn't die in vain."

But what he said made me feel as if they did. Since 9/11 affected me as a fellow human being I was amazed that he couldn't say it. That is all. 2 years and he still can't say it in a picture thread in a public computer forum. Maybe he couldn't say it because he wanted to emphazise his disbelief that the only thing his government did in reaction to this terrorist act was to invede two coutries and kill thousands of people. Most of them innocent. At the very least innocent of 9/11. I didn't take that into account when I wrote before and therefore I feel I should apologize for it.

Sometimes you people amaze me with the insight and collective wisdom and give me renewed hope for us all. Sometimes I'm less than impressed. I'm sure you feel the same way. Bottom line: It is over, we can't do anything about it except respect those who died both in WTC, the planes, Iraq and Afghanistan. And learn from it. And stop the drama. This is reality.

[daimoni]

.

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by MacNStein:
Yeah, it'd been a long time since Pearl Harbor, and most US natives aren't even aware of the results the Japanese attack had on our culture for several decades. Strange thing is, my great-great-uncle, after seeing the NYC attacks, just said, "someone's gonna get an ass-whippin' for that". He was in the navy during WW2, and despite his age, those memories are still very clear.

I said the very same thing. The first thing through my mind was, "Doesn't whatever idiot who did this realize that $hit like this only pisses us off?" Minutes later I realized that the grief and rage would be enough to blind us - causing us to lash out against unrelated targets on flimsy evidence.

I was right on the first count, Afghanistan got a much needed whoopin' after they refused to turn over Osama Bin Laden. Unfortunately right on the second, too, as so much of America turned its attention to Saddam Hussein.

We still don't have Osama Been Forgotten's head on a pike.

*sigh*

To address the issue of the thread. There is no such thing as, "getting back to normal." You can never, ever, go back - whether it's a major tragedy or simple nostalgia, the past is gone. Dead. Nothing more than spirits and demons that lives on in your heart. In order to "get back to normal" one would have to be able to live in the past. That is something we can never do. In truth, what people call "getting back to normal" is just "getting used to now," or "accepting the present."

Normal is a state of mind, like happy or sad. Better names for it include "accustomed," "acclimatized," "used to," and "adapted to."

There's a biological basis for all of this, believe it or not. Neurons literally become less sensitive to stimulus, until they "get back to normal."

Voodoo is just impatient, I think. He should be careful - impatience is not an endearing trait. The shift was radical for Americans, and it will take a long time for many to become accustomed to this new view of the world, precisely because the old one was so ingrained over a long time.

BlackGriffen

P.S. I misread the "taken 10 months before" comment as "taken 10 minutes before," and I just assumed he meant "now." So, I don't know about the rest of America, but I've moved on to other things. As much as my fellow Americans will let me, anyway.

You can imagine how shocked I was when someone brought up the fact that the towers were in the background. It wasn't till I read this thread that I saw the "months" bit.

[xi_hyperon]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
By the dictionary, yes. But the use of the word "tragedy" there as a noun rather than an adjective was clearly a euphemism. I know that partly from the way people winced when I asked to use the word "attacks" instead.

Basically, I think it just took a while before people were ready for that.

It's all a matter of how you want to parse it, but neither is wrong IMHO. BOT - I think it is pretty simple, experiences define perspectives, which both Timo and Voodoo have demonstrated. Quantitatively, the loss resulting from the attacks (<--look Simey) of 9/11 was small compared to that of other events in history, but that doesn't lessen the impact for those involved. I think most people in the U.S. feel as though they share in this loss, so it is only natural that many will still reflect on this date with sorrow. Does this imply that what has happened or is happening in the rest of the world is any less important? I don't believe so. The bottom line is, people will deal with a loss the best way they see fit, which may not always jibe with others' approaches.

[Timo]

But this was over 2 years ago and dammit still going all sobby over it is bordering on obsession.

A-ha (<--Scando allusion, eh?)! The crux of the matter. Let me suggest how you've got it wrong:

I don't think NYCFarmboy's "Ten months before..." referred to events that changed the world or the millenieum or whatever. I don't think (though hopefully he'll chime in if he's so inclined) he was looking to add that image to the one hundred billion other images whose meaning is still contested politically. Rather, I think, as I've posted with regard to my own personal experience, that his "Ten months before..." referred to the simple startling reaction one has to seeing a landmark that isn't anymore.

One could, for example, get something of the same feeling by looking out across Jackson Park, and then looking at a picture of the Chicago Columbian Exposition. Or trying to imagine the long-gone buildings of the Paris World Fair (1937) by looking up at Trocadero.

This interpretation is supported by the point of the thread, which was to show pictures. So NYCFarmboy posts a picture which all New Yorkers (and others) look at and say, "hey, that landmark I saw every day isn't there anymore. That skyscraper (they frequently looked like one from many in-the-city angles) I used to orient myself in the village or in the grid isn't there anymore."

I think Simey's got it -- images of the World Trade Center building complex have become to many people mere symbols of their eventual destruction. Symbols of attack, arrogance, whatever. But to others, say people like me on the ground, seeing an image of a landmark that's not there is a little jarring. Which is to say, they meant something different before 11 September 2001 than after, and since I still remember what they used to mean,* there's plenty of cognative dissonance in seeing their image lodged in something marked "today" (that is, the image thread).

It's like waking up and wondering, "is it day or is it night?" That kind of feeling.

*To give just one small example, there was an ongoing and elaborate architectural debate of the World Trade Center that centered on the question "are these buildings horrible or really horrible?" One certainly can't talk about such now, since the buildings (more precisely, the image of those buildings), however un-human-friendly they once were, are now cenotaphs -- symbols of death.

[finboy]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
No disagreement about the fact that they are tragedies, but I disagree about intent. As a matter of fact, that was one of the things that drove me crazy after 9/11. For several weeks afterwards, people (at least here in DC) kept talking about the tragedy of 9/11. For example, I was a coordinator for the Combined Federal Campaign charity drive. They had a special way to contribute for the victims of the tragedy of 9/11.

I really objected to that. A tragedy is an earthquake, or another accidental or natural event. This wasn't a tragedy, it was an attack.

I think that phenomenon was part of the shock that people went through. People were used to thinking about tragedies. They were not used to dealing with the idea of a deliberate attack. But it wore off and I noticed that after a few weeks the tragedy talk went away, and people started calling 9/11 what it really was.

You have Reuters and Peter Jennings to thank for that, too. "Tragedy" and "incident" were being used within a day or so by both.

Bhopal was the fault of a big corporation, so demonstrating intent is consequential. OF COURSE it was an evil, exploitative act -- that's what corporations do.

[finboy]

Originally posted by BlackGriffen:
The first thing through my mind was, "Doesn't whatever idiot who did this realize that $hit like this only pisses us off?"

They don't. That's a large part of the problem. Until the OBLs of the world realize that "sh*t comes back tenfold", we're all in more danger.

[eklipse]

Originally posted by Timo:
Could you unpack this for me? Do you mean, "so what, more Iraqis died, so what?"

The point is: Why should the world mourn for and commiserate America for falling victim to a devastating attack - and still continue to sympathize years later - after America itself has inflicted an even more devastating attack (killing many more thousands of people) on another country? Why is it that when Americans are killed it is Bad™ and when Americans kill it is Acceptable™?

The impression given is that an American life is worth more than any other. Approximately 3 or 4 times more.

[boots]

US culture is a culture of extremes. The national response was not surprising.

We sat in denial of our senses for 24 hours...glued to the TV screens.

We grieved.

We got angry (as a nation) in the extreme.

So yes, it is time to get over it. But not forget it.

The thing that still bothers me about the whole thing is GW saying "If we let them change how we live, they win." (or something to that effect). So our response was to massively overhaul the government ("homeland security" - kinda has a Zionist ring to it...which is odd for the "melting pot" to try to claim), impose some pretty controversial security measures, and invade a couple of countries.

Sounds like they won.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by finboy:
They don't. That's a large part of the problem. Until the OBLs of the world realize that "sh*t comes back tenfold", we're all in more danger.

This has been the official policy of Israel for most of my lifetime. How much longer before we realize it doesn't work?

Threat of force is not a useful deterent against those willing to die for their cause.

I'm afraid we're going to have to be a bit more creative than that.

[eklipse]

Originally posted by daimoni:
I'm sorry you don't. Because I know a lot of people who do. And yes, they live in America.

Maybe you hang out with the wrong people?

Oh sure, criticism and outrage exists towards the action taken in Iraq - but on the same scale as that towards 9/11? - and from the same leaders who were so 'morally appalled' by 9/11? I think not.

[eklipse]

Originally posted by BRussell:
Can you say that about the 9/11 acts? Can you really compare them, as much as you might disagree with the war in Iraq?

At a basic level, people died that shouldn't have. Killers will always find politics and arguments to justify their evil deeds - that doesn't really change anything. No amount of fluffy moral rhetoric and ends-justifying-the-means-BS makes any difference - it doesn't make one side any better than the other.

[ThinkInsane]

Originally posted by eklipse:
5,000 plus Iraqis, all with families, friends, careers, dreams, hopes. All snuffed out in a few moments of evil, of previously unimaginable horror.

I don't see any 'collective trauma of the civilized world' over that.

And if any American here made a comment about dead Iraqi civilians similar to voodoo's comment, you would be foaming at the mouth in righteous indignation.

Your logic makes it sound like it's ok as long as it's dead Americans. Some of us don't care to see thousands of people slaughtered no matter where they live. And I am sorry, but I do see a difference between people accidentally killed in a war and people murdered for someone's ideology.

[eklipse]

Originally posted by ThinkInsane:
And if any American here made a comment about dead Iraqi civilians similar to voodoo's comment, you would be foaming at the mouth in righteous indignation.

Actually, I thought voodoo's comment was unwarranted and out of place.

Your logic makes it sound like it's ok as long as it's dead Americans.

I don't see how it does.

Some of us don't care to see thousands of people slaughtered no matter where they live.

Count me among them.

And I am sorry, but I do see a difference between people accidentally killed in a war and people murdered for someone's ideology.

When are wars fought for reasons other than someone's ideology? That appears to be a very fine line between 'accidental killing' and murder that you are drawing.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by ThinkInsane:
And I am sorry, but I do see a difference between people accidentally killed in a war and people murdered for someone's ideology.

But I thought the 9/11 attack was an act of war, not merely murder.

So they declared war and killed thousands of us. We declared war and killed thousands of them.

How many WTC workers had anything to do with US troops desecrating the Holy Land or brutalizing Muslims? How many Iraqis and Afghans had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks?

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by ThinkInsane:
Your logic makes it sound like it's ok as long as it's dead Americans. Some of us don't care to see thousands of people slaughtered no matter where they live. And I am sorry, but I do see a difference between people accidentally killed in a war and people murdered for someone's ideology.

bypassing the last part for a moment, I didn't read him as saying dead americans were ok, but rather that we value or feel their deaths more intently than deaths elsewhere we may inflicted or indirectly caused.

He was distressed by that, but I sort of don't think that's too unreasonable, most countries would feel the same, if not to the same extreme degree.
Americans DO value american lives over the lives of others. Is this a bad thing? yes and no.

But I think you're stretching what he said too far in the other direction.

[daimoni]

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[eklipse]

Originally posted by daimoni:
I think you need to stop, take a DEEP breathe, and realise that maybe, just maybe, not everyone in America follows lockstep in with the party line of the current regime. That there is dissent. That there are protests.

I know such a realisation may turn your concept of the world upside down, and that you may feel uncomfortable with that... but ultimately, you'll be a better person for it.

Thanks for the advice.

The point I was trying to make was that the world leaders who hijacked 9/11 as a propaganda tool to further their own ends (i.e Dubya & Tony), were quick to show their moral outrage towards the attacks - but that quickly disappeared when it came to the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I am well aware that a great many of the world's citizens were opposed to the war for one reason or another - I'm not trying to belittle them - my issue is with the global propaganda machine that twisted an attack on America into an attack on the foundations of humanity and spun an attack on Iraq into some kind of righteous moral crusade.

[ThinkInsane]

My apologies on the dead americns ok thing. THat was out of line. I am at work and busy, and I shouldn't have replied at all in this thread until I had more time to think through my response. Maybe I'll try again later when I gt home.

[daimoni]

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[Timo]

Originally posted by eklipse:
The point I was trying to make was that the world leaders who hijacked 9/11 as a propaganda tool to further their own ends (i.e Dubya & Tony), were quick to show their moral outrage towards the attacks - but that quickly disappeared when it came to the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq.

1. Your observation about world leaders is defendable, even accurate, but not really what I was talking about. In that, I can't help but notice you resemble the world leaders you mock -- you've "hijacked 9/11 as a propaganda tool to further [your] own end..."

2. Your posts show you quick to jump to moral outrage from the Iraqi war, but comparatively little outrage regarding nineteen hijackers. To me you seem interested merely in being some kind of "propaganda counterweight" rather presenting nuanced, balanced views. Your priviledge, of course.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Timo:
I think Simey's got it -- images of the World Trade Center building complex have become to many people mere symbols of their eventual destruction.

Well, except the charity drive I was talking about was mostly for our victims here in DC.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
No disagreement about the fact that they are tragedies, but I disagree about intent. As a matter of fact, that was one of the things that drove me crazy after 9/11. For several weeks afterwards, people (at least here in DC) kept talking about the tragedy of 9/11. For example, I was a coordinator for the Combined Federal Campaign charity drive. They had a special way to contribute for the victims of the tragedy of 9/11.

I really objected to that. A tragedy is an earthquake, or another accidental or natural event. This wasn't a tragedy, it was an attack.

I think that phenomenon was part of the shock that people went through. People were used to thinking about tragedies. They were not used to dealing with the idea of a deliberate attack. But it wore off and I noticed that after a few weeks the tragedy talk went away, and people started calling 9/11 what it really was.

As you say, the Americans weren't used to this kind of violence. Other parts of the world are. Northern Ireland, Germany, Spain, all of them have experienced periods of terrorist attacks (and most still do).

But many Americans do lack the perspective for the rest of the world. When it comes to non-Americans, suddenly different standards apply.

I don't like two things about America's reaction to September 11th:

1. The misuse for political propaganda and as a justification for entirely separate issues (e. g. Iraq).

2. The hypocritical `nothing that bad has ever happened anywhere anytime' attitude. Take a look at how Japan dealt with the Aum sect after the terrorist attack on the subway system of Tokyo in March 1995. 5000 were injured, only 12 killed.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
2. The hypocritical `nothing that bad has ever happened anywhere anytime' attitude. Take a look at how Japan dealt with the Aum sect after the terrorist attack on the subway system of Tokyo in March 1995. 5000 were injured, only 12 killed.

You are contradicting your own point. Only 12 killed. Only 3000 killed.

The fact is, in terms of terrorism, this was by far the biggest and worst one ever by several orders of magnitude. There just has been notjing like it outside of conventional war. And even then, it is different.

Obviously, our parents and grandparents suffered far worse in war. My mother was bombed in WW-II in England. My uncle was on Normandy Beach. I'm sure that you have similar stories from your family. But none of them were catapulted quite so suddenly from peace to the violence of war the way we were 2 years ago. The crises that lead to World War II lasted years. War, when it came, was a surprise to nobody. That wasn't the case on 9/11. We went to work, and an hour later were evacuating the city.

Moreover, the experience of WW-II is not real to most of us. You are too young to have experienced it, so am I. The percentage old enough to remember that experience personally is tiny. For most of us, 3000 killed in two of our cities was a huge shock.

Geography is the real key to this. I grew up in England with the background of the IRA campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s. If having that kind of background is something that makes one blase about 9/11, then I should be blase. But that is not what makes people blase about 9/11. What makes people blase about 9/11 is being a long way from 9/11. For you, 9/11 was a TV event and something you read about in newspapers. I saw the Pentagon smoke with my own eyes. It's different.

[zigzag]

At first I thought voodoo was being the drama queen - after all, the photo featured the WTC, which fell ten months later in a rather notable fashion. But his explanation made me realize that it wasn't the mention of the WTC, but the tone of it, the dramatic use of the ellipsis. On that basis, I can understand his reaction, the feeling that Americans and New Yorkers think the world revolves around them and that the unique awfulness of their experience goes without saying. But it's also possible that (a) NYCFarmboy was affected by the incident in a particularly personal way, or (b) NYCFarmboy didn't intend to be dramatic at all, he just happened to put it down that way because he thought the significance of the photo was self-evident.

So, it's understandable from either direction. In any case I doubt NYCFarmboy ever thought his post would attain such importance.

[jbartone]

I have quite a few American friends that were affected by 9/11 / 11/9 still waiting for the results of the enquiry...

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
You are contradicting your own point. Only 12 killed. Only 3000 killed.

The fact is, in terms of terrorism, this was by far the biggest and worst one ever by several orders of magnitude. There just has been notjing like it outside of conventional war. And even then, it is different.

Obviously, our parents and grandparents suffered far worse in war. My mother was bombed in WW-II in England. My uncle was on Normandy Beach. I'm sure that you have similar stories from your family. But none of them were catapulted quite so suddenly from peace to the violence of war the way we were 2 years ago. The crises that lead to World War II lasted years. War, when it came, was a surprise to nobody. That wasn't the case on 9/11. We went to work, and an hour later were evacuating the city.

Moreover, the experience of WW-II is not real to most of us. You are too young to have experienced it, so am I. The percentage old enough to remember that experience personally is tiny. For most of us, 3000 killed in two of our cities was a huge shock.

Geography is the real key to this. I grew up in England with the background of the IRA campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s. If having that kind of background is something that makes one blase about 9/11, then I should be blase. But that is not what makes people blase about 9/11. What makes people blase about 9/11 is being a long way from 9/11. For you, 9/11 was a TV event and something you read about in newspapers. I saw the Pentagon smoke with my own eyes. It's different.

I do not contradict myself here. I was rather pointing towards something else here. People think it was the first and only attack of this scope. This isn't true. The people of Tokyo were lucky, that's why they have only had 12 people killed, but several thousand injured ones. Properly carried out, the body count would have been in similar regions. So yes, this is in the same category as September 11th. Do you know how many millions of people take the subway of Tokyo each day? The attack was designed to kill a very large number of people, the body count being in the thousands. The Aum sect has professionally prepared this attack, being able to spend a lot of money. And (judging from the number of injured ones) it could have been a Japanese 9/11.