It's Long Past Time to Get Over 9-11

[signalmankenneth]

We've wallowed too long in our victimhood 9-11 was indeed a devastating loss of personal life. Those who died were mostly US citizens, but included people of all nations, such as the wait staff and bus boys at the sky high restaurant in the Twin Towers. It was a "shared" loss, indicative of the international inclusiveness of America.

But having never experienced a significant mainland attack since the War of 1812 -- as Noam Chomsky points out in his remarkable book, "9-11: Was There an Alternative?" -- we feel ourselves invulnerable as a country. I recall reading an observation of Kurt Vonnegut many years ago -- who survived the allied fire bombing of Dresden in WW II in an underground slaughterhouse for prisoners of war -- commenting that America was distinct among Western allies in never knowing the devastation of cities under siege by bombers, rockets, tanks and mortar attack.

Then there is our national hubris, that American Exceptionalism itself was under attack on September 11, 2001. Like all powerful empires, we feel invulnerable and crush anyone perceived to have pierced through our bubble of "invincibility."

Chomsky and others call 9-11 a crime, which our government treated as a justification for wars that are still continuing ten years later, draining us of military lives in excess of those lost on 9-11, causing civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands, and being a central contributing factor to the rise in the American deficit.

Europe, which endured WW II, and lost some 30 million people, stopped letting the nightmarish loss of life and destruction hamper its reconstruction more quickly than America has let go of 9-11, which it still clings to and wallows in.

BuzzFlash at Truthout, publishing since May of 2000, reported and broke stories on the attack on the Twin Towers (and the Pentagon) and the Bush/Cheney administration use of the tragedy to launch military conflicts of empire. At the time of 9-11, the Bush administration's poll numbers were low and dropping. All that changed on 9-11, after which the full propaganda strength of the White House and corporate mass media focused on putting US citizens in a state of fear to accomplish strategic military goals to enhance America's superpower status and extend our military footprint.

Yes, BuzzFlash at Truthout focused on verifiable fact that Bush and Rice were warned of likely Al-Qaeda hijackings and how the stenographic DC press let them off the hook on their egregious unintentional or intentional lapse in heightening airport security that might indeed have prevented 9-11.

Rice eventually defended her failed responsibility to protect us by saying something like "but we didn't receive warnings that they would fly them into buildings," which was specious because US intelligence knew for some time of just such a possibility as part of an overall Al-Qaeda strategy. Bush finally admitted, during his presidency, that they were warned of hijackings, but not of a specific target so his administration didn't take action to protect the World Trade Center. The corporate press thought those excuses made sense, except for the simple logical fact that if Bush and Rice, among others, had taken increased steps to prevent hijackings, they might have prevented the hijackings that brought down the Twin Towers and blew up part of the Pentagon.

Furthermore, in exclusive reporting by Jason Leopold and Jeff Kaye on Truthout, it is revealed that US intelligence services did indeed know of Al-Qaeda interest in targeting the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: "high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets."

In other words, the Bush administration was aware that the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.

And then there are all the lingering threads, still unconnected, of how the CIA and FBI were on to some of the hijackers, not to mention the quickly erased connections of the hijackers to Saudi Arabian backers. There are so many unanswered questions, even more after a 9-11 commission whitewashed the dirty laundry surrounding the attack.

But this much we know. The narrative of our government switched on a dime after 9-11, and we were cast into a state of what Chomsky calls "manufactured consent," whipped up by a bombardment of jingoistic rhetoric coming from the federal government and the airwaves. We were kept in a constant state of fear with crayon-colored alerts. We were pawns in the great game of empire.

As a result, our nation is on the verge of a double-dip recession. While nations like Germany forge ahead economically, Osama bin-Laden achieved one of his major goals: crippling America economically.

We are still wallowing in our victimhood. We had our time to grieve, but we haven't moved on.

After World War II, the US helped rebuild Europe -- with the visionary Marshall Plan that even turned Germany (our former Nazi adversary) -- into thriving democracies and economic engines.

Since Barack Obama was elected, the Republican Party shifted the national narrative from 9-11 to the deficit, which -- as noted earlier -- has been a substantial contributor to our financial shortfall. But 9-11 has continued to be an albatross around the neck of national progress and the closure of grief and grievance.

That will continue to weigh upon us unnecessarily until we get on with a new narrative of innovation, a belief in the strength of democracy, and an understanding that overextended empire cannot endure indefinitely while undertaking squandered and prolonged military expeditions.

We have appropriately mourned those who died in the attack of 9-11. It is time that we honor them by advancing as a nation to write the next chapter of the great experiment in democracy known as America.

By Mark Karlin on Sun, 09/11/2011 - 7:51am.

[Alias]

What can be said about the 10th anniversary of 9/11 that hasn’t already been said? I, like most Americans, saw it play out on TV that morning, felt the confusion that faded to disbelief then slowly turned to anger. I can’t say I was sad that day. That came later as what happened really sank in. I felt anger. I still feel the anger.

I was in Baltimore that day at a random hotel for a conference. I had no business attending, but when you’re working your first entry-level job out of college, a day out of the office is a day out of the office. I lived in Baltimore and worked in DC, so a day off from that train commute was like vacation. I leapt at the chance to not make it. (It was an eBooks conference and I had nothing to do with them, but my boss had just taken pity on me and let me go with two co-worker friends who did).

I first saw the burning towers on a 27-inch TV in the lobby just after 9:20 when the conference took a break upon the news rumbling through the room. Hearing planes had hit the buildings was such a bizarre concept that I couldn’t picture it. After the break, attendees started to filter back into the conference room to continue whatever it was they were talking about. I couldn’t go back. I told my co-workers I was leaving, I had to find out what was going on. I had to watch.

I got home and didn’t blink for the next hour. Didn’t breathe either. There were unconfirmed reports of everything – rumors of bombs at the State Department and the Washington Monument, then confirmation the Pentagon had been hit. I had been there the week before delivering books. I felt an uncontrollable urge to do something. What, I had no idea.

I wanted to get to D.C., but that wasn’t possible. Trains weren’t running. I didn’t own a car. And everyone was leaving the city. I had no idea what I would’ve done had I gotten there, but I needed to be there. I was stuck.

News coverage became heroin to me, I couldn’t get enough. I couldn’t stop watching. If I slept the next two days, I did it with my eyes open in front of the television. I don’t remember eating.

I was numb with anger.

Ten years later the anger is still there. Our lives, our nation have gone on, but the anger is always there, lurking in the background. Just as it should be. We shouldn’t “get over it” and move on.

Most of those who planned and perpetrated that act of war are either dead or in custody, but they’ve been replaced. The war will never end. We will never win because it can’t be won. You can’t defeat an ideology unless and until that ideology changes. And it shows no sign of changing. That may not be a comforting thought. Reality often isn’t. But dislike of reality doesn’t make it any less so. All we can do is not lose. And thanks to our military and our American Spirit, we will not lose.

There’s comfort and justice in that, at least for me.

Remember...

http://townhall.com/columnists/derek...ore/page/full/

[Alias]

AMERICA'S WAR ON TERROR was launched when the heroes of United Flight 93 rushed the hijackers over Shanksville, Pa., aborting what would have been al-Qaeda's fourth 9/11 attack. In the decade that began on that terrible day, the goal of disrupting and crushing the Islamist terror network has been pursued with remarkable versatility: The United States has fought this conflict with military, diplomatic, and financial weapons; it has relied on aggressive intelligence-gathering and sensitive counterinsurgency; it has reshaped airline security and rewritten civil-liberties law. Jihadists have been killed with Predator drones abroad, detained as enemy combatants at Guantanamo, and thwarted in undercover stings at home.

Yet in the long run it may turn out that more significant than any of these was the war of ideas that followed 9/11.

Almost from the outset, President George W. Bush recognized that the United States was engaged in an ideological struggle. During the Cold War two decades earlier, Ronald Reagan had argued that the promotion of freedom should be a key priority in American foreign policy. By advancing the ideals of liberty and human dignity, Reagan told the British Parliament in 1982, America and its allies would undermine the Soviet Union and eventually relegate Communist totalitarianism to "the ash-heap of history." In much the same way, Bush saw, radical Islam could be weakened by deploying the moral force of liberal democracy and equality.

Just nine days after 9/11, addressing a joint session of Congress, Bush began to lay out an ideological strategy for defeating the jihadist threat.

"Al Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime, but its goal is not making money," Bush said. "Its goal is remaking the world -- and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere." Terrorism was not caused by the religion of Islam but by the Islamists' political fanaticism. "They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism and Nazism and totalitarianism."

The war on terror, Bush accurately foretold, would be a long struggle fought on many fronts. But ultimately the only way to prevent al-Qaeda and its allies from imposing an "age of terror" was for America to sustain an "age of liberty, here and across the world." While Bush would get plenty of things wrong after 9/11, this ideological insight -- that the root of Islamist terrorism was the lack of freedom in the Middle East -- was one of the big things he got right.

There were plenty who didn't. Many voices insisted that terrorism was fueled by poverty or lack of education. Other analysts rushed to explain 9/11 as the fruit of US "arrogance," or as a reaction to Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In reality, as Princeton economist Alan Krueger demonstrated in a 2007 book, What Makes A Terrorist?, the best predictors of terrorism are "the suppression of civil liberties and political rights, including freedom of the press, the freedom to assemble, and democratic rights."

Bush's campaign to democratize the Middle East -- what came to be known as the "freedom agenda" -- was rooted in the conviction that the way to break the back of jihadist hatred was to drain the swamps in which it breeds: the dictatorships and theocracies of the Muslim Middle East. "Terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples," he said in 2003. "When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace."

For decades, foreign-policy "realists" argued that stability in the Arab world was more important than liberty, and so it was better to tolerate oppressive regimes than to risk the upheaval that democratic change might bring. That was the roadmap that led to 9/11.

Today, 10 years after 9/11, the region is more unstable than it has been in generations. Iraq's dictator is dead, Libya's is on the run, and demands for freedom and democratic reform have shaken regimes from Tunisia to Syria to Iran. Yet who wouldn't prefer today's churn and ferment to the illusory stability of 2001?

No, Islamist terror hasn't been eradicated. Liberal Muslim democracy has a long way to go. But we have engaged the struggle of ideas. And as we fight not just the terrorists, but the poisoned ideas that motivate them, we are slowly winning the war that began on 9/11.

http://townhall.com/columnists/jeffj...eas/page/full/

[Alias]

Robert Peraza, who lost his son Robert David Peraza, pauses at his son's name at the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial during tenth anniversary ceremonies at the site of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2011, in New York City. New York City and the nation are commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan which resulted in the deaths of 2,753 people after two hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center. Security has been heightened in both New York City and Washington D.C. following a possible car bomb threat.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-201_162-...#ixzz1Xf4HqUCu

[Alias]

Never Forget

[Rune]

More awesome copy and paste there Alias.

[Alias]

Answering 9/11 with Mozart's Requiem

In spite of ten years of massive disinformation by the left and the media about the events of 9/11/01, around the United States there are September 11 ceremonies to mark what really happened.

In Oakland, California, among other cities, Mozart's Requiem is being sung, a truly fitting reaction to the barbarity of 9/11/01, because the Requiem is one of the high points of Western -- that is, Judeo-Christian -- music and art. The barbarians do not understand this, nor do the secularists of the left. The word "Requiem" means "May they rest in peace." It is respectful to the dead, and its gorgeous melodies stay in the mind. There are no greater works of art in the 25 centuries of Western tradition.

Mozart's Requiem reiterates civilized beliefs about the human soul, and it reflects both Christian and Jewish liturgy. This is not just secular liberalism in drag.


Grant them eternal rest, Lord,

and let perpetual light shine on them.

You are praised, God, in Zion,

and homage will be paid to You in Jerusalem.



Hear my prayer,

to You all flesh will come.

Grant them eternal rest, Lord,

and let perpetual light shine on them.

Following twenty centuries of Western thought, the Requiem gives hope for the resurrection of the dead, and justice for evildoers, like the mass murderers of 9/11.

This is not sloppy, sentimental Christianity or secular liberalism parading as Judaism. These are morally serious thoughts written by morally serious people. The Requiem does not threaten human punishment for evil, but it promises Divine justice.

As in Handel's Messiah, it is always the trumpet that sounds the signal for resurrection and judgment. In Hebrew tradition, it is the shofar, long before the modern trumpet was invented.


The trumpet will send its wondrous sound

throughout the graves of the earth

and gather all before the throne.

You may take these feelings as poetic rather than literal. I do. I find the Requiem expressive and healing. Mozart's Requirem is not phony sentimentality. It echoes real people struggling with real loss and injustice.


Death and nature will be astounded,

when all creation rises again,

to answer the judgement.



A book will be brought forth,

in which all will be written,

by which the world will be judged.

The Book of Judgment is central in the Western imagination. It stems from the repeated experience of injustice in life, where those who are evil and corrupt seem to get away with murder. The Book is a promise that in the end, right will prevail. Perhaps it does, or perhaps it doesn't, but faith in the inevitability of justice has helped make it happen many times in history.

And yet the Requiem is not a promise of revenge. The believer is too fallible to render judgment. Unlike imperialistic ideologies, Western thought does not promise seventy-two virgins in Paradise for chopping off infidel heads.


What shall a wretch like me say?

Who shall intercede for me,

when even the righteous need mercy?

While the Requiem's words reflect Western thought, it's Mozart's music that makes the Requiem transcendent. You don't really need to know a sin¢gle word. The answers are in the music.

In New York City the political clowns can't decide what the proper memorial should be for the mass crime of 9/11/01 and its victims. They can't tell the truth about that, even in their own shriveled minds, so that they keep going in circles. That's pretty disgraceful.

But the solution is already here. It comes straight from the highest achievements of Western civilization.

If you don't get a chance to go to a 9/11 memorial ceremony, you can play the Requiem for yourself. Just allow the magic to wash over you. It will be a healing experience.

I hope this will become an annual memorial every September 11

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/...s_requiem.html

[Cancel 2018. 3]

More awesome copy and paste there Alias.

you dumbass, what is the OP?

[Cancel 2018. 3]

remembrance is not victimhood. remembering and honoring those who died doesn't mean we haven't "gotten over it", rather, that we are respectful of their memories.

[Mr. T]

What a piece of crap. I suppose you libs feel like its the poor muslims who are the victims now. Cowards!



Look at all of these toe heads, The modern left and Islamic fascism

[FUCK THE POLICE]

What a piece of crap. I suppose you libs feel like its the poor muslims who are the victims now. Cowards!



Look at all of these toe heads, The modern left and Islamic fascism

They are.

[Good Luck]

Amazing. The 10th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on the U.S., and some flaming piece of shit liberal has to use it to take more pot shots at Bush under the disguise of recommending we "get over it." Should the Jews "get over" the holocaust? Is dedication of memorials "wallowing" in "victimhood"? Maybe you whiny head-in-sand liberal twats want to forget about it. We never will. The Lord commands that I should learn to forgive, and I will try as my Lord commands. But forget? Never.

"Get over it"? We GOT over it - that is why there is now a fine memorial and new tower in place of destruction the murdering assholes left behind. It took 10 years to build everything, and even then we had to make some compromising decisions in order to get the rebuilding done (enough) by the 10th anniversary. And now people who lost family and friends, coworkers and even children, now have a place to go to remember their loved ones.

You want to get over something? Tell ya what ya whiny bitches: what needs to be gotten OVER is the preoccupation with G.W. Bush. What needs to be gotten OVER is the way you whiney assed useless brain dead liberals cannot do anything, say anything, even think anything without bring up G.W. Bush. It must be horrible that a single man, one who has no more authority and never will have any more authority, can continue to command so much fear and loathing from so large a group of pus heads.

[Lowaicue]

Amazing. The 10th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on the U.S., and some flaming piece of shit liberal has to use it to take more pot shots at Bush under the disguise of recommending we "get over it." Should the Jews "get over" the holocaust? Is dedication of memorials "wallowing" in "victimhood"? Maybe you whiny head-in-sand liberal twats want to forget about it. We never will. The Lord commands that I should learn to forgive, and I will try as my Lord commands. But forget? Never.

"Get over it"? We GOT over it - that is why there is now a fine memorial and new tower in place of destruction the murdering assholes left behind. It took 10 years to build everything, and even then we had to make some compromising decisions in order to get the rebuilding done (enough) by the 10th anniversary. And now people who lost family and friends, coworkers and even children, now have a place to go to remember their loved ones.

You want to get over something? Tell ya what ya whiny bitches: what needs to be gotten OVER is the preoccupation with G.W. Bush. What needs to be gotten OVER is the way you whiney assed useless brain dead liberals cannot do anything, say anything, even think anything without bring up G.W. Bush. It must be horrible that a single man, one who has no more authority and never will have any more authority, can continue to command so much fear and loathing from so large a group of pus heads.

YOUR lord now, is it? There speaks the typical Yank kristian. (I spell it like that because no one, absolutely NO ONE could be further away from the teachings of Christianity than you.)
GET OVER IT, YANK. You lost, bin Laden won. Don't like it? then learn to BEHAVE yourselves when you enter OUR world. You are a loser and a mug. You'll believe anything that your local hallelujah hall tells you and anything you hear from the bush-alikes. Easy to govern. Easy to enslave.
Grow a brain for god's sake.

[USFREEDOM911]

YOUR lord now, is it? There speaks the typical Yank kristian. (I spell it like that because no one, absolutely NO ONE could be further away from the teachings of Christianity than you.)
GET OVER IT, YANK. You lost, bin Laden won. Don't like it? then learn to BEHAVE yourselves when you enter OUR world. You are a loser and a mug. You'll believe anything that your local hallelujah hall tells you and anything you hear from the bush-alikes. Easy to govern. Easy to enslave.
Grow a brain for god's sake.

Fuck off, you pea brained wanker.
America will still be a fre country; long after England is reduced to a third world country and you're not that far away, what with the 2 1/2 rating you've got now.
And then; after China has their civil war, you'll just have to find another country to run and hide in.

[Minister of Truth]

Well, now that we've hit the 10th Aniversary, Zappas will get his wish, as we will now stop hyping 9/11 as much as we have every year at this time. Such is the case with everything.