It’s unfashionable to make moral equivocations between 9/11 and what the US and its allies have done in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. It was a cruel and malicious act of terrorism, without a doubt, and triggered an amazingly violent – indiscriminately violent – response from the US. The US regime’s reaction to 9/11 was one of those “If A wrongs me, I am going to feel justified in wronging B and C in return.” Except, of course, ‘retaliation’ doesn’t apply when you’re claiming revenge on the wrong target. As the US did, knowingly and deliberately.
Today, nationalists will be beating their chests about freedom and how it was attacked on 9/11, but if they do, they are simply demonstrating that they do not understand what Freedom is; Freedom is not allowing yourself to be led like a bleating sheep by your political leaders, for their own ends. Freedom is not walking right into Osama Bin Laden’s strategy. Freedom is saying “no” when your government starts secretly bombing other nations, other cities, other civilians. Freedom is saying “that is wrong.”
It’s unfashionable to make moral equivocations between 9/11 and what the US and its allies do all the time, but I still cannot help wondering at the wailing and gnashing of teeth that would happen if an American City were subjected to the kind of area bombing that we so unhesitatingly queue up for others? Look at great America, people – waving the red shirt and telling the ‘terrorists’ to be afraid – when we’re doing worse to other people, all the time. One of our chickens came home to roost, and America did an epic freak-out. Imagine what a horrible world we’d live in, if everyone else immediately went on a bloody tear for revenge, for everything the US has done.
VP Pence and War Pig in Chief Mattis spoke in remembrance of 9/11: [cbs]
“We will never forget what took place in this place on that fateful morning,” Pence said at the Pentagon 9/11 memorial, saying he came to the ceremony to “pay a debt of honor and remembrance.”
Pence as well as Mattis said that 17 years after the attacks, the nation has remained empowered in its defense of freedom. “We must learn the lessons of 9/11 and remain ever vigilant in the defense of our nation and our people,” urged Pence.
Learning the lessons of 9/11 would be good, Pence.
I wonder what the public response would have been if the attacks had been on strictly military targets. There would of course still have been the horror of the passengers on the planes being murdered. But some people might not have been so quick to support some of the actions that resulted from the attacks. On the other hand attacks only on military targets would still have led to talk of a 21st Century Pearl Harbor.
I want you to spread this around.
I happily could not care less about this stupid overrated day. I appreciate the indifference to this dreaded day more than the fake mourning and anger. Although, I don’t know what’s more appropriate, expressing that or full-on invalidation after being on the receiving end of the latter for decades as an autistic asexual.
wontbehere4long@#2:
I want you to spread this around.
I happily could not care less about this stupid overrated day. I appreciate the indifference to this dreaded day more than the fake mourning and anger.
I want to spread it around, too. American breast-beating and bloody shirt-waving around 9/11 is disgusting. The fake mourning and anger infuriate me – it’s all ritualized nationalistic bullshit.
Osama Bin Laden twice declared war on the US; he even took out ads in major newspapers to carry his declaration. I’m sure he felt he had sufficiently warned the US that he was willing to use any method available to him, to do whatever damage he could – including, obviously, massacre of civilians (war crime) – he intended to fight the US with the same methods the US has used for over a century. I’m sure he’d have used B-52s, if he had them. Presumably Americans would not complain, were that to have happened. Apparently that is an acceptable way – even a laudable way – of fighting a war.
Whatever damage Bin Laden did physically, the societal damage he induced in the USA makes it seem insignificant. And very cost-effectively, too.
(e.g. Patriot Act)
I well remember the moment when I first heard the news of 9/11, my first thought was “there go civil liberties”. The burgeoning police state arose as expected.
Lofty@#5:
I well remember the moment when I first heard the news of 9/11, my first thought was “there go civil liberties”. The burgeoning police state arose as expected.
When I was researching my book on homeland security (don’t look for it, it was hardly good and it was a flop in spite of Hillary Clinton using the title as a campaign tag-line) I pretty quickly realized that – from its size alone – the PATRIOT act had been prepared well before the attack on 9/11. That meant that it was sitting on a shelf somewhere with a post-it note on it saying “in case of terrorism disaster, pass this legislation” – it was a complete package of everything the national security state had wanted since CALEA. At the time I expected a return of the CLIPPER chip, but instead we wound up with our entire infrastructure backdoored for the warrantless wiretaps. Nice. They didn’t even bother to pretend.
There are maybe three groups of people who ought to remember that date:
1) Those who lost someone
2) Those who lost everything as a result (including a lot of people affected by the US response)
3) History buffs
Everyone else who’s putting on services, raising flags and making speeches is just milking it for their own ends. If there had been a bigger, more memorable attack then, in all likelihood 9/11 would have already faded away and been replaced by the annual M/DD2 thing.
I’d also like to remind everybody that it has become common practice for western nations to launch military strikes in the general direction of the attackers’ supposed origin.
E.g. the Paris attacks. I think it took less than a day for France to decide to launch airstrikes against some (supposed) IS targets after they claimed responsibility. Never mind that IS claimed their attacks in Europe were in retaliation to western bombings, just drop more bombs and then, maybe, deal with the actual problem.
Given the shitty track record of western militaries I wouldn’t count on those targets being legitimate (i.e. no civilians, not even collateral damage*). One also wonders why, if there were known IS targets they had been left alone until someone felt the need to retaliate against them. IS was, at the time, the major target for virtually anyone living or operating in the middle east.
*The need to even mention “no collateral damage” should be a mark of shame for any self-respecting, modern military with their so-called precision strikes and intelligence apparatus.
P.S.:
#6 is terribly unfair. I’m sure the US government just had a contingency plan ready to go in case of a major disaster. That would be the responsible thing to do: having a plan all ready to go when something terrible happens. That way you can leap into action, no need to dilly-dally or think things over first. So what if the plan violates certain “unalienable rights” and does nothing to address the problem or its causes? At least we are prepared!
I hate it when people utilize somebody else’s tragedy for selfish personal gains. The usual culprits are, for example, conmen who sell fake cancer remedies or charge people for contacting the ghosts of their deceased loved ones. Politicians, however, go even further than that.
Do you need an excuse for bombing cities and killing Iraqi civilians? Sure, 9/11.
Do you need an excuse for passing some extremely bad laws? Sure, 9/11.
Are you struggling with your election campaign? Do you need to boost the number of your supporters? Sure, 9/11. Just do a public display of fake mourning, and afterwards voters will like you more.
It is so damn disgusting to watch. And it’s not just American politicians who do this crap, it’s happening everywhere.
@ 4 John Morales
Whatever damage Bin Laden did physically, the societal damage he induced in the USA makes it seem insignificant. And very cost-effectively, too.
About $400,000, I read recently.
But as a non-USAian the societal damage he did to the USA does not really concern me except as it affects the rest of the world. It’s the US’s concern.
The insane, rabid, response of the USA towards the rest of the world does. The attack on the Twin Towers called for a measured police response, perhaps backed up by some implied military threat. That is what Spain did a couple of years later for the train bombings.
The Taliban was willing to cooperate, probably because of the military threat, though at the time I do not remember them as terrorists. Mad religious fanatics and US allies until abandoned after the Soviet retreat , but not terrorists as such. They may well have been badly shocked at what Bin Laden had done.
The Taliban were not a nice bunch of people but some evidence seems like a reasonable request to me.
Wrecking, at least, four countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria with hundreds of thousands of dead was not a measured response.
This is something one could not make up.
US aims to punish UN peacekeepers responsible for abuses
The United States is pushing the Security Council to toughen UN action against peacekeepers who abuse or fail to protect civilians, US Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday.
I was in USA at the time of 9/11 attacks. I remember one commentator in TV saying at the time that such attack is the direct and sadly predictable outcome of USA’s foreign policy and their behaviour in Middle East.
I have never seen that commentator again and I hink he was right – and regarding USs foreign policy nothing has changed since, except maybe for worse.
I was in lower Manhattan, and my partner was in Tower #2.