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The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

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You are here: Home / Politics / War on Terror / War on Terror aka GSAVE® / 9/11

9/11

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It is hard to believe it has been four years since 9/11, and the anger is still there but the hurt has seemed to fade a little. That may not be atypical:

The first year was marked with a moment of silence, the tolling of bells and a reading of the names of the nearly 3,000 people who died. Those sad rituals continued for the second and third anniversaries of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and will be repeated once again today.

But this time, somewhere between the solemn ceremonies and memorial golf classics, there is also a search for another way to remember that is more official, unified and concrete — something to help ensure that Sept. 11 is recognized by the public and kept in boldface on every calendar for centuries.

“This one is difficult. Something like 9/11 could, at first, transcend politics and unify us as an American nation, drive us all together,” said Katherine Pratt Ewing, a cultural anthropology professor at Duke University. “But the significance seems to change every year…

Today, 9/11 means the start of the NFL season.

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    John Boucher

    Four years later and not only is Osama bin Laden still at large, but he continues to kill Americans as well.

    But there still is one constant through all of this. Our ineffectual and clueless president still takes the month of August off. And then some.

  2. 2.

    ppGaz

    I’m not sure that there is agreement around the question of what 9/11/2001 actually meant.

    Just to give two examples (out of many possible ones):

    1) One could say that it “meant” we should go out and get the chief perpetrator(s). This is the meme made popular by Bush immediately after the attack — “Bring them to justice.” I’ll stop short of talking about how, and why, we failed to do that.

    2) One could say that it “meant” that it was time for the US (and the West in general) to wake up and realize that we live in a different world from the one we fancifully invented in our heads after the fall of the Soviet Union. Namely, that the world was our oyster now. Finding that there was still great danger out there, we could have, after 9/11, reinvented our idea of security and preparedness, reinvented the way we handle our borders, and the safety of our critical infrastructure.

    If we need something to do today, it would be useful to reflect on the possibility that four years after 9/11, we aren’t a lot safer, and that we squandered some of the opportunity we had to make ourselves safer, and that it might be useful to look ahead and plan and strategize differently from the way we did in these four years.

    Or, we could strut around and pat ourselves on the back, and listen to country music, and mouth useless slogans like “support our president.”

  3. 3.

    demomondian

    I think it’s bitterly ironic that 9/11/2003 will be the day that Delta chooses to file for bankruptcy in order to screw its employees of their pensions.

  4. 4.

    jobiuspublius

    I’m not surprised. Look at what people do at wakes. They stand around a corpse chit-chatting. That’s been my experience.

    As the authors noted, forgetting about memorials, turning them into tourist attractions or museums, or shopping spree’s and barbecues is what usually happens. So, it seems to be our nature to want to move on. Maybe, it’s a sign of our hedonism or optimism. I think this is aided and abetted by our business dominated government. What can be done to stop it? Pass a Memorial Profiteering law? What about free speech? Wouldn’t it Stalinist to make celebrations into state run affairs?

    It could also be too early to have memorials. As has been noted, OBL and Al-Qaeda remain at large. Were there Pearl Harbor memorials during WWII? Were people going on with there lives during WWII the way they are now during the war on terror? Declaring the war on terror to be an endless war is like telling people to eat drink and be merry for tommorow you may … I don’t know.

    Let’s not forget the politicization of 9/11, getting suckered into Iraq, and Worst-POTUS-Ever.

    And then there was Katrina …

  5. 5.

    Bob

    I think that Kafka wrote something about the tigers coming into the temple. At first it alarmed everyone, eventually it became part of the ceremony.

  7. 7.

    Boronx

    “This one is difficult. Something like 9/11 could, at first, transcend politics and unify us as an American nation, drive us all together,” said Katherine Pratt Ewing, a cultural anthropology professor at Duke University. “But the significance seems to change every year…

    This is natural to some extent, but it’s exacerbated by utterly failed leadership, and worse, a concerted effort by that leadership to obscure the truth about what happened.

    Defending its decision not to commit forces to the Tora Bora campaign, members of the Bush administration – including the president, the vice president and Gen. Tommy Franks – have continued to insist, as recently as the last presidential campaign, that there was no definitive information that bin Laden was even in Tora Bora in December 2001. “We don’t know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora,” Franks wrote in an Oct. 19, 2004, Op-Ed article in The New York Times. Intelligence assessments on the Qaeda leader’s location varied, Franks continued, and bin Laden was “never within our grasp.” It was not until this spring that the Pentagon, after a Freedom of Information Act request, released a document to The Associated Press that says Pentagon investigators believed that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and that he escaped.

  10. 10.

    CaseyL

    9/11 was an atrocity.

    The response to it was a calamity.

    The calamitous response has already caused more damage, to America and to the world, than the terrorist attacks did.

    9/11 was the trigger event that led to America losing its mind, losing its way, and losing its soul.

    Someone once said, about JFK’s assassination, that we would have recovered from the murder of JKF, but we’ll never recover from the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

    I feel the same way about 9/11.

  12. 12.

    Zifnab

    911 has gone from the day we were all Americans united to a political football.

    That is still the major problem. No matter how hard the administration fumbles, the 9/11 football still appears to stay hard in their hands. It’s a rather sick joke that you need one horror (Katrina) to offset the rampant abuse of power brought on by another. Like getting shot twice in the leg, with the second shot prying the first one loose.

    And the question still remains, will the politics of fear forever be a potent weapon in the arsenal of the badguys? All the rationalizing and clear-headed thinking and reasoned logic has failed to prevent a needless war in Iraq, a massive curtailing of freedom at home, and a crippling strike to our foreign relations. It took a Catagory 4 hurricane wiping out a major US city to open the eyes of people enough to recognize the danger we are in from our own leaders. Fear of hurricane today trumps fear of terrorists from four years ago. It’s a sad sick joke.

  14. 14.

    Jim Caputo

    It is hard to believe it has been four years since 9/11

    To me it feels somewhat distant. I guess that’s because of all that’s happened since then…

    The capture of Bin Laden

    The expanding of freedoms in America

    The secular democracy we brought to Iraq

    The way the government saved thousands of lives by reacting swiftly to the Katrina catastrophe.

    I look back on all those accomplishments and I’m filled with patriotic fervor and pride.

    Thank you, George Bush!

  16. 16.

    JoeTX

    9/11 signifies for me the long slide away from a grand democracy to a neo-conservative one party system, that tries to export our believes on others by force. Where there is no longer truth and right or wrong, just spin. We had national unity and world opinion on our side, a healthy economy, and a government that was beginning to operate in the black. We have lost so much since 9/11

  18. 18.

    Bob

    The murder of JFK was a coup by, among others, oil interests. If you really want to be a real American, you need to understand what the hell it was all about.

  19. 19.

    narvy

    The murder of JFK was a coup by, among others, oil interests.

    No kidding. And all these years I thought it was a coup by the missile cartel after the Cuban missile crisis spoiled the missile market.

    If you really want to be a real American, you need to understand what the hell it was all about.

    Since I haven’t been a real American I’d like to become one now, but I can’t because I still don’t understand what the hell it was all about.

    If that was actually the satire of of the conspiracy theorists that it looks like, I apologize. If not, go back on your meds, Dude.

  20. 20.

    narvy

    The First World War was much more horrific than any war that preceded it, and what we now celebrate as Memorial Day by jumping into our SUVs to burn more petroleum faster was created to respect and honor the soldiers who died in that bloody holocaust. I heard a report somewhere that some academic says that the same thing will happen with 9/11.

  21. 21.

    DougJ

    9/11 signifies for me the long slide away from a grand democracy to a neo-conservative one party system,

    Why do you hate America?

    that tries to export our believes on others by force.

    Freedom is on the march.

    Where there is no longer truth and right or wrong, just spin.

    This is the fault of the media elite and their relativistic friends on the left.

    We had national unity and world opinion on our side, a healthy economy,

    The tax cuts have made the economy strong. We are respected around the world.

    and a government that was beginning to operate in the black.

    Clinton left us with a recession.

    We have lost so much since 9/11

    9/11 changed everything.

  22. 22.

    narvy

    ppGaz – Good post. Thanks.

    Jim Caputo – Good post. Thanks.

    The Political Teen – That is the most magnificent post-modern post I have ever been privileged to see. ppGaz and Jim, go sit at the feet of The Master and learn.

  23. 23.

    Mr Furious

    Wow, John.

    I’ve been away since Wednesday, and only after stepping away and coming back to a thread like this one does one realize that your audience has evolved into one that is shockingly left/liberal. I know it’s not always like this, but I wonder how you feel about it.

    I happen to think it makes for a more stimulating site—it’s my favorite stop. But I wonder how often it makes you throw your hands in the air and wonder what the hell you are doing this for…

    As for 9/11, I’ll put my thoughts down and come back later.

  25. 25.

    narvy

    This is the fault of the media elite and their relativistic friends on the left.

    As an out-of-the-closet lefty (We’re here, we’re liberal, get used to it!),
    I must protest we are not

    resulting from speeds approaching the speed of light

    nor are we

    based on the theory of relativity.

    With thanks to the American Heritage Dictionary.

  26. 26.

    narvy

    Mr Furious –

    I’ll put my thoughts down

    Oh, please don’t. I’m sure they can recover and live on for many years.

  27. 27.

    ppGaz

    Suggesting that Bush has acted like, talked like and looked like a complete ass for the last two weeks …. is shockingly liberal?

    I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: Hang around the Internet, sooner or later you will see everything.

  28. 28.

    narvy

    opposing Bush doesn’t make you a liberal

    True. It makes you intelligent, fair-minded, honest, and realistic.

  29. 29.

    tBone

    I know it’s not always like this, but I wonder how you feel about it.

    Well, depending on what time you left on Wednesday, you may have missed this. I think it probably answers your question.

  30. 30.

    narvy

    Gulf Coast Isn’t the Only Thing Left in Tatters; Bush’s Status With Blacks Takes Hit

    From the New York Times, datelined September 12.

    From the political perspective of the White House, Hurricane Katrina destroyed more than an enormous swath of the Gulf Coast. The storm also appears to have damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove, President Bush’s political adviser, to make inroads among black voters and expand the reach of the Republican Party for decades to come.

    Many African-Americans across the country said they seethed as they watched the television pictures of the largely poor and black victims of Hurricane Katrina dying for food and water in the New Orleans Superdome and the convention center. A poll released last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center bore out that reaction as well as a deep racial divide: Two-thirds of African-Americans said the government’s response to the crisis would have been faster if most of the victims had been white, while 77 percent of whites disagreed.

    The anger has invigorated the president’s critics. Kanye West, the rap star, raged off-script at a televised benefit for storm victims that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in Miami last week that Americans “have to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not.”

    At the White House, the public response has been to denounce the critics as unseemly and unfair. “I think all of those remarks were disgusting, to be perfectly frank,” Laura Bush said in an interview with the American Urban Radio Network, when asked about the comments of Mr. West and Mr. Dean. “Of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country.”

    Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration’s most prominent African-American, weighed in, too. “Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race,” Ms. Rice said, en route to her native Alabama to attend a church service.

    But behind the scenes in the West Wing, there has been anxiety and scrambling – after an initial misunderstanding, some of the president’s advocates say, of the racial dimension to the crisis.

    One of Mr. Bush’s prominent African-American supporters called the White House to say he was aghast at the images from the president’s first trip to the region, on Sept. 2, when Mr. Bush stood next to Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama, both white Republicans, and praised them for a job well done. Mr. Bush did not go into the heart of New Orleans to meet with black victims.

    “I said, ‘Grab some black people who look like they might be preachers,’ ” said the supporter, who asked not to be named because he did not want to be identified as criticizing the White House.Three days later, on Mr. Bush’s next trip to the region, the president appeared in Baton Rouge at the side of T. D. Jakes, the conservative African-American television evangelist and the founder of a 30,000-member megachurch in southwest Dallas.

    Bishop Jakes, a multimillionaire and best-selling author, is to deliver the sermon this Friday at the Washington National Cathedral, his office said, where Mr. Bush will mark a national day of prayer for Hurricane Katrina’s victims. The bishop’s style of preaching is black Pentecostal – he roars and rumbles in performances that got him on the cover of Time magazine as “America’s best preacher” in 2001. More important to Mr. Rove, he has become a vital partner in the White House effort to court the black vote.

    Last week, the White House continued its political recovery effort among African-Americans through its network of conservative black preachers like Bishop Jakes. Many of them have received millions of dollars for their churches through Mr. Bush’s initiative to support religious-based social services – a factor, Republicans say, in Mr. Bush’s small increase in support among black voters, from 9 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2004.

    On Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room, Mr. Bush met with black preachers and leaders of national charities, and sat next to Bishop Roy L. H. Winbush, a black religious leader from Louisiana. On Thursday, two senior White House officials, Claude Allen and James Towey, held a conference call with black religious leaders to ask what needed to be done. Mr. Towey is the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and Mr. Allen, who is African-American, is the president’s domestic policy adviser.

    One Bush supporter, the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III, the president of the National Ten Point Leadership Foundation, a coalition that represents primarily black churches, said last week that something positive might come out of the crisis. “This is a moral and intellectual opportunity for the Bush administration to clearly articulate a policy agenda for the black poor,” Mr. Rivers said in an interview.

    Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who has made reaching out to black voters a priority, put it simply. “We’re going to work with them,” Mr. Mehlman said. “This disaster showed how important it is that we do these things.”

    * Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

  31. 31.

    ppGaz

    But post_katrina is not about “opposing” Bush. What is there to oppose here? The man simply looked, talked and acted like he was clueless, helpless, and completely insensitive. He went through the entire critical period as if he were sleepwalking one minute, and rudely awakened the next.

    If one had been watching tv all that first week, with the sound off, it would look for all the world like Bush’s main concern was whether to wear the suitcoat and tie, or the rolled up shirtsleeves and open collar.

    Did anyone see him land on the carrier today, in New Orleans? What a bizarro scene. He made a big show of posing for snapshots with some of the ship’s crew, mugging with them and looking for all the world as if he were on a campaign trip. Would it hurt the guy to look and act for five minutes like he took all this seriously, as if there might be something more important going on that how he fucking looks?

    “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

    “We didn’t expect the levees to fail.”

    “What didn’t go right last week?”

    There is nothing liberal or conservative about this stuff.

    It’s about whether you will slavishly defend this kind of fecklessness and sorry behavior, or whether you will call a spade a spade. Whether you will give in to reality, or just admit that all truth, to you, is politically-based and personality-based.

  32. 32.

    jobiuspublius

    Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who has made reaching out to black voters a priority, put it simply. “We’re going to work with them,” Mr. Mehlman said. “This disaster showed how important it is that we do these things.”

    lol. Them. I wonder what it’s like to be an ambasador to the US.

    Well, it’s about time. It’s about time that disasters were put to good use. No use in letting a perfectly good disaster go to waste. Hey, how about mobile wind farms with giant batteries so we can … Oh never mind.

    People will see thru this. Money will get spent. Nothing will come of it.

    America to Washington, Black/African Americans are Americans too.

  33. 33.

    DougJ

    Did anyone see him land on the carrier today, in New Orleans?

    In fairness, major hostilities have ended in New Orleans.

  35. 35.

    stickler

    Narvy said:

    The First World War was much more horrific than any war that preceded it, and what we now celebrate as Memorial Day by jumping into our SUVs to burn more petroleum faster was created to respect and honor the soldiers who died in that bloody holocaust.

    Yes, the First World War was a new low in war-making and slaughter. But our Memorial Day actually predates it: it was part of the collective attempt to make sense of the slaughter from the Civil War. It began in New York and was for decades known as “Decoration Day.”

    World War I (or, as Wilson called it, “the war to end war,” with no right to a refund for false advertising) was commemorated by Armistice Day, November 11th — the day when the guns fell silent on the Western Front.

    From Wikipedia:

    “Decoration Day” was proclaimed on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was observed for the first time on May 30 of the same year. The tombs of fallen Union soldiers were decorated in remembrance of this day.

    Many of the states of the U.S. South refused to celebrate Decoration Day due to lingering hostility towards the Union Army, which it was commemorating. Many Southern States did not recognize Memorial Day until after World War I, and even after continued to have a separate Confederate Memorial Day, with the date varying from state to state.

    The alternative name of “Memorial Day” was first used in 1882, but did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967.

    Sorry to seem picky. But when the mud and blood of the Civil War and the First World War get mixed up, I notice. And sometimes I think to grieve for all the lives cut short by those wars.

  37. 37.

    jobiuspublius


    In Rural Mississippi, Hurricane Relief Is Scarce

    POSTED: 2:19 pm CDT September 11, 2005
    Email This Story | Print This Story

    SMITH COUNTY, Miss. — Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, living without electricity and other basic services is a daily challenge for residents in rural communities stretching from Jackson, Miss., southward to the ravaged Gulf Coast.

    This is especially true of rural areas in southeast Mississippi, including Smith County, some 50 miles from the capital city.

    Ten miles from the nearest town, the farmers in this region aren’t a priority for the emergency management crews or rescue workers who descended upon the Gulf Coast.

    Nobody brings food. There are no shelters. Even if someone wanted to go to an evacuee camp, the logistics would be ridiculous.

    Roger Hayes, of Four Points, Ala., just over the Mississippi border, said most people in rural areas aren’t counting on the government. They are independent and their needs are simple.

    But eventually, they might need some help removing the trees from their roofs.

    Wait until they get electricity and find that Worst-POTUS-Ever was photo-oping, in NO no less.

  38. 38.

    jobiuspublius

    Is this unprecedented?

    …
    International Response Aids Katrina Recovery

    NATO has begun an aid mission to the United States, sending a cargo plane to the Czech Republic to pick up emergency supplies for hurricane victims.

    The converted Boeing 707 is expected to land in Arkansas on Monday with 24,000 blankets, 600 camp beds and 14 large tents donated by the Czechs.

    The mission is the first such flight since the 26 NATO allies agreed Friday to rush aid to the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Two ships from Denmark and Norway also will be loaded with supplies.

    The United States asked NATO for help a week ago. The alliance then activated its Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Center to help oversee the offers, including those from non-NATO nations such as Russia and Switzerland.

    About 100 different countries have pledged assistance in the form of cash or logistical aid to hurricane victims. On Sunday, Mexican and Dutch troops landed in Louisiana to help relief efforts. Four Canadian ships are also on the way.

    …

  40. 40.

    Steve S

    I think it would be best as a nation if we forgot about 9/11. It is not useful to dwell upon tragedies. Wallowing, or Celebrating in your defeat is rather anti-American.

    9/11 isn’t a holiday. I wish the Bush administration would stop treating it like one.

  41. 41.

    narvy

    Armistice Day, November 11th

    You’re right. I should not have slept through that history class. Mr. Know-it-all is embarrassed. But the point still stands, as the blood and the pain recede in time, the original significance fades and the day becomes a holiday.

  43. 43.

    narvy

    Money will get spent. Nothing will come of it.

    Not so. Bishop Gates will have a new Rolls Royce.

    “Of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country.”

    Especially well-connected incompetents in the Old Boys’ network.
    “Further evidence of his caring is his program for the betterment of the lives of the evacuees by housing them in the Astrodome.” – Barbara Bush

    These people couldn’t get a clue if someone gave them a free clue coupon.

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