Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The words do not have to be perfect.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

The willow is too close to the house.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

T R E 4 5 O N

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Accountability, motherfuckers.

People are complicated. Love is not.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / 9/11

Reader Interactions

152Comments

  1. 1.

    Michael D.

    What will Barack Obama do today to screw up the ceremonies and make the right go crazy? Post your guesses!

    My guess is he’ll throw a flower at a widow or widower.

    Of course, just showing up will make them go batshit nuts!

  2. 2.

    Morbo

    Seems like it was just yesterday, doesn’t it?

    No, it only feels that way when it falls on a Wednesday.

  5. 5.

    Crashman06

    Dad worked across the street in the world financial center building. He and his brother stood at the bottom of the WTC for a few minutes watching it burn, until a cop told them to clear out. They went to a coworkers high rise a few blocks away, and saw the towers fall from 20+ floors up. Until then, I thought nothing ever bothered my dad, but he couldn’t stop talking about that day for years.

  10. 10.

    zzyzx

    Seems like it was just yesterday, doesn’t it?

    I think my perspective is a lot different as a west coaster, but it feels like it was decades ago. I do wonder why we’ve completely forgotten about the OK City attack (which is IMO much more likely to be repeated with how the tea party movement is going and the ease of a farmer slowly stockpiling fertilizer over the course of a decade or two vs trying to set up another coordinated hijacking) and I come to some depressing conclusions.

  11. 11.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    A year later, I looked out from my little balcony in Paris and was amazed to see this, just across the river:

    http://image16.webshots.com/16/8/34/83/186583483kznDRY_ph.jpg

    I remember the year before on 9/12/2001 I was coming back to Paris from London and a cab driver was asking me about it, asking if I was from the US, shaking his head, and then he said “Nous sommes tous Américain aujourd’hui” — which I thought was just the most amazing thing, a Parisian, a cab driver, saying that? But I soon realized it was a little phrase, going around, because I heard it again and again though that week, that month, there was this just incredible feeling of solidarity with the US.

    Of course, we couldn’t have that , so we soon put an end to that nonsense…

  12. 12.

    Napoleon

    And the day hear in Cleveland is almost exactly as it was 8 years ago. Not a cloud in the sky and a slightly crisp day, with a hint of fall in the air.

  13. 13.

    asiangrrlMN

    As for 9/11, it actually seems like it happened in a different lifetime. The country seems to have doubled down on the crazy, fear, rage, and hatred, which saddens me. Then again, the country also elected the first black president, which heartens me still. Unfortunately, I think we have a ways to go down before we pull back up again.

  14. 14.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Hmm, that’s odd, if I just paste that link in the browser address bar it works, but when I put it here as a link to click on it says not allowed.

    Will this work?

    http://image16.webshots.com/16/8/34/83/186583483kznDRY_ph.jpg

  15. 15.

    Crashman06

    @asiangrrlMN: It’s weird. My whole life, he never, ever talked about anything that bothered him. Stoic Irish upbringing and all that. But after this, it’s all he could talk about for a while. That’s how we knew how bad it was for him.

    I’d better call him today.

  18. 18.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Crashman06: Yeah. I was in the Bay Area at the time, and I saw the second tower fall in real time on TV. It was so surreal. I felt like I was watching a Bruce Willis movie. I can’t imagine how it must have felt to watch that in person. You are a good son for calling your dad (as you will) to check in on him.

  19. 19.

    scarshapedstar

    @JenJen:

    I dunno. On the one hand, catching bin Laden might have been as devastating to the GOP as banning abortion would: they’d kill the goose that laid the golden egg. On the other hand, maybe people would have appreciated it enough to cancel that effect.

    I guess we know now which option those cynical fucks chose.

  21. 21.

    Punchy

    @zzyzx: Personally, I’m just stunned that nothing’s been rebuilt yet. 8+ years later, and not a single high-rise on that property. Something….anything….to show our ability to bounce back. But nope.

  22. 22.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I don’t know how to paste it so it won’t make it a link.

    http: //image16.webshots.com/16/8/34/83/186583483kznDRY_ph .jpg

    If that works, just paste it and remove the spaces after http: and _ph

    In any case it’s a Paris memorial, two huge beams of light over the river near the Louvre, on 9/11/2001 (11/9/2001, here)

  23. 23.

    Incertus

    Seems like it was just yesterday, doesn’t it?

    Put me in with the people who feel like it was a lifetime ago, a particularly shitty lifetime for seven of the eight years since it happened.

  26. 26.

    jibeaux

    @scarshapedstar:

    I’m as cynical as anyone, but I do not believe that the Bush administration intentionally chose to let bin Laden go for political reasons. I think on that score they were simply incompetent. I’m also surprised that he hasn’t been caught yet.

  27. 27.

    SGEW

    [reposting from previous thread, as it’s on topic here – sorry for double posting]

    On that beautiful pastoral crystal clear morning, after the second tower fell, I stared hard at the rest of the skyline, willing it to stay there – willing the rest of Manhattan to stay standing, to not crumble in sympathetic resonance. On my rooftop, my neighbor clutched my phone; she had just been talking to her father in the first tower before it fell. She couldn’t stop screaming. The radio spoke of other planes, other threats. Some guy next to me cursed the “rag heads.”

    I remember that I felt some sort of portentous vision, some fearful prescience; of war, of terror, of suffering and monumental overreaction. I feared that I was witnessing the opening act of a global spasm of terror, of endless war, and that the fear and tearful rage of my country in reaction to this horror would lead to an attempted cure more harmful than the cloud of ash and dust and human remains that blotted out my southern horizon.

    Now I look back at the past eight years and this nation’s visceral reaction: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia; the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, the DHS; Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, black sites, extraordinary rendition . . . and I realize that no matter how awful we have been, I was expecting far, far worse. I was expecting tens of millions killed, and a police state, and a nation that lived in perpetual fear. I feel that we have weathered some terrible storm, and are now abandoning the worst of our impulses behind us in the darkness. We are left with the damage we have caused – damage that may not heal right, grievous damage, damage that stains the very landscape like the gaping hole in my city’s outline – but the rest of the skyline still stands. We did not all crumble.

    Last night I was walking down Eighth Avenue, and saw a beam of light fire up into the sky as they tested the spotlights for today’s memorial. I felt a sort of distant pain, like an amputee’s phantom limb that had just softly clenched its fist. But this city – this country – is still here. Evil men with box cutters couldn’t take it away from us. And neither could Bush.

  29. 29.

    gbear

    As of this morning, the Obama administration has an infinitely better record of protecting the country from terrorism than the Cheney/Bush administration. If Cheney starts chattering about how Obama is putting the country in danger, he should immediately be told to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

  31. 31.

    zzyzx

    @Punchy: Yeah I know. I still think there’s room for liberals to run as the tough party, the one that says, “Yeah you can hit us but we’ll come back even stronger,” since the Republicans have decided to be the cowering in the dark party.

  33. 33.

    Jason

    I do remember it like it was yesterday. I’m not sure many other things stick out as clearly in my mind as 9/11/2001 even though I lived (and live) in Chicago.

    I remember watching TV getting ready for work and wondering what the hell was happening and then the second plane hit. I remember watching the towers fall and feeling completely helpless. I remember people streaming out of Chicago wondering if the same thing would happen there.

    I remember calling my wife and trying to find out where she was and if she was on her way home from the city. I remember the next day going in to work on a clear day and not seeing any airplanes in the sky which was ever more odd considering my office was about 5 miles away from O’Hare airport and we always had planes flying overhead.

    I remember feeling helpless over the next several weeks and the impact the event had on our nation and around the world. I never thought I’d have an event like the bombing of Pearl Harbor in my lifetime.

    I do remember it like it was yesterday.

  34. 34.

    MysticalChick

    November 2001 – opening season of Washington Caps hockey – all rise for the Star Spangled Banner – in the three seconds before the music started someone yelled “Fuck the Taliban” and the whole place erupted as if we were one. It was interesting, indeed.

    It seems like yesterday and so long ago at the same time. I had an online friend who was a commercial pilot and I was frantic trying to find out if he was flying that day (he wasn’t).

    Just a weird eerie time. My husband (who worked for a time at the pentagon and had friends there) was in a funk for days and days – just lying on the couch watching the coverage.

    I pray we do not go through something like that ever again.

  37. 37.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @JenJen:

    The guy in the picture is obviously on all sorts of governmental programs. VA, Medicaid, Social Security etc., etc., you could cut the irony with a knife. I think it is absurd that they are all capitalizing on 9/11 while at the same time protesting “government programs and taxes” I mean they do know that firefighters, police, and the military are paid for by taxes right? Oh never mind.

  39. 39.

    asiangrrlMN

    Stupid mod. Probably because I accidentally inserted one too many reply to arrow thingies. Trying again.

    @Steeplejack: I know! I loved it so much when I saw it the other night that I stole it.

    @gbear: Suck on it, Cheney!

    @Bill E Pilgrim: The link is broken. I tried to find another photo, but I couldn’t.

  40. 40.

    Bill H

    No, it doesn’t seem like yesterday, it seems like we have had a craven population hiding in foxholes and screaming to be kept safe for a lot longer than eight years.

    Something….anything….to show our ability to bounce back.

    I think the fact that nothing is there is deeply symbolic of the fact that we have not bounced back, that we are not even trying, and that we do not have the capacity to do so. We are still cowering in fear of a handful of elderly Arabs hiding in the Hindu Kush.

  42. 42.

    Halteclere

    I’m interested in talking to some of my colleagues at lunch today to see what their thoughts are now, 8 years later.

    I haven’t forgotten about 9/11, but nor has my life perspective been static since then. Yes, the US was spectacularly attacked by international terrorists in 2001, but the US was also spectacularly attacked by domestic terrorists in 1995 in OK city and in 1993 as the first Word Center bombing. And internationally the Paris subway bombing was in 1995 (which I rode a few months later), the sarin gas subway attack in Tokyo occurred in 1995, etc. And I don’t want to overlook the Cole bombing in 2000, or the US Embassy bombing in Kenya in 1998 (I went to college with a girl who’s aunt worked there).

    Basically 9/11 was a grave and tragic shock to everyone. But I never followed the idea that the US was an exception and “nothing bad” would happen here, so 9/11 to me wasn’t some game changer. But for many people 9/11 cast aside a feeling of invulnerability, or at least the misconception that there was an absence of danger as a nation, and made them start to see a proliferation of dangerous shadows (real and imagined), when all along they should have had their eyes open to the history of the previous 10 years.

  43. 43.

    someguy

    Oh, and BTW, @ ZZYZX, while we’re doing librull triumphalism, when exactly is Librullizm Triumphant going to repeal the Patriot Act and dissolve the surveillance state mechanism directed at us, the searches of barefoot air travelers for liquids, preventive detention by the FBI and crap like that?

    I know I’m a total asshole to bring that up but the longer that stuff stays in place the more we’re doing to ratify the hideous Bush legacy.

  44. 44.

    smiley

    I remember getting choked up in my 9:00 class (10:00 EDT) and most of the students hadn’t heard about it yet. On my way home for lunch, I passed a gas station where cars were backed up for hundreds of yards. They were charging nearly $6.00/gallon. Scumbags.

  45. 45.

    Shinobi

    I find that I am torn. Yes 9/11 was SO long ago, and so much has changed since then.

    At the same time my memories of that day are still extremely vivid. Waking up to DJs on my clock radio talking about people throwing themselves from the top of the WTC, at first I thought I was still dreaming. And then I went and turned on the TV in my living room. Most of the people living on my floor (in my dorm) ended up sitting in my apartment watching coverage all morning. And then in the afternoon we all went and donated blood.

    So while time has passed and things have changed I think what makes it stay present is what a turning point it was, how much the world changed that day. I remember talking to a friend that day, and we looked at each other and realized that the world and our country was never going to be the same again.

    I guess while time passes and things change major events like that stay in our minds and seem like yesterday, no matter how long ago they were.

  47. 47.

    Arlene

    It seems to me like a long time ago. I remember being worried about my brother-in-law who worked near the towers. My former neighbor was in one of the towers and fortunately got out. It’s amazing how much good will the rest of the world felt for us and of course, Bush & Cheyney threw it all away. My big fear now is we’ll have another Oklahoma City incident with all the right wing crazies acting up and being cheered on by Rush, Beck, etc.

  48. 48.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Comrade Jake:

    From the link:

    Spencer Ackerman, reflecting on the report, added, “If this Guardian piece is even 50 percent correct, al-Qaeda faces a recruiting crisis, ideological bankruptcy and capabilities deficit so severe that its entire viability is questioned. This is a death spiral.”

    I think you could substitute GOP for al-Qaeda in that sentence and the shoe still fits.

  49. 49.

    Legalize

    I watched the towers fall from my roof and passed dust-covered folks walking up Broadway and Amsterdam, as I was walking downtown. And then I watched stunned policemen later that night not really knowing what to do. I bought water, eggs, bread, cheese and some canned fruits and veggies. Turns out there was no looting or shortages of food or other essentials. It doesn’t seem like just yesterday at all. It seems like a lifetime ago in another world that resembled America. Or maybe our current reality resembles America, while America existed previous to 9/11. Who knows. I do know that for some reason, this year is worse than others even though the president is trying to un-cheapen what the wingers did the past 8 years. It’s upsetting that the wingers prefer to live in fear, hate and paranoia. Why do they want to relive all that every year at this time. I don’t get it, and I will always despise them for it.

    Watching Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” tonight. Hope it works this year.

  50. 50.

    ChrisB

    I don’t know where he is. I really don’t spend that much time on it to be honest with you. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him.

  51. 51.

    Crashman06

    @Halteclere: I was 19 when it happened. Oklahoma City didn’t really register with me; maybe I was too young at the time. But for a kid who grew up at a time that no one was really worried about the USSR nuking us, 9/11 was a huge shock. The death of innocence, in a way. I think a lot of people my age feel that way.

  52. 52.

    The Moar You Know

    This probably makes me some sort of asshole, but I have long stopped caring about the anniversary of the event. Seems like emotionalist, nostalgic wallowing in ancient history. The people who cannot or will not get on with their lives strike me as being either overly martryrish, dwelling in a world of self-imposed terror, or frankly, mentally ill.

    Sure, the event itself was seized upon by a gang of unscrupulous bastards to demolish what was left of democracy in this country, but there was nothing exceptional about the event itself that caused that. Those people would have seized on any excuse. This one was convenient.

    When I read the media and hear our citizenry wallowing in the detritus of this tragedy, again, I just want to scream “get on with your lives, America!”

  53. 53.

    Cris

    I remember saying, as I watched the news footage of the burning rubble, “Looks like the President will be expanding wiretap authority again.” That was apparently the extent of my ability to imagine government overreach. Even in my cynicism, I was hopelessly naive.

  54. 54.

    ChrisB

    @ChrisB: I wanted to leave that quote up there by itself. But going back and watching Bush say those words again made my blood boil.

    What a fucking asshole.

  55. 55.

    Persia

    @Bill E Pilgrim: That’s amazing. Thank you.

    I was pregnant on 9/11; my daughter was born a month later. Big changes for me, then, and it does seem like a very long time ago. I don’t think I’ll ever forget sitting on the couch, watching Peter Jennings, and wondering what I’d gotten my kiddo into.

  56. 56.

    DecidedFenceSitter

    It was a long time ago for me – I’ve gotten married, divorced, and am engaged again, I’ve gone through three jobs, on my second career. And a whole lot of personal growth, so yeah for me it seems like an ancient amount of time ago.

    8 years ago, I was driving into my temp agency job in Fredericksburg, VA, as the only job I could find in a down economy having graduated in July. I still remember the cell phone and email tag people were playing cause people had thought I’d gotten a job in DC. I still remember the panic when the Pentagon was hit (a couple staffers had family who worked there), our servers going down because they were located in Manhattan (and yes, people ordered stuff from a catalog on 9/11).

  57. 57.

    gbear

    I remember hearing a story about a plane crashing into the WTC as I drove to work that morning and my mind pictured a little private plane running amok. I had to make some site visits that morning so I heard the whole thing unfold on public radio while I was driving to and from meetings. I worked for a state agency located directly across the street from the state capitol building, so we were basically scared shitless the whole morning wondering if we were next. The office set up a TV set right in front of my cubicle. No work got done that day.

    I remember that day well, but it still feels like it was a lifetime ago. Jesse Ventura was governor then so in many ways it was a lifetime ago. Things have changed so much since then. I’m glad that in the last year we have started a course away from the post-9/11 days. I hope we can stay on this course without crashing the car.

  59. 59.

    joe from Lowell

    I’m not going to spend today obsessed with 9/11.

    I usually am, but not this year. Time marches on.

    I bet I’ll be a sack of misery on the tenth anniversary, but not this year.

  60. 60.

    Cyrus

    I was a freshman in college at the time and my first class that day was at something like 11:25 a.m., so I was playing computer games that morning. I didn’t find out that anything odd was going on until I walked by a room down the hall around 10 a.m. and they had the news on. Speculation dominated that morning class, but coincidentally the class was about the literature of war, so the teacher kind of tried to keep to business a little. That afternoon a couple friends and I tried going to a Red Cross center, but organization on short notice didn’t work so well; the place we went to wasn’t open.

    A distant cousin of mine got married the following Saturday in Manhattan. The wedding had been planned for months and it went on as scheduled. Attendance was lower than expected, though, and the honeymoon was postponed because both bride and groom were doctors, so were working overtime. My family and I ultimately attended. There were “have you seen this person?” posters all over the city. The following morning, Sunday, we walked downtown, but couldn’t get any closer than a couple blocks to the site.

  61. 61.

    PanAmerican

    I just want to scream “get on with your lives, America!”

    There is a vast swath looking for some sense of purpose and meaning in their miserable existence. Fear is a good as meth, church or watching “America’s Next Douchebag” in filling that space.

  62. 62.

    R-Jud

    9/11/01 seems like ages ago, but I remember it. I was in my second week of teaching on the South Side of Chicago. Before classes started, one of the teachers mentioned that someone had crashed a plane into the WTC, but at that point we thought it was just a light aircraft, an accident. That was all I knew until mid-morning, when parents started pulling kids out of class. Then a memo from Arne Duncan showed up: “Due to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington…”

    At lunch, I called my friend who worked in 7 WTC over and over again, until I finally got through to her voice mail: “Hi, this is L., it’s September 11, 2001, and I’m all right.” She was running late to work. She saw everything unfold from the ferry.

    A friend of mine in NYC is turning 30 today. He hasn’t celebrated his birthday in eight years– he even returned gifts. This year, he’s having a party.

  63. 63.

    SGEW

    @The Moar You Know:

    You have the privilege of feeling that way. But yes, it does make you some sort of asshole.

    Recognize personal emotional and psychological trauma: it is real, and is not to be dismissed so easily. Trauma is a “mental illness” and, like all illnesses, should not be denigrated like it was some sort of moral failing.

    Eat an analogy: Someone you know was in a horrifying car accident eight years ago. On the anniversary of that day, they are sad, and upset. They have issues with driving on the highway. They have bad dreams about it sometimes. You tell them that they suck because they can’t get over it, and that they should stop “wallowing” in “emotionalist nostalgia.” You’re an asshole.

    There is a difference between criticizing the harmful impact that the event itself caused (madness, terror, authoritarianism, paranoia, and political manipulation) and criticizing the people that it negatively impacted as being “overly martryrish [sic].”

    Say you’re sorry.

    [Also: 9/11 was probably the most psychologically impactful public event since the Berlin Wall fell. It directly influenced most of the major foreign policy decisions the U.S.A. made over the next four (six? eight?) years. Every future American history book will start a new chapter with a photograph of the Towers. It was probably the first event that was observed in something close to real time by a majority of the world’s population. Saying that it was “nothing exceptional” is a little strange.]

  64. 64.

    Punchy

    but one plane blows up because of it

    But this cannot happen. Take it from a PhD chemist — you cannot blow up a plane with liquids brought on with a carry on. Impossible, which is what drove so many of us chemists insane when they announced this ban of ludicrous shit like toothpaste and 8oz of mouthwash.

    You can start a fire with small liquid volumes, and form toxic clouds (e.g., mixing potassium cyanide and HCl), but one cannot essplode a plane with 6 oz of peroxide or any other liquid that commercially available.

    /rant over

  65. 65.

    scav

    Harumph. I’m with Haulteclere 42 and The Moar You Know 52. Then and now. I was already at work and seem to have been on the NYT site already when the first news made it – reported just as a plane so I was left wondering how a Cessna could miss seeing something that big for a bit. After clearing that misconception up, I was stunned because less than 27 minutes later there was already something on the AP by some guy pontificating about what the effect would be on the stock market. Then they sent us home and I wondered about my co-workers going on and on about how it was better safe than sorry. Excuse me. We’re in a single floor building in Skokie. We are simply not photogenic enough. And then later after everyone put up their memorials, they proceeded to put up their Halloween decorations just next to them and I was left wondering about people that couldn’t make the mental leap that the gravestones and ghosts just might put the macabre into overdrive. I’d never really understood how insulated and simple-minded some Americans could be. They were acting as though they had invented being victims of terrorism – by watching it on tv. Repeatedly. And then putting it on their coffee tables in big glossy books. What I’ve lost over the following 8 years is a fair bit of charity because while I was willing to believe in their essential ignorance and innocence at that point, at this point I can only see their ignorance as maliciously in intent. I’m working very hard to remember that I’m furious at a subset.

  67. 67.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @asiangrrlMN:

    As for 9/11, it actually seems like it happened in a different lifetime.

    For me, it feels as if it happened in a previous century. I realize this is a terribly US-centric perspective, but it feels as if the 20th Cen lasted until 2001-09-11 and the 21 Cen started the next day. I’ve read that it felt that way in London or Paris in the summer of 1914, and today I feel like now I have a small grasp of the sense of shock and disorientation that people back then felt as they were hurtled into a new century.

    And like them, our new century today seems to be one filled with fear, anger, hate, irrationality and insecurity and uncertainty beyond what I ever could have imagined before, and those psychological toxins are still in our political bloodstream today and are taking their sweet time working their way out of our system.

  68. 68.

    Tattoosydney

    I was up a bit late drawing, with the TV on and the volume down, and somehow glimpsed the first reports of a plane hitting one of the Twin Towers. My memory of the evening is a little blurred after that, but I seem to recall I saw the second plane go in live. Almost everyone I knew was asleep, and I felt too guilty to call them – how can you rouse dear friends from their dreams to tell them that a barbarism is happening before your eyes on the other side of the world?

    I remember walking to work the next morning thinking that planes which had left the US the day before would just be arriving in Sydney after our usual curfew had finished. Working in a Harbour view office tower suddenly didn’t seem such a bright idea.

    We Australians lost a few people on 9/11, and the grief we felt for your losses, America being one of our nation’s oldest friends, was heartfelt and desolating.

    We, of course vaulted ourselves into W.’s wars, our Prime Minister grinning like a spiv at a wake while getting his picture taken with Bush. I detest both of them too much, for leveraging our mutual pain into a crusade for oil, to dwell on them.

    Best wishes to everyone. I hope today is a good day for you, if also a sad one.

  70. 70.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    I was on the E train heading away from WTC when it happened. I was going to Citibank’s building in Queens just across the East River from the UN (it’s the tall bluish one about 50 stories that is all by itself). The subway lets you out under the building and after 9AM, the lobby area on the ground floor was usually deserted with everyone having gotten their coffee and being at their desks to start their day (I was there for a training program – running late that day). That day at 9:10AM or so, the lobby was full of people. I remember seeing that and thinking it was odd and trying to head to the elevator bank to go up when I got stopped by security who told me they were evacuating the building.

    Just then, the nearest elevator opened and several people from my training class came out and said that planes had hit the trade center.

    My first thought was for us to get back to midtown because I knew they would shut the subway system down. We ran back to the inbound E train and caught the next one. It was surreal, we were on a crowded subway car full of commuters who had no idea what was going on and my friends are describing what they saw (our training area 30 floors up had an unobstructed view of lower Manhattan). People on the car were looking at us like we were crazy. Just as we approached midtown, an announcement came that 53rd street was going to be the last stop due to an “incident” at WTC. We got up to the street level and even though we were in midtown, you could see the black smoke across the perfect blue sky. We walked to our hotel and watched on TV like the rest of the world even though we were only a few miles away.

    Some other things I remember about that day and the aftermath in NYC:

    -the throngs on refugees walking north up the avenue blocks from lower manhattan

    -being in central park later that day and seeing fighters patrolling the skies around manhattan

    -running out to get the 9/12 edition of the NY Times (“US ATTACKED”), which I still have. I also kept the issues of the New Yorker (the all black cover with the slightly off-black image of the towers) and the Economist – an incredible view from the Jersey side just after the North Tower fell)

    -the bomb scares at the Empire State and UN buildings the following week.

    -the hastily erected message boards in places like grand central terminal with notes looking for loved ones

    -the smell of the fires burning when the wind shifted north

    -the drinking. it seemed like people really hit the sauce in manhattan after that.

    -soldiers with automatic weapons in a pretty deserted JFK a month later

  71. 71.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @SGEW:

    Last night I was walking down Eighth Avenue, and saw a beam of light fire up into the sky as they tested the spotlights for today’s memorial. I felt a sort of distant pain, like an amputee’s phantom limb that had just softly clenched its fist. But this city – this country – is still here. Evil men with box cutters couldn’t take it away from us. And neither could Bush.

    That is a beautiful and very moving piece of prose. Are you quoting somebody, or did you write this yourself? If the latter, my hat is off to you. If you aren’t already writing professionally, please consider doing so.

  73. 73.

    linda

    at the time, i worked on 8th & broadway and my experience was exiting the building to see broadway — which is a one-way street heading downtown — with no vehicle traffic, but the street packed with pedestrians making their way uptown from the wall street area. because i live in brooklyn, i walked against that crowd down to the manhattan bridge.

    ambulances were filled with injured and racing uptown (at this point i was on lafayette st, which is a one-way uptown) one woman collapsed in front of me and several of us flagged down another ambulance, who stopped to pick her up.

    there was no hysteria; people were very quiet as they made their way out of lower manhattan. once we made it over the bridge into brooklyn, there were people passing out bottles of water — which were very mcuh appreciated after a very disturbing trek.

    and in that eight fucking years, it’s been one disaster after another.

  74. 74.

    Robin G.

    I wrote about this on my blog today; this year it’s hitting me so much harder than previous years. I think it might be because with Obama in the White House, it finally feels safe to mourn. All the previous years, it felt as if you let your guard down and talked about September 11th, the right wing would use you and hold you up as an example of how we have to get revenge. But now it’s safe, it’s safe to let myself feel about that day, and it hurts so badly. I’ve been crying all morning, for the very first time.

  75. 75.

    The Moar You Know

    Say you’re sorry.

    @SGEW: I’d like to oblige you, but cannot. I will apologize for that, as you seem like a likable and nice person.

    I’ll note that some of us have been through similarly horrific experiences, and yet don’t feel the urge to climb up on the cross every year of the anniversary of said event and beat our breasts, weep, and wail over the cruelty of it all. Which is precisely what this nation does every year. Frankly, it makes me sick.

    I wish you all luck in your yearly self-flagellation, and will leave you to it.

  76. 76.

    Svensker

    @SGEW:

    [Also: 9/11 was probably the most psychologically impactful public event since the Berlin Wall fell. It directly influenced most of the major foreign policy decisions the U.S.A. made over the next four (six? eight?) years. Every future American history book will start a new chapter with a photograph of the Towers.

    Every American history book should show mutilated Iraqi bodies and burning Iraqi buildings as America wreaked revenge for our hurt on those innocents.

    Yes, what happened to us was awful. (I was in Jersey, frantically try to reach my husband who was in downtown Manhattan, and 4 families we know lost loved ones — one family lost two brothers.) But what we did to absolutely innocent Iraqis to avenge our anger so completely overshadows our trauma — what self-centered, arrogant, ignorant, whiny ass babies we are. No wonder we haven’t been able to rebuild at the site. For future 9/11 memorials we should be required to crawl on our knees through the Iraq countrywide begging forgiveness. After taking out and executing George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al, for high crimes, of course. And Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman.

  77. 77.

    Tattoosydney

    @asiangrrlMN:

    We were there squandering it with you. Fuck John Howard. Fuck Dick Cheney.

    Spent five minutes trying to compose a response – something about how you Americans don’t know just how much the rest of the world admires you and wants to be you – but anger and tiredness defeat me.

    How you?

  78. 78.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Robin G.:

    All the previous years, it felt as if you let your guard down and talked about September 11th, the right wing would use you and hold you up as an example of how we have to get revenge.

    Of all the things I hold against the right for the last 8 years, hijacking our collective grief for political purposes seems to me to be one of the most unforgivable. IMHO doing so was an act of blasphemy.

  79. 79.

    Jay in Oregon

    @Cat Lady:

    I wish Obama would announce that they’ve caught bin Laden. That would be interesting.

    Indeed!

    I would await the breathless, deeply unironic “He’s trying to politicize a national tragedy!!!1!!ONE!” from the right…

  80. 80.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    @The Moar You Know: While Americans are prone to having the world stop when a little girl falls down a well, I think some of what you describe was in part politically calculated by the Bush admin each year to keep the terror, fear and anger alive in the populace to keep support up for various “initiatives” they were undertaking. The terror alerts and those magnetic “Support the Troops” ribbons served similar purposes.

  81. 81.

    Brachiator

    @Michael D.:

    What will Barack Obama do today to screw up the ceremonies and make the right go crazy? Post your guesses!

    No guess necessary. One local talk radio station here in Southern California got the early jump on this early this morning. They accused Obama of “cynically” attempting to devalue 9/11 by calling for a day of national service instead of simply observing a remembrance of this day of national tragedy.

    They even included an interview with some hack who has written a book about how Obama is trying to destroy America.

  82. 82.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I wrote then deleted from the end of my last post almost the exact same thing even using the word “hijack” to describe what the Bush admin took away from the country after 9/11 and did in our names.

  83. 83.

    DZ

    I must say that I am at least partially with The Moar You Know Here. Since 9/11, I’ve lost my father to heart attack, lost my wife to cancer, had two forms of cancer myself and lost two of my dogs to illness. I think about them but not much about 9/11.

  85. 85.

    David Hunt

    I didn’t listen to the news as I was getting ready for work or on the ride in that day. So when I walked into the office, my boss surprised me with, “Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center.” I remember immediately realizing what “two” meant. In fact, all I could say was “Two?!!”

    I watched the second Tower fall on TV thinking that I was watching people dying and I should feel less detached about it, but it just looked like a building pancaking. Right after that, I clearly remember thinking, “Oh my God, we’re going to war.”

  86. 86.

    SGEW

    @The Moar You Know: Well, I’ll take what apologies I can get, I suppose. I’ll even apologize to you: I’m sorry that it sickens you. I understand your distaste for the public grieving. I can even commiserate: I realize that there is a great deal of the perverse in the macabre carnival that the 9/11 memorial has become, and how cynical and narcissistic it may seem (or, at times, be). Not to mention the somewhat gratuitous, self-centeredness of the personal (yet pseudonymous) reminiscences that one might find here.

    But I’ll just note that people react differently to trauma – you, yourself, might not feel the need to beat thy breast, nor weep, nor wail, but some of us do. We even feel better afterwards, sometimes. In all humility, I suggest that if you have had a traumatic experience that eats at you, you might want to give it a try sometime. It could help.

    Also, @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Thanks for th’ flattery. I blush. Not published (yet?), and I’m mostly wasting away doing legal writing nowadays. Blah.

  87. 87.

    Jay in Oregon

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    I think you could substitute GOP for al-Qaeda in that sentence and the shoe still fits.

    Has anyone ever noticed that you never see the GOP and al-Qaeda in the same room at the same time…?

  89. 89.

    Mike in NC

    I just want to scream “get on with your lives, America!”

    Maybe it’s just my imagination, but most of what I’ve seen on TV today could best be described as nostalgia for the G. W. Bush era, yet with hardly a peep about what has happened during the past eight terrible years. How come Dick Cheney isn’t on every channel barking about how “we’re gonna get hit again”?

  90. 90.

    PaulW

    I was at the main library in downtown Ft. Lauderdale meeting with other librarians in the tech lab (computers) departments. The library was switching to a new email system (groupwise) and they wanted us to perform the in-house training. Meeting started at 9 am. One of my coworkers was late, coming in and saying there was news a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers.

    It was sad to hear, but we all knew the story about the Empire State building getting hit with a plane back in the 1940s, so we assumed it was a tragic pilot’s error or bad weather or something (it was a clear day that morning in Florida. I think it turned out the whole Atlantic seaboard had clear skies… it was going to be such a beautiful day…) So we settled in, going over the email system, what we should teach, what the handout materials should look like, etc. It took about an hour, just sitting there in the classroom lab unaware of what was happening outside.

    When we finished the meeting, we left the classroom and walked out into the foyer area and up the escalator to the library’s main floor. They had dragged out a TV on a cart and was trying to get a signal. For some reason, TV reception was lousy in that building, and they didn’t have cable connection. I saw an old boss of mine who was also at the library for a meeting and approached her, asking what was going on.

    “Oh my God,” she told me. “There was another plane hitting the other World Trade Center tower.”

    It took a few seconds. It took a few seconds to realize that one plane was an accident. Two planes, one right after the other… hitting each tower…

    I knew then it meant war.

    The lobby TV was terrible, snow and static, and I went up the 8th floor to see if reception for a TV in the staff lounge was better up there. It wasn’t. They tried moving it into a meeting room closer to the windows to see if that could help. And barely. There was still a lot of static and snow, and some of the guys I was with didn’t agree with me when I swore one of the towers had collapsed.

    By that time, reports of the Pentagon strike were all over the place, rumors about other buildings getting hit with car bombs, more planes in the air… The call went out from the county government: everyone close down and go home.

    Every skyscraper in Ft. Lauderdale was closing (the odds of terrorists striking South Florida seemed ridiculous, but by then panic was unshakable). The parking lot for the library was actually a few blocks to the other side of the government center across the street. I walked across and met a young couple who were trying to enter the government building. The county center had already locked their doors. The couple didn’t know. I told them. “Terrorists are flying planes into buildings. They hit the Twin Towers. One of them’s gone, just flat out gone.”

    By the time I got to my car and got the radio on – the first time I could clearly get news about what was happening – the second Tower fell.

    I couldn’t go straight home: while the downtown buildings were closed, other library branches were still open and I had to report back to the NW Regional branch in Coral Springs. When I got there, the whole staff knew. I met with my tech lab workers and we all talked about what was happening in low hushed tones. There were probably 7 patrons in the whole building, just one in that lab. Just before lunch time, the word came down that all libraries were closed until further notice from the county.

    That whole day ended up with me in a daze. I went home first, sitting with my two cats and watching CNN for hours. Reports on the last plane – Flight 93 – started coming in. By the afternoon, I felt restless, despairing. I decided to go donate blood. I had never done it before: I hate needles, was terrified of doing it, but that day… well I wasn’t the only one. The only blood bank anywhere in North Broward was crowded well out into the parking lot. I ended up standing there for three hours before it had gotten so dark that you couldn’t see the persons you were talking with (few parking lot lights). So I went home and went back to donate blood that Saturday.

    They ended up not taking my blood. I tested positive for Hepatitis C and spent the whole month of October getting re-tested before they confirmed it was a false positive. They never told me what I *did* test positive for, though. But I digress.

    I am with one of the earlier posters, though: I coulda sworn we’ve have gotten Bid Laden by now. Don’t anybody ever tell me Bush and Cheney were great wartime leaders: THEY DIDN’T CATCH BIN LADEN.

  92. 92.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Regarding public grieving about 9/11: I simply avoid most of it myself, and don’t let it get to me. Honestly, it’s gotten less and less over the years imho. people move on. they have to. I don’t begrudge those who want to have their ceremonies. I don’t begrudge those who wish everyone would move on.

    I do wish we as a nation would spend more time remembering all the lives that have been lost since 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq (troops and civilians), as I mentioned on my blog. But since we don’t have a draft, a seven-year, two-front “war” doesn’t register.

  93. 93.

    scav

    @SGEW: Please SCGW, right after noting that people react to trauma differently, you have to suggest that no, really, try beating your breast to make you feel better. No, seriously, for some of us: not. If anything, the big stuff in my life tends to bring out the hyper-logic while I blubber and ululate over stubbed toes. Would you honestly suggest to a gay guy, that no, really, most of us are really into chicks, you should try it sometime?

  94. 94.

    Mayur

    @SGEW: I think TMYK has a good point in that 9/11 was not a *personal* trauma for many (most?) of the breast-beaters out there, no matter how much they might like to characterize it thus. Watching two buildings burn on TV is not the same as being in a car crash or experiencing the death of a family member.

    I was there, and I’ve been emailing with a number of the folks who walked through the dust, ash and smoke to get to my apt (which was the gathering place for people who were downtown that morning); we haven’t talked about the day beyond a couple of references to stuff in the press. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of (bad) memories about that day, but we’re not sitting around beating our breasts, *in part* because we saw how the country’s collective shock was manipulated to lead us into disaster after disaster.

    Also, I have to wonder why the country doesn’t go into this memorialization frenzy on the anniversary of Katrina.

  96. 96.

    Mayur

    Also, it may just be my imagination, but it feels like 99.99% of the grieving over 9/11/2001 comes from people who have no personal connection either to the victims or the city.

  97. 97.

    Jen R

    @David Hunt:

    Right after that, I clearly remember thinking, “Oh my God, we’re going to war.”

    My first (unspoken) thought was, “That’s it. It’s over.” I wasn’t (so) afraid of what terrorists would do to us; I was afraid of what we’d do in response.

    Pretty sure that qualifies me as an “America-hater” in the minds of people like Joe Wilson, but fuck them.

  99. 99.

    someguy

    What the date really means to me, is that there was a tragic criminal act, that the Republicans used as a rationale to indulge our country’s nasty little periodic urge to go kick the crap out of some non-white, non-Christian nation. We have a habit of doing that every twenty or thirty years – though the non-Christian thing, while preferable, is optional. See, e.g. Dominincan Republic; cf. “The shores of Tripoli.”

    Yeah, it was a big tragedy. But other nations lost upwards of tens of thousands of people in the tsunami that followed a couple years later, and you don’t hear them whining about it still or standing on the beach shooting at waves that had nothing to do with that ‘attack.’ As for us… well, we’re still busy genocidin’ lots of brown non-Christians. So in the end you have to ask yourself if that’s a Republican trait or an inherently American trait. Given our bipartisan history of slaughters, and our reluctance to quit slaughtering Iraqis and Afghans despite the change of Administration I’m starting to suspect it may be the latter – it’s just that Republicans are better at exploiting the urge.

  100. 100.

    JK

    As a lifelong New Yorker, I am sickened and disgusted that the rebuilding at the Ground Zero site has been such a joke.

    Who would have thought that 8 years after the 9/11 attack, the site of the Twin Towers would still be vacant?

    There is slight progress being made on the new building that will occupy the site of the Twin Towers, but God knows when the Hell it ever be finished. Having seen the artist’s rendering of the building, it’s such a hideous monstrosity that I almost wish the site would be left bare.

    The politics that ensued over rebuilding of the site was pretty disgusting and I wish to Hell it could have been avoided. I was offended by the idea of a design competition. I would have preferred that the Twin Towers simply be rebuilt but with much better, stronger, and durable material.

    Like others, I wish Bin Laden and Zawahiri had been captured. Few things would give me more pleasure than seeing these homicidal maniacs in custody. I find it amazing that Dick Cheney is so brazen and strident in his attacks on Obama, given the fact that he and George Bush failed to capture or kill Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Watching Dick Cheney lecture Obama, one would never have any idea that 2 mass murderers EVADED JUSTICE UNDER HIS WATCH.

    I regret that the 9/11 attacks turned Rudy Giuliani into a national hero. The title America’s mayor is a total crock of BS. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, he was a deeply polarizing figure who regularly bullied and ridiculed his political opponents. Whatever he did on the days after 9/11, he’ll always be an arrogant, obnoxious SOB in my book. I was disgusted to see the MSM drool all over him especially Time magazine. Naming Person of the Year was an outrage. It was Giuliani who insisted on locating the emergency command center within the Twin Towers despite warnings against it. His speech at the Republican convention where he took a swipe at big cities to bolster Sarah Palin was nauseating. I hope my fellow New Yorkers have the brains and common sense to avoid electing Giulaini governor.

  101. 101.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Tattoosydney: I know. It grieves me how much this country has simply ceded to evil over the past eight years. Even at the height of my cynicism, circa 2002, I never dreamed to what depths we would plunge. I came close, but nothing compares to the reality.

    I am saddened and a tad bit defeated right now. Contemplative. Wondering where we can go from here.

    @Mayur: I have to agree here and to a certain extent, TMYR. I personally was not affected by the falling of the Towers, so I think it would be unseemly of me to appropriate the grief of those who were personally touched by the tragedy. Then again, I didn’t feel the same way as most people on 9/11 in that I wasn’t shocked by it happening, nor did I think America was so exceptional that she should be exempt from the tragedies that happen all around the world on a daily basis. We had just been incredibly insulated to that point. Afterwards, we acted out in the worst way possible.

    @DZ: I am so sorry for your personal loss. My condolences to you. I hope that things are a bit brighter in the upcoming year.

    Svensker, I agree with this, too. After 9/11, we could have acted in a way that would have actually been constructive instead of racing down the road to abject self-destruction (and global destruction as well). The past eight years are just such a damn shame.

  103. 103.

    gbear

    @Mike in NC:

    Maybe it’s just my imagination, but most of what I’ve seen on TV today could best be described as nostalgia for the G. W. Bush era, yet with hardly a peep about what has happened during the past eight terrible years. How come Dick Cheney isn’t on every channel barking about how “we’re gonna get hit again”?

    Cheney’s not on TV today because, as of today, the Obama administration has a better record at keeping us safe from terrorists than Cheney/Bush. Cheney’s talking points all vaporized today. His ass isn’t covered any more.

    Not that I’m expecting the media to realize this…

  105. 105.

    John T

    I had the day off and I was trying to sleep in but my mom called me on the phone and told me to turn on the TV. I spent most of the day watching repeated footage of the towers collapsing, over and over.

    But no, it doesn’t feel like it was just yesterday. The memory of 9/11 may be vivid but it’s definitely not fresh, after it has been so relentlessly, cynically exploited for political purposes in the past 8 years.

    Remember in the post-9/11 days when George W. Bush had a 95% approval rating? I was one of the 5% who wondered why everybody was worshipping the opportunistic jingoist. It felt like the world had gone crazy, and that was really a defining moment for me, politically.

  106. 106.

    The Moar You Know

    @LanceThruster: Ahhh, you’re a troofer. What Markos did to you folks was the best. I don’t agree with everything he’s ever done or said, and loathe his commentariat with the fire of a thousand suns, but he got that one dead-on right. Nipped your bullshit in the bud, he did.

  109. 109.

    SiubhanDuinne

    To me, it seems like yesterday in that every detail of the day remains etched as clearly as it did on the date itself. In other ways it seems not eight years, but a lifetime, ago.

    I was attending a Governors’ Conference in Lexington, KY (I mentioned part of this in an unrelated thread several weeks ago). Among the high-profile speakers the day before (i.e., Monday the 10th) were VP Cheney (for whom we all had to go through unbelievable extra security processes), Helen Thomas, and as entertainment in the evening, Rosemary Clooney — who was YES! introduced by her nephew George :-)

    I was packing to leave the morning of the 11th with the Today show on in the background, and watched it unfold as we all did. Of course all flights were cancelled and there were no rental cars to be had for any price, so getting back to Atlanta was a bit of a challenge (to say the least). Finally got a ride with a friend of a friend, and it was a surreal experience, being in a little convertible on I-75 on that gorgeous sunny blue-sky day, listening to the news on NPR the whole way (one of the biggest points of speculation was where GWB was — remember, they kept moving him from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska or some such), and seeing huge American flags draped from the overpasses.

  110. 110.

    drillfork

    @Legalize:

    I do know that for some reason, this year is worse than others even though the president is trying to un-cheapen what the wingers did the past 8 years. It’s upsetting that the wingers prefer to live in fear, hate and paranoia. Why do they want to relive all that every year at this time. I don’t get it, and I will always despise them for it.

    Because on 9-12, we were all terrified and blindly following the Republicans in the White House. That’s what the wingers want to get back to…

  112. 112.

    freelancer

    @gbear:

    I was thinking that at around 10 am eastern time.

    “Democrats – as of this morning officially keeping you safer from terrorist attacks than the Republicans ever did.”

  113. 113.

    chopper

    ugh. i lived in DC at the time, was on my way to work after a night of drinking. on the yellow line which goes under the pentagon. at least i was supposed to, my half-asleep ass accidentally got on the green instead at l’enfant plaza. went one stop, turned around, got back on the right train and it didn’t move. didn’t say why, just that something was up.

    so i figured yeah, whatever. hopped on the blue line to go the long way. made it to foggy bottom and the train stopped. got out and found a pay phone and called my boss to tell him ‘screw it, i’m not coming in today’. took 5 tries to get through to voice mail. huh. freakish.

    got back on the train in the other direction and everyone was talking. a big attack on the pentagon, in NYC, something about pennsylvania and a possible bomb in the mall. jesus i’ve never sobered up faster in my life.

    went back home and watched it unfold on TV with my roommate, whose dad was a big-shot congressman and who later flipped out over the anthrax mailings to the point where we were opening our mail with latex gloves.

    remembered that my brother was flying from boston or something to california that morning. finally got through to my mom, freaking out and she let me know he had an early flight and was already in CA.

  115. 115.

    Mayken

    @SGEW: Fu(k, man, that was… just awesome! I’m bawling and feeling so proud all at the same time. Thanks for sharing that.
    Damn! Just… damn!

  116. 116.

    Robin G.

    @JK: I always thought a nice, grassy memorial, with an oak tree planted in the center of each footprint, of course a listing of the names, and perhaps a museum where one of the other WTC buildings were, would be nice. Though I do think one of the biggest FUs the new administration could give to the old would be to oversee the actual rebuilding. It rather makes the point, doesn’t it.

  118. 118.

    someguy

    @ Robin: what about a memorial to the hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of civilians killed in our temper tantrum fits of revenge for 9/11? I don’t hear anybody talking about a memorial for them…

  119. 119.

    Mayken

    @Punchy: Thank you! I have a really good friend who is a security expert who rants about this every time any one of us flies. It is simply physically impossible to blow up planes with the contents of a pop bottle. And the TSA continuing to insist that it is simply wastes a lot of time, money and effort that could be spend on, ya know, real security.
    Yeesh!

  120. 120.

    LanceThruster

    @arguingwithsignposts: @Cris: @The Moar You Know:

    Markos, HuffPo, Crooks and Liars (among others) all practice a certain amount of gatekeeping from the extreme to subtle and relentless.

    These are some of the same groups that acknowledged the fraud involved in Black Box voting or BushCo thugs doctoring pre-war intel, or guilty of partisan Justice Dept firings, or raising terror alerts for political gain.

    You can pretend to know what you cannot (the facts of the 9/11 attacks) and applaud those who enforce to whatever degree adherence to the “official” conspiracy theory (because that’s exactly wht the 9/11 Commission put forth – their “theory” of what happened), but asking questions and demanding answers have served us well in other areas where people have incentive to lie.

    How long before questioning 9/11 starts to head towards being catagorized as in the same manner as questioning details about the Holocaust? Most people can see the danger in designating unpopular or even unsubstantiated views as thought crimes yet seem willing to go along with them through intellectual laziness.

    So thanks to the cover provided by a great number of progressive sites, issues are not decided by who can present the stronger argument, but who can declare the winner in any given debate, facts be damned. Non-truthers shouldn’t fear further examination of the crime if they’re so certain there’s no there there. And that’s even considering the fact that evidence was destroyed illegally. That alone should be troubling, yet you’re a one-note wonder with your unwavering truther dismissals.

  121. 121.

    LanceThruster

    @someguy:

    I agree.

    We were outraged and traumatized over thousands of innocent people in the US killed over a political beef, and our response was to kill thousands (hundreds of thousands actually) of innocent people someplace else over a political beef (that is, people NOT involved in attacking us).

    Sorry, but we suck at ethical standards (but excel in hypocrisy).

  122. 122.

    Joe

    This may sound inappropriate, but I think Congress should rescind the declaration of September 11 as Patriots Day. I do not think this name represents what happened that day. I also think it is ironic that Patriots Day in New England commemorates the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. This date is 220 years to the day before the largest terrorist attack in American history prior to September 11, 2001. The fact that the Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by self-styled “patriots” bothers me. In the end, the beautiful and honorable responses of people on September 11 and after had much less to do with patriotism and much more to do with basic human decency and heroism. We should remember the open-hearted response of people around the world with something other than a name reflecting nationalism.

  123. 123.

    Tony J

    It doesn’t feel like yesterday, but it does feel like a day I’ll never forget.

    I was in bed asleep when my girlfriend woke me up to say that a jet had crashed into the World Trade Centre. I remember thinking “That’s odd”, but it didn’t really register as something intentional, and I figured I’d hear all about it when I was awake, so I dozed off again.

    Then she woke me up to say that a second plane had hit the other tower, and I was suddenly very awake, and very scared.

    Now, I’d only been the owner of a PC for a few months by then, but I’d already started graviating towards the debate sites on British newspapers, and had started taking exception to the bullshit coming out of the Republican posters and arguing back at them. So the first thing I did, after checking the TV to see that it was really happening, was go online to see what Americans were saying.

    What I remember very clearly over the next few hours was how the hundreds and hundreds of expressions of sympathy and shock everyone was posting began to be interspersed with more and more wingnut calls for revenge. By the end of the day, they were the dominant voice, already calling for the wholesale invasion of every Middle-Eastern country they didn’t like, and I knew that everything was going to go to shit in a hurry. Because the scumbags waxing jubilant over What This Meant had their guy in the White House, and no one was going to stand in his way.

    But today, I’m just glad that, while the last eight years have been shitty to live through, the apocalyptic scenario I envisaged at the time didn’t take place. America now has a Democratic president with a muslim name, and the crazy people who saw Sept 11 as their opportunity to set the world on fire are reduced to relying upon the charity of their friends in the Conservative Media in order to stay relevant.

    And that’s a good thing.

  124. 124.

    Ed Marshall

    @LanceThruster:

    Yeah, but no one owes you a platform.

    The most depressing thing about truthers is that the entire narrative springs from the fact that it’s less acceptable to state and understand that American foreign policy is and was so loathsome that it made what happened on 9/11/2001 inevitable than to postulate a false flag scenario perpetrated by the government.

    It’s easier to accuse the government because there is a solution there, a bad guy that you have a certain amount of control over. If the problem was all Bush you don’t have to talk about Palestine or the remnant puppet regimes in the Gulf. Those are much harder sells and that’s really remarkable.

  125. 125.

    ellaesther

    @JenJen: I don’t know if you’ll see this, but: Me too. Oy, me too. The anger I feel that we abandoned that search for the grandiose schemes of hateful men who wanted to mold the world in their image fills me with such a helpless rage….

    This is going to look like blog pimping, but it’s really blog sharing, because I want to say: Hey, I dug these up for myself, and they might speak to you today, too. Bruce Springsteen, “The Rising,” and Jon Stewart’s response to the attacks on his first day back at the Daily Show: http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/this-day/

    יהי זכרונם ברוך
    May the memory of those killed eight years ago — and those killed because of eight years ago — be blessed.

  126. 126.

    Michael

    He can make them go nuts by simply saying:

    “Good morning ma’am, and ain’t it a loooooovely morning?”

  127. 127.

    liberal

    @someguy:

    What the date really means to me, is that there was a tragic criminal act, that the Republicans used as a rationale to indulge our country’s nasty little periodic urge to go kick the crap out of some non-white, non-Christian nation.

    I don’t disagree, but let the record note that a number of Democrats voted for the Iraq AUMF (Oct 2002).

  128. 128.

    Ruckus

    I was on a plane flying from the eastern part of the country to the west coast when the planes hit. Our pilot was great, he came right out and told us what had and was happening. He treated us like adults, something I learned later that other pilots did not do for their passengers. The girl next to me was scared because the company she worked for was located in WTC and she was afraid that her friends had died. We landed in Atlanta, and were held on the ground for a couple of hours, so we were one of the last planes to unload. The look and feel of fear was palpable in the airport. There were no hotel rooms so this girl allowed my fellow worker and myself to share her room. The humanity of that moment will live with me for a long time. And yet to this day I can not remember her name. Some parts are crystal clear and some parts are a blur. Just like some parts feel like yesterday and some feel like they have been there my whole life.
    BTW her friends were all on planes heading to Atlanta for a conference and were OK.
    I look back and see how much our lives and country has changed and I am not hopeful for our future. And then I look forward and think that the only constant is change so maybe we can change for the better this time around.

  129. 129.

    LanceThruster

    @Ed Marshall:

    No, no they don’t.

    But when Bill Maher at HuffPo makes such sweeping pronouncements re: 9/11 (putting it in the same category as birthers and faked moon landings), you’d think he would not run from opposing views (I merely pointed out that he rejects god and religionism – as do I – yet thinks ghosts are real).

    There’s a difference between moderating those adding nothing to the discussion (either through tone, spamming, or putting forth lies as established truth), vs someone engaging in discussion rationally and attempting to support their own assertions with relevant material and references.

    Wanting to know more (actually, insisting that further examination is warranted and demanded) about a murky and convoluted scenario as put forth by those who seemed to exploit the attack so effectively is quite different from claiming to know exactly what happened.

    I do not care that for whatever reason YOU feel it is not warranted; you can remain confident that nothing will be found. More money was spent sniffing Clinton’s sheets than on the most deadly attack in recent history by foreign operatives on American soil. Many of the survivors whose family members and loved ones were killed on that day want to know more, as do first responders, and other law enforcement and civil engineering professionals, but I guess they’re just unreasonable loonies too (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/why-i-support-a-new-911-i_b_233371.html ).

    But thanks for your inquisitive nature.

    Move along, nothing to see here.

  130. 130.

    Skepticat

    At the risk of inviting snide comments about elitism, I’ll say that I was sailing in a national regatta across the bay from Logan Airport that day. The planes probably flew right over our heads on departure. It was strange to watch the New York skyline on television, then turn ninety degrees and look at Logan and the Boston skyline. Minutes after the second plane hit, even before the towers fell, a friend from New Orleans was standing on his boat, staring across at the airport, and said very quietly and very firmly, “There go our civil rights.” It may have been the single most prescient thing I’ve ever heard.
    Several acquaintances were on the planes and a close friend’s son died in the WTC. As I live alone, I was extraordinarily grateful to be with friends from all over the country (most of whom couldn’t get home for many days) that week.
    The positive feelings of coming together, helping one another through the trauma, and hearing warm expressions of international support were rapidly curdled for me. Not having a television insulated me a bit from the relentless coverage, but nothing could protect me from the perversion of those emotions into fear-mongering, hatred, and vicious political opportunism. I hate that it happened, but I hate even more what it was used to “justify.”
    For those of us who didn’t lose family or close friends, there might even have been bit of a silver lining. However, the Bush administration turned the potential for self-examination of our position in the world and for international solidarity that could have overcome many problems into lead. My heart remains leaden, for that’s what the anniversary has come to mean to me.

  131. 131.

    LanceThruster

    @Ruckus:

    I have commuted into downtown LA for over 20 years. I saw something that I had never seen prior to 9/11 and that was other drivers treating everyone else on the road with courtesy.

    And much like clean air after the rain before the smog returns, it lasted EXACTLY a day and a half.

    I think that illustrates what’s wrong with this country better than almost anything else.

  132. 132.

    Ed Marshall

    How about putting together a panel to explain why a large, well-funded, group of people would want to murder us in large numbers and why that act was celebrated by large portions of the world? I think this is a case where Occam’s Razor should prevail, but why is it easier for me to imagine more seriousness from your panel to investigate than a panel that was trying to be serious about answering my question?

  134. 134.

    David Hunt

    @Jen R:

    I hear where you’re coming from, Jen. I knew that we’d been hurt badly, but I figured we’d come out of that okay. But buried in the back of my brain, trying to come to the front was a story from one of my favorite EV shows: Babylon 5:

    The Earth-Minbarri War started when the Earthers attacked a Minbarri ship due to tragically poor communications all-around stemming both sides operating with their cultural blinders firmly in place. The Minbarri Head of State was on board and was killed. Here’s the part that’s relevant. The Minbarri over-reacted, even for that act of war. Their ruling council basically went insane with rage and decided that they didn’t need to know any more about the Humans than that they should be totally eradicated. Driven into extinction. They only came to their senses after they had destroyed Earth’s military and were about to launch the final attack on Earth.

    I couldn’t place the source of my unease, but I was very worried about events spinning out of control and escalating beyond the point that there was any stopping them. And today, we’re still in Afghanistan and Iraq and we never caught bin Laden. I don’t think the events of that show were the source of my worries, but they surely did exemplify what could (and did) go wrong.

  135. 135.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    @LanceThruster: I am curious as to what you think actually happened that day in NY to bring the WTC down. Don’t give me the conspiracy theory about who was behind it all, just tell me what happened (the series of events) beginning at about 8:45AM or so.

  136. 136.

    Robin G.

    @someguy: I’m sorry, I didn’t realize memorials could be mutually exclusive.

    Saying that remembering the dead of Sept 11 means we forget those killed afterwards is no more attractive coming from the left than from the right.

  138. 138.

    ellaesther

    @Robin G.: I was thinking about this earlier today, and I just thought: You know what — today, it’s ok to just think about us. Tomorrow, and every other day, we should absolutely act on every front to find justice for those we’ve hurt in the meantime, and if some want to do so today, too, that’s laudable, but if I (or you, or anyone else) only has room for these specific tears, for those specific deaths, on this day, that’s ok. Some days, it’s ok to mourn your own.

    I’ve been crying a lot too.

  139. 139.

    Ronald

    Seems like what gets lost in all the conspiracy theories and reactionary news is the fact that the man responsible is still at large. Well, at least we can berate Osama. That will surely make him question himself.

  140. 140.

    HumboldtBlue

    Not a fucking thing changed for me, other than the loss of my sister in a wholly unrelated matter. 9-11 sure as fuck changed the lives of millions in Iraq, however. They’ve been going through 9-11 every fucking day since 1993 and we sit here and debate civility and meaning and where were you that day.

    We are human beings and we enjoy killing one another, particularly our nation. When the mindless, state-sponsored killing is stopped, we can claim something changed. Until then, we’re still responsible for the deaths and mutilations and displacement of millions of innocent human beings who had no more hand in 9-11 then I did in helping the Phils win the Series last year.

  141. 141.

    Mike G

    When Words Fail Us
    http://www.privilogic.com/wordsfail/

    Some very moving images of spontaneous memorials around the world in response to the 9/11 attacks. I revisit this site occasionally, today seems especially appropriate.

    And I try not to think about the arrogant, snake-mean, small-minded bastards in the White House who cynically exploited this tragedy, and pissed away the goodwill of the vast majority of the world in a bloodthirsty orgy of greed and stupidity.

  142. 142.

    Ed Marshall

    @ellaesther:

    I have a limited exposure to Hebrew but I swear ברוך is tagged as graffiall over Hebron by settlers and I was told (by them) it’s “Baruck” for Baruck Goldstein of the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. Was someone pulling my leg or am I remembering wrong?

  143. 143.

    ellaesther

    @HumboldtBlue: “particularly our nation”? History and my daily paper tell me that we’re not, actually, all that special in that regard.

    People have a right to their grief, and of all the places on the internet to use the wars to shame people about that grief, you chose this one? I’m fairly certain that most of the people reading your comment have some pretty sizeable arguments with the “deaths and mutilations and displacement of millions of innocent human beings,” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else the U.S. military might be felt. But they have a right to grieve American losses, too.

    And having said that, I also say, sincerely: I am so sorry for your own loss. Eight years isn’t really very long, at the end of the day, to get used to the absence of someone who should be there.

  144. 144.

    ellaesther

    @Ed Marshall: No, sadly, you’re right. “Baruch” is, ironically enough, the same as “Barack” — it comes from the word for blessing/blessed, and can be used as a name.

    I suppose each Baruch and Barack has to make their own decision as to whether their lives will fulfill the promise that their name offers.

  145. 145.

    Ruckus

    @Mike G:

    And I try not to think about the arrogant, snake-mean, small-minded bastards in the White House who cynically exploited this tragedy, and pissed away the goodwill of the vast majority of the world in a bloodthirsty orgy of greed and stupidity.

    Please tell me how to be even partially successful at this.

  148. 148.

    someguy

    @ Robin – no, no it’s not okay to just think about ourselves. The loathesome foreign policy that Ed mentioned above is the result of just thinking about ourselves. We consume 80% of the world’s resources, and produce 80% of its pollution, yet a fifth of our people live in grinding poverty and have no health care. We grow weepy about 3000 people killed as a result of our selfish national way of life, yet ignore the millions we’ve killed or displaced since 9/11. Nevermind the 50% of 9/11 casualties that we stood by and idly watched occuring during Hurricane Katrina – how many of us stood by and bitched but didn’t go down there to lend a hand? Then we elect a government that promises to change all that, but which in fact turns around and endorses it. The Obama of the campaign trail was right. Our fat asses need to learn to eat less and drive smaller cars, and suck it up and make do with less.

    The sad fact of this day reminds me that the loathesomeness that makes the rest of the world dance in the streets when disaster befalls isn’t exactly limited to our foreign policy.

  150. 150.

    someguy

    @ Robin,

    I guess. But it would be a bit like the Germans having a remembrance day mourning Russian atrocities in WWII… seems to me like something is way, way out of perspective here. 9/11 was just a wee drop of retaliation for our running around the globe acting like Godzilla on meth for the last 100 years, never mind the karmic debt we’ve incurred by stomping our own indigenous people and our poor and working class into the dirt. In a just world, we’d be sitting in the timeout corner for a century or two. Lucky for us the world is patently unjust.

  151. 151.

    LanceThruster

    @Gordon, The Big Express Engine:

    I think “what actually happened” is that conflicting and/or shifting explanations as to what happened (the details of the attack, the perps and their almost instant identification, the deficiencies claimed to be the cause of the collapse of WTCs 1,2, & 7, the President’s NOT being immediately whisked away to safety in the midst of an ONGOING attack of indeterminate scope, the criminal destruction of evidence, the prevention of civil engineers from thoroughly examining the wreckage in order to gain a greater understanding of the collapse mechanisms, the banning of site photographs, the instances of foreknowledge – the put options and particularly the ‘dancing Israelis’, the omissions of the 9/11 Commission, the numerous coincidences of emergency drills and first responders in place, prior obstacles thrown in the path of law enforcement investigators and intelligence operatives – such as with Coleen Rowley, timely fortuitously termed insurance purchases by Larry Silverstein, eye-witness testimony or communications transcripts being ignored or censored, including that of first responders, stand down orders, destruction of records dealing with emergency responses and the chain of command instructions as with the air-traffic controller tapes, etc., etc…) established beyond a doubt that a more detailed examination of the events of the day was fully justified.

    That a full and thorough examination of the details was stymied across the board at almost every level establishes that uncovering the truth involving elements of the attack was not a priority. Wanting to steer clear of any awkward truths establishes a concern over what those truths may be.

    You ask me what I think happened. I think the tangled mess of the various officials’ explanations reveals that there are parties with incentive to cover-up what really happened. Other than that, I don’t know. I think MIHOP or LIHOP is certainly plausible at least circumstantially. Our country has a long history with false-flag operations on scales both large and small.

    I want to look at who benefitted from the actions post-9/11. A criminal Bush admin for one, through destruction of civil liberties and the ability to flout the law at will, and his war profiteering cronies for another. Maybe they were just “lucky” to exploit the traumatized populace and use that fear to wage war on enemies they had in their sights long prior to 9/11.

    That’s what I think happened. Too much speculation beyond that is premature as more data needs to be gathered (and sadly, should have been gathered immediately following 9/11).

  152. 152.

    HRA

    I read thru to #135 at work and had to leave then. BTW that’s where I was 8 years ago today. The news hit hard in our office. A student from NYC started running around hysterically. He had relatives in the WTC and here he was hundreds of miles away. After he was settled down, the shock of it all came upon us. The university was shutting down. I joined the crowds walking to the parking lots. It was so silent. It was eery. I am sitting bumper to bumper on the thruway and all you can hear are the radios. No one is crowding or changing lanes. We are all like zombies. I walk into the house, turn the TV on and stand there mesmerized by what I see. I cannot remember to this day when I put down my handbag or my case. Did I sit down, eat, drink, etc.? I could not tell you. I do not think I was unique in my reaction.
    If it was up to me, I would have built 2 twin towers right on the site in NYC. The hell with cowering and letting them win. We had stood up to others. We could have done it again.
    Moments ago, I heard this noise echo through this area and could not fathom what it was for a short time. I remembered someone saying there were fireworks to celebrate today’s anniversary for this evening. Unbelieveable!

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