9/11, Again
Reposted. Again. Written 9/11/2007.
I did in fact try to think of something new to write. I couldn't. The politicized nature of this was kind of inapprorpriate when I first wrote it, and remains so now. Nevertheless, I stand by every word. Especially with President Drum Circle in office. As I'd previously apologized:NOTE: This is a politicized remembrance of 9/11, so you may wish to skip it. I didn't set out to write it this way, but this is how it turned out; I couldn't just mouth the cliches about us all being united on 9/11 without noting how illusory and false that feeling turned out to be, like a love gone bad. I apologize for that direction, but I can't see how to avoid the obvious. We've been mythologizing 9/11 bringing us closer than ever before; maybe we can interrupt this myth-making from time to time to note it actually divided us more than ever in our history. It was actually my intent to write the same old cute story of that feeling of being united; when I got there, however, it was a bitter cliche and a lie I choked on.I do not understand now, as I didn't understand then, how so many people could be willing to forgive and forget just to either 1) keep consistent to a Blame America philosophy lying tangled in molten beams at One World Trade Center, or 2) to move blame away from a politically inconvenient group (jihadis who need to be dealt with the in the bad old "Republican" way) to a more convenient group (Republicans themselves). Until last week, President Clove Cigarette had a Truther as a high adviser/czar. That's where we are. But that has always been where we were; the crap about "unity" was always a lie. ...
I woke up on 9/11, late as usual. I was between jobs. My alarm had been set accidentally to the radio wake-up. I had probably been listening to Rush last time I listened, because it was on WABC in NY (talk radio). "We are under attack," Cutis Sliwa said. "We are at war. The Twin Towers and the Pentagon have been destroyed." Far-left co-host Ron Kuby didn't disagree. "America is under attack," he said. These were the first words I heard upon waking. Or was I awake? I wasn't sure at first; perhaps I was dreaming. I listened some more, but they were throwing out incoherent (to me) reports about various happenings I knew nothing of. I put on the TV and saw the Twin Towers burning. It's a cliched thing to say but it's exactly what I thought. "This isn't real." I thought it was a movie. I thought it was some kind of War of the Worlds stunt, some documentary-style fiction. Why it was running in the morning, and why Curtis Sliwa would also be taking part in it, I didn't know. I changed channels. They were showing the same movie. On every channel. I sat down mouth drooped low and stupid. This couldn't be real. The footage began rolling in. Planes smashing into the Towers. Little gray blurs of human stick-figures falling from high gray windows through thick gray smoke. There have only been two moments in my life where I literally doubted my senses and thought I might be hallucinating and maybe insane. The first was a much cuter story. I had been home from college. Up late, as usual. Haunting the kitchen like a ghost with a burning drive for vengeance against sandwich meats. I heard voices. Small voices, coming from a cupboard. I froze, listened. Was I imagining them? No, they seemed real. There was one voice-- I couldn't make out the words, but it was definitely a human voice in the cadence of speech, and there was also another voice responding to it. It had struck, I thought: I was schizophrenic, had gotten it at about the right age for it. Either that or there were in fact small tiny people whispering conspiracies in my cupboards. I slowly, anxiously opened the cupboard. No pygmy conspirators ran for cover. I looked past the bag of Domino sugar and the battery-powered storm radio for the creatures, but the cupboard seemed still. And there it was, though it took me a longer time than one would think necessary to grasp it: the stupid radio. Someone had accidentally turned it on, and there were now voices chattering in the cupboard about school closings or inflation or local politics or whatever they were talking about. I was relieved. I was not insane, and more reassuringly, the world was not unlike what I thought it was. I had the same thought of that as I watched the pictures from NY and the reports from DC. I do not think I am making this up; I think this is a legitimate memory, though memories lie to. But I remember thinking about that cupboard, thinking about hearing what I knew to be impossible and yet seemed real, and reassured myself that this, too, would all go away, as easily as opening the cupboard door. Something would happen, I would wake up, or a crawl across the bottom the television would finally say This is a staged disaster to test American first-responders, and everything would be as it should be: the Towers would stop burning, America would not be under attack by an unknown foreign power, and those little gray blobs tumbling long gray walls would be revealed for the special effects they were. Long minutes passed and still this was all real. Still I could not really grasp it. This was the absurd plot of a James Bond movie. There were no Evil Masterminds just sitting around plotting to destroy the Twin Towers for only reasons of raw carnage and spectacular visuals. There could be no good outcome for those who did this: This was evil for evil's sake alone, and the evil would be revisited upon them. What could they possibly hope to achieve from this? What military or political value was there in any of those little gray people tumbling from the buildings? I tried to call my girlfriend. The phone made crazy spiraling noises, non-functional. She was in midtown, so she was safe; at this point I knew the extent of the attacks so far and new the damage was limited to the Pentagon and the Towers, though one plane was still missing and could possibly be part of a final attack. There was confusion, if I remember right (which I might not), about whether the last jet was actually missing at all or simply lost in all the chaos, a blip that safely landed and was no longer in the skies. Only later would we hear of the plane being downed in a field in Pennsylvania. Only later would the Towers, incredibly, disintegrate before our eyes, one after the other, as if a sequel to Independence Day. And then further buildings would fall, undermined and weakened by the seismic events of that long horrible afternoon. I went outside. I had seen enough. I knew what was going on, basically. There was nothing more to know. I needed something else now. I needed to a connection with another human being. I just needed to say trite things like "This is unbelievable" and "This is so horrible." And I needed to hear such obvious sentiments in return. Outside my building, two doors down, a guy on the first floor had set his big speakers in the window and had turned them up loud. A group of about thirty people from the neighborhood -- people I had vaguely seen but rarely before acknowledged -- were standing in a half circle, some with hands over their mouths, listening. Listening to the same things they'd already heard thirty times at least, but still needing to hear again. And hear in the company of other Americans. I shook my head in disbelief at a guy. "This is crazy," my face said. He just nodded angrily. He was further along in the process than I was, probably having watched and listened since the first strike on the Towers. He was beyond "This is crazy." He was where I would only be later that evening: "This is goddamn war, solemn as death." As cliched as it was, there were no conservatives or liberals in that half circle, no Democrats or Republicans. No one was jockeying for political advantage; no one was particularly worried that destroying a vicious enemy might somehow benefit a Republican President politically. We only cared about how many had been killed, and how many had escaped, and how many could still be rescued from the burning buildings -- I fantasized about daring helicopter rescues, not realizing the heat on the upper floors of the Towers would be at least a thousand degrees -- and also: Who had done this, and what must be done to them. Even if it had no military value. There were little gray people falling from the skies like rain, and those people had to be avenged. They had done nothing wrong. They had simply gotten up to go to work. They had been in the middle of paperwork and checking the sports scores on the their computers when they were struck down by the cultists of a Murder God. For a time, for a week after, we were all united. There is no tragedy that does work some small amount of good by bringing people together, if only for a time, if only because the pain of enduring is too much for any one to bear alone. It was a false unity, of course. We would later learn that we had not come together closer -- at least, not more than superficially, and not more than temporarily -- and had in fact moved further apart than ever before. The problem was, of course, that 9/11 had profound implications for Americans' divergent worldviews. For conservatives like us, it confirmed -- like nothing, nothing had done before, at least not since World War II -- that there were monstrous evils in the world for whom the only acceptable solution was purposeful and relentless violence. For another group, the liberals, 9/11 was a blip, a short-term disruption of their worldview. For a while we believed we were united, but we were not. Liberals held that greater than any enemy was warfare itself. The necessary implications of this were that all possible courses of action were preferable to the United States engaging in acts of warfare, and further, that it must be true that the United States had within it the power to avoid all war simply by modifying its own behavior. One must believe that if one is truly pacifist: If one believes war can and must be avoided at all costs, one must by implication believe one can and must avoid war at all costs by changing the behavior of one's own country, for changing the behavior of other countries can only be accomplished via war and lesser, but still warlike, means. For a time liberals seemed genuinely confused. Four large commercial jets had been crashed through their core psychological identity, the very heart of their self-definitions. They groped for new modifications to this self-definition, sometimes speaking like conservatives spoke, if only because it was a handy form of communication they'd heard before and were relatively familiar with. But mostly, deep down, they sought ways to heal back their old worldview, that the only reason the US gets into wars is because of dreadful US behavior, and if the US would simply change to be better world citizen, all war would blissfully vanish from the earth. It took them a long time to recover their bearings, but ultimately they did. At first they lacked the confidence to reassert their demolished platitudes again. Later they lacked the political courage to state them as firefighters dug through twisted smoking metal in hopes of finding survivors... or body parts that could be buried. Later they lacked some sort of semi-coherent, or at least superficially so, philosophical framework by which they could reassert their old belief systems, except, to the extent absolutely necessary, to put up an asterisk as involved Afghanistan. The asterisk read: * All wars can be avoided and if they are not avoided it is due to the arrogance and belligerency of the US. However, Afghanistan is a sticky wicket politically, and if necessary, you may in good conscience claim to support this war as the exception that conclusively proves the iron-clad rule that All Wars Are Bad Wars and All Wars Are The Fault of America. It's not that they set out from the first principle that America is detestable and to be maligned. Rather, they begin from the idea that war is the ultimate enemy -- war itself, and not, say, Al Qaeda or Iran -- and therefore any war the US joins makes America detestable and malignant. This is not an accidental or avoidable part of their belief system; it is a necessary and iron-clad corollary. As they say, when all you have is a hammer, every problem in the world looks like a nail. For the left, it simply must be the case that each and every war can and should be avoided. Ergo, their hammers cannot be used to drive nails into Al Qaeda, or Saddam, or the apocalyptic cult of Iran's Mullahs. To savage an external enemy even by rhetoric lends, necessarily, support to the idea that something should be done to stop, check, or decimate that external enemy, and therefore that is a line which cannot, must not be crossed. They have a hammer. But their nails can only be driven deep into American wood, staking through American flaws and American blunders and American arrogances, and cannot be driven into any other external enemy. To even acknowledge an "enemy" is to acknowledge that sometimes war is quite justifiable -- even necessary, both practically and morally -- and that they cannot permit themselves to do. As they say, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. And for the left, 9/11 is not a suicide pact. They will not allow it to destroy that which defines their essential selves. Trutherism is only this syndrome taken to its ultimate and logical end: America itself literally destroyed the Towers, destroyed a ring of the Pentagon, downed a plane in Shanksville. But even those on the left who do not carry Trutherism to its logical conclusion are still bewitched by the enchantments of this magical thinking: We provoked them. We manipulated them. We caused this to happen, with our globalization, with our hubristic hegemony, with our environmentally callous greed for material things and oil that makes those things and brings them to our doors, with our invasion of the pure, ecologically-sensitive cultures of the Untainted Third World, tearing apart the fabric of their societies with our McDonalds and our pop music filled with Satanic Verses. The only departure between Truthers and the left generally is on the proximate agency for 9/11. Both agree that, whether Bush or bin Laden gave the order to bring the Towers down (or both turned their keys simultaneously, like a nuclear launch), we were ultimately the ones behind it all, either knowingly and maliciously, or stupidly and arrogantly and negligently and with such ill-regard and lack of care to be equal to actual malicious intent. This is the problem we face, and, unfortunately, will always face. One of Bush's miscalculations, and mine as well, was that the unity of the country could survive very long once the immediate psyche-shattering crisis of 9/11 had faded from our memories. We are not united and never will be. I miss that feeling I had with my neighbors, people I'd barely said hello to after three years of living among them. It was such a good feeling to feel truly connected to one's fellow Americans, to feel as if we really were in this together, that we were a team, united and mighty. But it was of course an illusion. As someone wrote the other day, one cannot expect one third of the country to commit psychological suicide, to kill the very core of their politico-religio-psychological identity. Their identity did not die; it simply went away for a little while to recover, to heal up in the woods. A short while later were were more divided than ever. Not united but alone. What had been a relatively low-impact difference between us was now more central than ever, as half of us thought our worldviews were quite well corroborated by the demolition of the Towers, and a third of us, after a time of reflection, reasserted their own core belief -- There is no war but that the US provokes or permits to happen through negligence or malice -- as full-throatedly as ever. Though, for political purposes, always with the asterisk. And so it is six years on. It's not that the "lessons of 9/11" have been forgotten by some; it's that they never truly believed them to be lessons, or at least did not see the same lessons most of us did. What 9/11 taught most of us was that our respective political philosophies were not simply correct but more demonstrably correct than ever; what may have been incongruous or discomforting to liberals about 9/11 has since been recontextualized, retrofitted, and retconned so that for liberals too 9/11 proves they were right all along. We both point at hole in New York City where people used to work and sit in a rather barren and windswept plaza and eat lunch. We say, "Never again." They too say, "Never again." We have the same evidence, the same slogan, but wildly different interpretations of both. For us, Al Qaeda is the ultimate enemy; for them, war itself remains the ultimate enemy, Al Qaeda merely the symptom of a greater disease, and that disease is the arrogance and hegemony and belligerency of an America that blunders and bullies around the world like a drunken soccer rowdy with a can of petrol and an appetite for destruction. And that will never change. Until the next time. For about a month.
Comments
Posted by: dave at September 11, 2007 01:13 PM (T7Z1d)
I wrote this comment on Hot Air, but it seems appropriate here as well:
I realized on September 11, as the attacks were going on, that any unity we gained was going to be short-lived.
I was in graduate school. When I heard about the attacks, I went downstairs to the history department, where a television was set up. On the television screen, the news was showing video of the burning towers. There were about a dozen of us in the room. One of the people in that room was a faculty member in the history department. As he watched the news, his only comment was this:
“I wonder if the president is crying to his daddy?”
He smiled after saying this, as though he’d said something clever. I wanted to punch the son of a bitch in the face. It was at that moment that I realized to some, the day's horrors meant little other than simply being a political club to use against an administration they had already decided to hate.
Posted by: Slublog at September 11, 2007 01:13 PM (R8+nJ)
Over at one of the feminist blogs, they're voicing how sick they are of 9/11. It's time to focus on Katrina; enough about the real estate of the rich white patriarchy; it's time to focus on rebuilding ghettos.
Posted by: carin at September 11, 2007 01:15 PM (ECLiw)
Anyone who doesn't see this as a good thing doesn't deserve to live in this country.
Posted by: carin at September 11, 2007 01:17 PM (ECLiw)
It's got me thinking too. If another 9/11 type attack were to happen, lets say a biological or Lord help us, a nuclear attack, I VERY MUCH DOUBT that it would do anything at all to unite America, even for a brief period of a week, ever again.
Why? Because look what has happened so far.
We have an ever growing group of people called Truthers whose hatred of George Bush and Republicans is so overwhelming that they will make up and believe any batshit conspiracy theory no matter how insane it is, than to even consider the simpler, realistic explanation.
We have Hollywood that is making mad money off trashing the war on terror, with no end in sight. What's the last pro-America movie they've put out? Independance Day? We can't be sure the aliens were Muslims or not.
If anything, I think another attack will permanently fracture America into two separate countries, one left-leaning and one-right leaning. There's going to be the obligatory "Bush set us up the bomb" type crap, while the real culprits will be rolling on the floor laughing at how divided we are and how much trouble they've managed to create by simplying bombing something.
It's not supposed to be like this....and yet, here we are.
Posted by: EC at September 11, 2007 01:19 PM (mAhn3)
I wanted to punch the son of a bitch in the face.
I finally started announcing loudly and often to both friends and strangers that if another person said to me, "Do you know why they hate us?" I would cold cock them.
Over at one of the feminist blogs, they're voicing how sick they are of 9/11.
And I'm sick of hearing about their va-jay-jays, so we're even.
Posted by: dave at September 11, 2007 01:20 PM (T7Z1d)
-- In an online forum that afternoon, some jackass pontificating that of course Flight 93 had really been shot down, and the story about the passengers fighting back was a lie, and pitying us fools for swallowing that obvious lie.
-- My wife overhearing two college students saying of the dead that "they were just a bunch of lawyers and accountants anyway..."
-- The college where we were living holding a peace vigil that night, with speakers denouncing a military response.
The Left (and their psychological allies the conspiracy theorists) were never unified with the rest of us on 9/11. They just kept their despicable opinions quiet for a while.
Posted by: Trimegistus at September 11, 2007 01:20 PM (aHeFG)
Posted by: PattyAnn at September 11, 2007 01:20 PM (8vM5E)
>> I especially resent hearing it from non-Americans since they don't believe it at all.
Not all non-Americans, Dave. Some of us truly felt kinship with Americans, and still do.
I had never studied America much before 9/11, although I was in US for 2 years. Since then, I have studied a lot about America, and it made my respect and love for America grow.
America does have friends. You will find them, when you stop looking for them in Europe.
Posted by: Tushar D at September 11, 2007 01:21 PM (IlgNp)
Posted by: elenii at September 11, 2007 01:24 PM (3j23U)
Posted by: Ed at September 11, 2007 01:24 PM (TaJY1)
Little did I know that our military had evolved to such an extent that we could target the bad guys with unimaginable accuracy. I thought we'd have to carpet bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age (short trip though that might be) and kill them all and I was okay with that. Who knew we could decapitate their regime one day and bring food, medicine and civilization to the people of that country the next?
That is why I avoid liberals on days like today. I couldn't possibly listen to their bull shit without being moved to physical violence. What little patience I have for them the rest of the year doesn't exist today.
Posted by: Drew at September 11, 2007 01:24 PM (hlYel)
I understood where he was coming from, since for any normal civilized person, we'd like Islamic terrorist acts to be as inexplicable as a tornado, awful but ultimately just a fact of life. I think its a mindset that is very modern, "What do you mean we have to drag an entire culture kicking and screaming into the 21st century?"
But unlike an earthquake or tornado, you can fight the people who perpetrated 9/11. If you attack my country, we will respond.
Posted by: Aaron at September 11, 2007 01:25 PM (UGNtC)
Thanks, Tushar.
The college where we were living holding a peace vigil that night, with speakers denouncing a military response.
I forgot about how people didn't want us to attack at all. Jeesh. What idiots!
Posted by: dave at September 11, 2007 01:26 PM (T7Z1d)
<blockquote>They had been in the middle of paperwork and checking the sports scores on the their computers when they were struck down by the cultists of a Murder God.</blockquote>
That is the Truth about 9/11.
Well said, sir. Well said indeed.
Posted by: SicSemperTyrannus at September 11, 2007 01:26 PM (Mv/2X)
We simultaneously dropped humanitarian daily rations and bombs on Afghanistan. Maybe that is a first in history. Check back in 50 years.
BTW, my wife is Taiwanese and has never lived in the USA, but she saw the 9/11 clips on Taiwanese TV tonight and was more pissed off than I was.
Posted by: Aaron at September 11, 2007 01:28 PM (UGNtC)
Posted by: carin at September 11, 2007 01:32 PM (ECLiw)
Posted by: Bosk at September 11, 2007 01:32 PM (+aNmG)
The whole "war is the enemy" thinking is part of a greater mindset. The Libs believe that they are citizens of the world, instead of American citizens.
No, that's not quite right, they are citizens of the world, except for America. Talking to them does no good, because they have this lofty, godlike disdain for their fellow Americans. So, why should their pain or death or suffering or anger matter any more than Osama bin Laden's or for that matter, concern them at all.
Somehow, in this country, we have managed to produce, a population that is about 1/3 sociopath.
No, I don't mean, psychopath. I mean individuals who care nothing about their fellows, who only want what they want to the exclusion of decency and simple humanity.
Individuals who cannot for one second challenge their beliefs about themself. They have to be right, no matter what. So, they twist and turn reality until it resembles something they can live with. How else to explain the Truther movement, the whole blood for oil thing, halliburton, etc?
It's like listening to Martians and not very well informed Martians talking about America.
Eh, sorry about the length - this day and it's aftermath pretty much stripped away any illusions I had about...anything to do with the left, liberals, Democrats.
Marxism/liberalism really is the death of common sense and decency.
Posted by: rinseandspit at September 11, 2007 01:37 PM (fsZu0)
I was working an afternoon/evening shift, so got up late. Like most mornings, one of the first things I did was to fire up my DSL connection, with Yahoo being the home page.
On seeing the headline, the first thought that came into my head was "Wow, someone hacked Yahoo". Then I clicked links, and turned on the TV. That someone was both evil and stupid enough to do such a thing became a reality.
At that point it would've taken little convincing to press the nuclear launch button myself against whoever did this and whichever country harbored them. I remember a poll at the time that said 28% of Americans agreed.
Posted by: Hollowpoint at September 11, 2007 01:38 PM (plsiE)
Posted by: Laddy at September 11, 2007 01:39 PM (WEQwZ)
If the US did suffer another serious attack, would people refrain from throttling liberals? I wouldn't.
Posted by: dave at September 11, 2007 01:39 PM (T7Z1d)
The false sympathies were the hardest for me to take. I think I recall Allahpundit making the point that the international expressions of regret had just a little bit of "now that you've been taken down a notch" in them.
It infuriated me then, and it infuriates me now. Meaningless expressions of sympathy from people who despise America? You can take that shit and shove it up your ass.
I know we have friends, but I also know we have enemies.
Posted by: Dave in Texas at September 11, 2007 01:41 PM (pzen5)
And like Drew, I'm avoiding the public right now. There will always be some wiseguy coffeehouse revolutionary who thinks its cute to wear an intifada shirt because its hip to have a deathwish. I'm not a fighting sort of guy but I would throw him throw the fucking window.
So no more commentary, I'll just be over here, cleaning my guns.
Posted by: not that ryan at September 11, 2007 01:42 PM (LcnPS)
Posted by: EC at September 11, 2007 01:42 PM (mAhn3)
Posted by: Bosk at September 11, 2007 01:44 PM (+aNmG)
Posted by: A. Weasel at September 11, 2007 01:45 PM (bqcfE)
Our nation was never going to be together as a whole, thanks to Gore's childish, self-centered little tantrum over the 2000 election. There was a brief moment of quiet from the leftists morons who were already screaming about Bush and his evil cronies. But it was only about a week after 9/11 when I started hearing about how all of the American fags that were being raised was "faux patriotsim" and how we brought this on ourselves, etc. The "Hate America and all it stands for" crowd were not going to let this "one little blip" get in their way. In fact, it just provided more support for their insane BDS bullshit.
Posted by: wiserbud at September 11, 2007 01:46 PM (IHbof)
Posted by: not that ryan at September 11, 2007 01:46 PM (LcnPS)
This morning, I was sitting in my conference room watching the MSNBC replay of the coverage. It was quite surreal to watch the moment where Jim Miklaszewksi announce that he had just felt the Pentagon shudder. While I knew this was just old TV, six years later, I still instinctively braced a little bit, wondering if I'd hear sirens in the hall.
Of course, through the luck of fate, I flew out of D.C. to L.A. on September 8th, taking the American Airlines flight that, had I left on Tuesday instead of that Saturday, would have returned me to my office a whole lot sooner than I had planned.
So, luckily, I just watched my office building burn from the other side of the country instead of from the parking lot (or worse).
Today, it's gray here in Washington. We had rain last night. It's just another day at the office today. Petraeus on in the background. Working on a report to Congress. Eating M&M's I bought in a vending machine down the hall.
6 years ago, this place was on fire. Today? Just another day in a real lazy war.
Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge at September 11, 2007 01:47 PM (MbenW)
Posted by: wiserbud at September 11, 2007 01:50 PM (wWwJR)
Well said Ace. We need to hammer home from now until the election just how vile and seditious the left has become with their endorsement of defeat and appeasement to our enemies. They are the domestic enemy and should be treated accordingly. I spend this day remembering the horror and while I can't watch the video's, the images have been burned into my memory. I still feel the same rage and horror today as I did on September 11, 2001. Never forget, never forgive
Posted by: Theresa, MSgt (ret), USAF at September 11, 2007 01:52 PM (1Sp5m)
Until the next time.
For about a month.
Great piece but I gotta disagree with that last part. Here's why:I've always thought that the great "win" for AQ on 911 wasn't the actual death and destruction on that day. It's the seams in the American resolve that it exposed. That's why the Bush administration laid it on so thick in the following days/weeks/months: you had to just to keep everybody from retreating to their comfort zones of imagined safety.
I don't think that a comparable attack in the future will result in any common ground between hawks and doves for one second. You've pretty much made that point within the piece: people have their beliefs that are virtually unshakable despite what happens around them.
Thus, another attack on par with 911 is going to do the real damage. Everybody will have pretty much decided where they stand: hawks will see it as further evidence that our enemies are real and war is what it will take to preserve the nation, while doves will see it as further evidence that war isn't and cannot work as intended since there's already been several years of it.
Think about it: what is the average leftist/dovish response to the next 911? Are we all going to unite in the superficial way that we did before?
Fuck no, we're going to go at each other's throats from minute one. Blame and recriminations. Analysis paralysis. Levels of vitriol that make the current "Bu$h = Hitler" tripe look like schoolyard taunts. If the left is being dragged into the current war like deadweight now, then post-second attack warmaking will flat necessitate leaving the left behind 100%.
They won't have it any other way.
That's why there can be no second attack if we want the nation to continue. The first one we got a mulligan, but the second one will be played where it lies. I don't see how we'll be able to prosecute the war with every third person acting like we really REALLY caused it this time.
Posted by: tachyonshuggy at September 11, 2007 01:53 PM (Lz6uE)
Very good essay, Ace. I never got much of a chance to feel united. The day Bush made his bullhorn speech on the rubble about the enemies of America hearing from us soon, a chick in my office came to my desk.
'I'm so mad' she mumbled. She was literally red faced and trembling, with her teeth clenched.
I nodded and asked 'because of the World Trade Center?'
She shook her head and answered 'Because of Bush getting us into war.'
Seeing an ugly lefty reaction up close shook me out of my comfy libertarian isolationism and into solid pro-Bush territory.
Posted by: adolfo_velasquez at September 11, 2007 01:57 PM (uMUAD)
I sometimes wonder if we have become too civil. For most of human existance, your enemies were not treated as humans. Wars were brutal, and made no dictinction between combatants and civilians. It was just us and them. All this new age humanity baggage that arrived in the form of Geneva conventions, human rights, proportionate response etc have constrained one side, while the other side continues with it's barbarism. I wonder whether we can really prevail over the islamists when we are fighting a gentleman's war, taking great care not to harm their civilian population, while they deliberately hide amongst civilians, come over here under the guise of students and businessmen, and blackmail us everyday by some faux outrage generated over this or that made-up insult.
It is no surprise that most of these constraints were put upon us by leftist minded new age bastards who cooked up the whole human rights sham.
Islam is just a tool. The real threat that is destroying us is the leftist thought. If we get rid of our left-imposed restraints, we can tackle the islamic terrorism menace in short order.
Posted by: Tushar D at September 11, 2007 01:58 PM (IlgNp)
Right, and I saw this difference during the 2004 conventions for each party. One night during the Democrats' convention, Glenn Close got up there and made a bizarrely rambling, disconnected, incoherent speech about oh, what a tragedy it all was, which made the events of 9/11 out to be some species of natural disaster; tragic, but unavoidable.
Then the Republicans, a couple of weeks later, brought on a Flight 93 widow who opened her speech by saying, "I got a call from my husband on Flight 93 that morning and he told me that the passengers had a plan to get the plane back."
If there is a better example illustrating the difference between how liberals and conservatives look at 9/11, I haven't found it.
Posted by: OregonMuse at September 11, 2007 01:58 PM (WTnHh)
For us, Al Qaeda is the ultimate enemy; for them, war itself remains the ultimate enemy,
I simply can't agree with this.
While there may be some "theys" who are decent people, as far as I'm concerned, most "theys" think that Republicans or conservatives are the ultimate enemy. And it's because they cannot or will not grow up and face reality. Having Republicans as declared enemies means they will never be arrested, sent to concentrations camps, tortured, killed - even as they accuse R/Cs of doing or wanting to do these very things. And even as they "support" an enemy who truly would.
Slublog's story about the history teacher is far more typical.
It took them a long time to recover their bearings,
Well, of course, because for a moment in time they actually had to support a Republican. Someone, who the day before was reviled.
Posted by: jdm at September 11, 2007 02:01 PM (Uqwv1)
Unlike Katrina, which was of course an actual natural disaster but one they somehow think was caused by an enemy...G.W. Bush.
Dealing with liberals these days is like dealing with children, retarded, petulant and dangerous children.
Posted by: Drew at September 11, 2007 02:02 PM (hlYel)
Tushar, I thank you for you kind and heartfelt words.
Next week I will be going to Houston to witness a friend of mine taking the oath of citizenship. I sponsored him for his green card and this is a moment that I have looked toward for a long time. He is Lebanese and more pro-American than almost anyone I know - including native-born Americans. He had to leave Lebanon in 1982 when Arafat was being driven from Beirut. Most of his family, including his parents still live in Beirut.
I welcome every immigrant like you and my friend to come and share the benefits offered by this great country. I am honored by your presence.
God bless America.
Posted by: noprisoners at September 11, 2007 02:03 PM (eqMup)
Posted by: dave at September 11, 2007 02:03 PM (T7Z1d)
Islam is just a tool. The real threat that is destroying us is the leftist thought. If we get rid of our left-imposed restraints, we can tackle the islamic terrorism menace in short order. - Tushar
I agree. There's no way a bunch of desert maniacs can do the kind of damage that the enemy within is doing to us.
Posted by: adolfo_velasquez at September 11, 2007 02:04 PM (uMUAD)
Posted by: freetime at September 11, 2007 02:06 PM (9fsuf)
Posted by: Judd at September 11, 2007 02:06 PM (JB0d8)
It sounds like it would be cathartic but it would be the wrong call. If we get hit again with something nastier, we'll have a more immediate calling to end the Islamo-nazi movement for once and all. I think that the only right response at that point would be to mobilize as many citizens as possible and like-thinking foreigners and just destroy the terror-networks and their supporting countries in the largest fight the world has ever seen.
Wretchards' Three Conjectures demands our attention more than psych-jobs of the left.
Posted by: adamthemad at September 11, 2007 02:06 PM (3jNT9)
Posted by: dave at September 11, 2007 02:07 PM (T7Z1d)
There were little gray people falling from the skies like rain, and those people had to be avenged. They had done nothing wrong. They had simply gotten up to go to work. They had been in the middle of paperwork and checking the sports scores on the their computers when they were struck down by the cultists of a Murder God.
That sums it all up. Innocent people were destroyed for no reason. None. And that must be avenged. It is morally wrong not to avenge such actions.
Posted by: alexthechick at September 11, 2007 02:12 PM (SHHaV)
Listening to the cspan hearing now on the intertubes. They're at a break and taking callers...4 out of 5 are loony lefty's but it's funny when the host says we have a conservative caller here and the caller rails on "the jewish/neocon conspiracy" and how Bush is just setting the scene for the Iran invasion.
Crazy
Posted by: Bosk at September 11, 2007 02:13 PM (+aNmG)
noprisoners,
I feel honored and priviledged to live in US. America is truly a dazzling flash of freedom and enlightenment in an otherwise dark world.
Posted by: Tushar D at September 11, 2007 02:14 PM (IlgNp)
I heard Peter Jennings rambling on, in a voice I've never heard before or since from a TV or radio anchor, about how the towers were hit. Then the south tower fell, and that's when I finally caught on to what he was saying, because it was just unreal.
When I got to school, the computer network was down, so we just had discussions of what was going on, and what it meant to us in deep flyover country. We seem to be a little more conservative around these parts, cuz there wasn't much understanding for their point of view at that time.
But, Iowa sure has got her identity back. Nothing like living in a college town to get the blue side view of America, every day.
Posted by: Jay in Ames at September 11, 2007 02:15 PM (K6W8P)
Posted by: Tushar D at September 11, 2007 02:16 PM (IlgNp)
It sounds like it would be cathartic but it would be the wrong call. If we get hit again with something nastier, we'll have a more immediate calling to end the Islamo-nazi movement for once and all.
And who's in league with the Islamo-Nazis? Why the liberal left, ofcourse. They are enablers and abetters. Look no further than Dennis Kucinich in Syria this past week.
Posted by: EC at September 11, 2007 02:21 PM (mAhn3)
Posted by: Tushar D at September 11, 2007 02:25 PM (IlgNp)
Posted by: Shmool at September 11, 2007 02:26 PM (WFrZV)
i was giving a demo at HCFA in Baltimore when the first plane hit. The feds all rolled in a TV and we were watching when the second one hit. We tried to get on with the demo (yeah, good luck with that) when word came that the Pentagon got hit, and then rumors of car bombs at the State Dept.
Needless to say, that was the end of the demo. I headed back to my office and finished out the day, figuring it was probably going to be crazy out there so may as well ride it out.
When I left at 5 and got on 95 South towards VA.....not a single car on the road.
Creepiest thing I ever saw.
Posted by: nico at September 11, 2007 02:27 PM (51ePm)
The answer, of course, is nothing. Yet they danced. That was my road to Damascus moment. I could not have been a liberal after that. No way.
Ace nailed it here. The Left has already made up their minds. No events will change their beliefs. The fake sympathy from the EUnuch powers and the rest of the world is matched only by the fake unity and patriotism seen here at home.
Posted by: Britt at September 11, 2007 02:30 PM (1jt+u)
I hear that. I used to do a lot of internet gaming and hang around gaming forums back then. First day it happened I had to read a multipage screed from a Canadian, former semi-friend about how awful the United States was, from slavery to Hiroshima. We were "more fucked up than Saudi Arabia" (I know he knew jackshit about Saudi Arabia, it was just a platitude).
I had also spent a lot of time on history forums, so I was used to international anti-Americanism, big time, but I seriously flipped out and spent the next year or so battling these idiots. At that point, it was mostly the foreigners, particularly arrogantly ignorant Western Europeans, who were the most openly anti-American, with a few Americans thrown in.
Finally, I decided I would be better off spending my time reading and learning than wasting my time arguing with Guardian and Der Spiegel robots. Eventually, I'll get back to them.
Posted by: MlR at September 11, 2007 02:32 PM (mX6h5)
Posted by: sinistar at September 11, 2007 02:34 PM (rEDvK)
If I had it all over again, I'd probably have chosen something closer to plan A. We'd probably be debating today whether we should hang or shoot Al Qaeda prisoners. The great liberal cause would be to give them their choice of a last meal.
Posted by: MlR at September 11, 2007 02:40 PM (mX6h5)
I'm always grateful when someone comes along and puts into words the isolated ideas that are floating around my brain, but which I'm not intellectually disciplined enough to gather up and articulate. This was truly a great post. It will go onto my hard drive and be revisited periodically until I have internalized all of it.
I was out in the field checking on a couple of jobs on 9/11/01 and didn't know anything about the attack until I got back to the office. Two of my co-workers met me in the parking lot and told me that two jetliners had flown in to each Tower and another in to the Pentagon. The first thing out of my mouth was, "I don't care if we have to vaporize a billion arabs, its time to get this shit settled." Back then arab was synonymous with muslim for me. I've since been forced to learn otherwise. I'm kind of glad that cooler heads have prevailed and that our country hasn't committed genocide on a previously unknown scale, but I fully agree that nothing short of massive amounts of violence against certain sectors within the muslim world will bring us peace.
Posted by: Sticky B at September 11, 2007 02:41 PM (6kZQQ)
I remember I had gotten up early for some strange reason, and was cruising the internet when my former GF called, crying, saying something horrible had happened. So I turned on CNN (we're not allowed to see FoxNews up here in Canada, eh?) and saw the 2 towers on fire.
"There were 2 planes?" I asked her "This is no accident."
I was watching them replaying video of people jumping/falling when they cut back to live and the first tower fell. My heart fell with it.
My post got rejected? oh well. I'd mentioned the Canadian TV news blathering on about how the CN Tower had been evacuated, what utter nonsense, eh? Stupid thing is made of concrete and has little or no importance outside of Toronto.
Posted by: 5Cats at September 11, 2007 02:42 PM (Knaf0)
They are not in league with them any more than we're in league with Halliburton/CFR/neo-conspiracy. Sure, they're spiteful, willfully ignorant, petulant assholes but they aren't in league with them.
Simple test; could the leftists in question be more active in aiding and abetting? Yes, right now they're protesting. Come back to me when there are bombs going off, then we'll talk about cleaning house.
Remember, we're the adults and they are the children. We're not the sloppy emotional ones. Which half of this country is famous for impotently wishing about "when the revolution comes" ?
Posted by: adamthemad at September 11, 2007 02:43 PM (3jNT9)
Tushar, #9: Thank you. However, it was "Europe" or namely the UK that finally broke me. I, like most, was in complete shock for the first couple of days. It wasn't until I saw a replay late at night/past midnight of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace being done to our national anthem that I totally lost it. I was glad my husband and daughter were already in bed and didn't witness my wracking sobs. As an American, I can honestly say "God Bless the Queen."
Posted by: cardeblu at September 11, 2007 03:02 PM (U/+XY)
Posted by: Criag at September 11, 2007 03:07 PM (yrptY)
I just got back from a historical tour of World War II sites in England and Normandy. I stood on Omaha Beach, where hundreds of brave Americans got cut to pieces by German machine gun fire; at St Paul's Cathedral in London, where British civilians stood on the roof to battle flames caused by bombs meant to destroy the church; at the American cemetary, where a thousand crosses mark the graves of men killed fighting the Nazi war machine. We knew we were fighting for civilization back then, and we suffered horrible loss to save it.
I get home and I see American congressmen calling an American general a liar because he wants to win a war America is fighting. A war against an enemy that has committed atrocities just as vicious as anything the Nazis or the Japanese ever did. These people are cowards, and don't deserve to be in the same room with men like Petraeus.
Posted by: UGAdawg at September 11, 2007 03:09 PM (d38jD)
Nice job. That bit about the hammer and nails was brilliant.
Posted by: slickdpdx at September 11, 2007 03:16 PM (bohOk)
Very, very good Ace.
I agree with the commenters who have said we need to be less civil towards the traitors among us. Less civil both verbally and physically. The left has come to believe that any behavior is acceptable because no one should be judged and they have come to feel immune from any response to their asshole-ishness. They have been judged and found completely wanting. Their support of those who would kill them for their views and non-belief makes one wonder in disbelief at their level of intelligence.
The next attack may well spark a civil war. The leftists should self deport now.
Thanks to Tushar, noprisoners, and to Jordan, the writer from Poland.
Posted by: cranky at September 11, 2007 03:17 PM (Xj2Ev)
When the Speaker of The House and a House Rep travel to Syria for tea, as well as Cindy Sheehan and Sean Penn going to see Chavez down south to hold hands and hug each other, they are in league with them.
When lefty politicians tell us that we have to be more tolerant of the most oppressive Islamic countries getting a seat at the UN Human Rights council, they are in league with them.
Hey, no one complained when Shakespeare said, "let's shoot the lawyers first" do they?
Posted by: EC at September 11, 2007 03:20 PM (j2Tjh)
In the weeks after the attack, I joined a Yahoo group having nothing to do with politics. I left pretty quickly after reading comments about how Americans saying "God Bless America" was JUST AS BAD as the Taliban.
If someone is so stupid and/or insane to believe that, I don't care about their opinion on any subject.
I never meant to lose my liberal friends these last 6 years, but they just can't seem to stop themselves from screaming the most bizzare sentiments.
Posted by: MamaAJ at September 11, 2007 03:20 PM (X6Zdh)
Excellent post Ace.
Today I've been trying to imagine what I would have done if I had been on Flight 93. Like you, I was having a great deal of trouble understanding what happened that day. If I had been siting on that flight and someone told me their friend just called and said two planes just intentionally flew into the Trade Center, I would not have believed it. In that situation, at that time, I can picture myself sitting quietly in the chair worrying that I was going insane.
Posted by: pitythefool at September 11, 2007 03:20 PM (Sg8sX)
Posted by: ConservativeBelle at September 11, 2007 03:27 PM (an0tv)
Posted by: Jose Cuervo at September 11, 2007 03:33 PM (2B316)
I was on a traffic control point in downtown Vitina, Kosovo. I got the news over a field radio from the company CP a few miles away, which was in a building with satellite TV.
All I could think about was my flight attendant ex-girlfriend and how I hoped it wasn't her plane, and hoping my sister didn't have another meeting at the Pentagon that day. Both were OK.
Posted by: SGT Dan at September 11, 2007 03:46 PM (jCQ+I)
Posted by: Bosk at September 11, 2007 03:48 PM (+aNmG)
The day 9/11 happened started out unreal and got more so as they day went on. People at the bus stop were talking about some incident in New York where a plane crashed into the world trade center. On the way to work, some girl with a radio told me that the towers had collapsed. I absolutely did not buy it. The idea that something like that could happen was unbelievable.
Then I get into work. Someone had a TV on CNN. I saw the footage of the collapsing tower. I was completely speechless.
Work told us all to go home for the day. On the way home the bus was crowded with people. I watched the footage all day and the shock of the incident wouldn't go away.
I wanted to talk with someone about it, but there was really no one I could talk to. I live and work in San-Francisco-by-the-mountains (aka Denver). The people at work are so left-wing they can't make a right turn when they drive--they have to go up a street and make three lefts. Most of them just kept their mouths shut, but a few started spouting of conspiracy theories and a bunch of other shit. They still do it from time to time. When they do, I just want to tell them to fuck off and quit, but I need the job.
The only place I could really turn to were blogs. I had been hitting blogs for a while already, but when 9/11 happened I started going to them every day in earnest. It's places like Ace of Spades where I can vent with like-minded people.
Not one person at work has even mentioned 9/11. To them it's just another day and 9/11 is an annoying memory. It'd be nice to actually sit down with someone who still remembers that 9/11 was a tragedy and that it signified the beginning of a long war against evil. Most people in these parts don't seem to understand that. Must be the altitude.
Posted by: CT at September 11, 2007 04:00 PM (KV/Mz)
American leftists, perhaps. But if you read any of the shit that snotty foreign elites were saying even on the very day, you'd know why they don't matter.
Bosk, that was posted here a few days ago.
Posted by: someone at September 11, 2007 04:02 PM (HS8cW)
"We've been mythologizing 9/11 bringing us closer than ever before; maybe we can interrupt this myth-making from time to time to note it actually divided us more than ever in our history."
Our politicians are more treasonous than in a century, but the country is in much better shape than it was in 1968, when the Vietnam collapse began. I was in college then, and trust me, it was a hell of a lot worse.
Posted by: Mark at September 11, 2007 04:09 PM (AUvbM)
Posted by: Bosk at September 11, 2007 04:12 PM (+aNmG)
God bless Poland. God bless all the Poles. Why can't we have more like them over here instead of having to endure fuckulent crapweasels like John F'n Kerry and Nancy F'n Pelosi?
Posted by: OregonMuse at September 11, 2007 04:13 PM (WTnHh)
I'm not sure where you live ... but here in Nashville, Tennessee, the Original Land of the Red-State Redneck ... well, people here really were united for awhile.
I've personally never experienced anything like it.
I guess things were different on the coasts and in the liberal city centers. But rest assured nobody here was making the types of comments some of you apparently heard even on that day. Our folks were busy writing the songs that meant the most to our soldiers ... or standing in line to give blood ... or standing in line at the recruiting station.
When I first moved to the South ... it was a culture shock. A lot of the negative stereotypes are true. My neighbors have cars on cinder blocks, dogs off leashes, and dirty children running wild. Just like the liberals imagine!
But you know what? These people, all around me, are real Americans.
On 9/11 and for a long time after, there was real unity here. We have a big Kurdish and Iraqi community here, and they were marching in the streets WAVING the flag ... not burning it.
I know it must be bad for those of you in New York or San Francisco. But the stories some of you tell was most definitely not my experience. In my neighborhood, 6 years later, the flags are still flying. And the fireman who lives across the street is still the greatest guy I know.
And I don't think my neighborhood is alone. I think I'm closer to the truth for most of America, for the farm towns and rural areas and suburbs and little cities, than you are.
I think America did unite, and stayed that way.
The blogs aren't reality. Television isn't reality. MoveOn.org and Michael Moore and Dan Rather are decidedly not reality.
The flag I'm looking at right now on my neighbor's flagpole, the one I helped him put up, that's the real story.
Get off your computer and go meet the real America. And if you really do live in some godforsaken place like some of you describe ... well, y'all come on down and visit sometime.
Sure, I live in a rerun of "My Name is Earl," the chicks are fat and toothless, and NASCAR is the only sport that matters.
But goddamn these people are Americans.
And they'd all think you folks are talking crazy.
(Of course, if my neighbors have even heard the word "blog," I'd be shocked.)
It ain't that bad, kids. Not out here in real America.
Posted by: Professor Blather at September 11, 2007 04:24 PM (6s9um)
Nicely done, Ace.
I remember someone at work, a retired Air Force colonel, saying as we all stood around listening to the radio that morning 'we're at war, people.'
I remember some clown on the Mote, right after the second tower was hit, posting 'This is our fault.' At that moment, he became someone I no longer respected.
People in my community lost loved ones in the Pentagon and WTC attacks. The outpouring of grief I witnessed that Friday evening at a special church service was something I will never forget.
It baffles me that there are those in this country who cannot, or refuse to, connect the dots between what happened that day and what we are trying to do in Iraq.
Posted by: MDH at September 11, 2007 04:25 PM (U474w)
Ace,
Great Post. I read this blog often, but rarely comment. I'm a fan though. I also live in Boston.
On 9-11-01 I was on vacation but home. Hungover and staring in disbelief when plane two hit, I wanted to be anywhere but home. But at the same time I couldn't take my eyes off the television. I ended up dragging my ass out of the house later that day. But the streets were bare. The T was empty. I hit the bar, even that was pretty empty. The few people there felt like I did, someone has to pay. But other than that nobody said much of anything.
Then you saw flags on lapels and houses, never forget pins etc. But then just as quick, everything started disappearing. Except for my friends down at the bar. And some other close friends. Like others have said above, my tolerance for libs has grown very slim. So even members of my family that skew tard I pretty much cut out of my life. No time for that shit anymore.
I watched the hearings today. Obama brought up 9-11 during his time. I threw my remote off the wall. Douchebag. Sorry for the long post.
Posted by: GernBlanston at September 11, 2007 04:33 PM (qbjrM)
Posted by: James OK at September 11, 2007 05:00 PM (S5chl)
All I an say Ace is,
Bravisimo! Brother! Bravisimo!
You nutshelled the left, with all of it's twisted permutations, in one piece.
Bravisimo!!
Posted by: The Last Patriot at September 11, 2007 05:02 PM (nTgr7)
Posted by: SGT Dan at September 11, 2007 05:21 PM (jCQ+I)
Two words --> Lynn Stewart. I would find in very difficult to believe she was an "isolated case". There are indeed some of them who are in league with them.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at September 11, 2007 10:45 PM (mrNpK)
Even then I knew something was wrong with the whimpering "why do they hate us?" Unfortunately it was roughly 2-3 years before I saw through The Religion of Peace, thanks mostly to the help of Muslim Apostates.
Posted by: CapitalistPiglet at September 11, 2007 11:18 PM (4paRT)
On that day I was in my bathroom, wallowing in self-loathing, trying to hide it from my husband when he turned on the T.V. and I heard "What the fuck?" What I saw that day burned away my self pity. It burned away the woman child of 27 that I was, a fat chain-smoking loser. It switched off the leftist "everything is someone else's fault" auto-pilot I was running on.
Sometimes I wish I could turn it back on.
I agree with others here who've said that the next attack will only cause more division. It could happen 10 years from now and the same idiots will screech it's all Bush's fault! Including my moonbat family.
That day didn't drive me further into leftism, it woke me up, made me grow up. I wish it had done the same for more people. The country would be much better off if it had.
Posted by: nightwitch at September 12, 2007 12:31 AM (dfTf5)
Posted by: Tom the Pooklekufr at September 12, 2007 01:36 AM (Ov9a0)
Out here in LA, I was unemployed and in a prolonged depression. One of my closest friends, who was like a kid brother to me and had just graduated with honors from UCLA a few months before, ran his car off the Sepulveda Pass one night in October 2000 while I was working a job in Miami, FL. He collapsed his side of the small car against a tree and died immediately, although his passenger came away largely unscathed.
One area of minor obsession for Dan had been Iraq and its rotten regime. I could imagine him being inspired to join the military after 9/11 and being psyched to set Iraq to rights. I'll never know.
That morning I was up early despite having no place to be. I checked my e-mail and found an item I might easily have deleted without reading. It was for an upcoming trade show in New York that I had zero probability of attending. (I had been to New York previously to work at similar events. On a 1999 trip we did the tourist thing at the top of the WTC.) The subject line caught my eye and the content said the show was possibly delayed or canceled because an aircraft had struck one of the WTC towers. At first glance I thought this was probably a small private plane and the show organizer was just being cautious. I tried going to news sites like CNN and couldn't get through to any. This was the moment I first began to suspect something very serious was happening. I then remembered that the adjoining room offered a news source that didn't suffer from server overload.
Within a few minutes the second tower was struck and the possibility of accident was no more. It was now surely a war, the like of which Americans hadn't seen since my parents were teens. Time to start waking up everybody else in the house. I roused my mother, telling her that the WWIII she'd always been told would be against the Soviet had finally come from a different source entirely. Or perhaps it should be termed WWIV, since we'd beaten the Soviets.
The liberals have never been able to make sense of their own beliefs since that day. The biggest threat to our freedom was supposed to come from the likes of Timothy McVeigh. Hollywood found that sort to be a very useful enemy, and the Oklahoma City bombing seemed to lend deep support to this mindset. But we know now that the McVeighs are exceedingly rare compared to the volume of willing recruits Bin Laden has found to date. When the real ongoing threat to the West came, it was from a source that was against nearly everything liberals desired, yet they were against America, so how could they be wrong? They just cannot accept that there are mentalities far,far worse that what they'd long opposed in their lives as Americans.
Posted by: epobirs at September 12, 2007 02:16 AM (YLsPS)
Been wanting to comment on this all day. But very few words come to mind other than well said. Much of my day has been spent in silence reading the accounts, looking at the pictures, remembering the disquieting silence of the plane-less skies overhead in the days that followed. And staring at a picture I have in my office of a huge American flag unfurled at PacBell Park in SF in the hands of firefighters and police officers during pregame of a Giants baseball game on September 11, 2002 one year later. In the most liberal city in the nation, thousands of Americans stood in silence shoulder to shoulder in defiance of the threat from terrorists, united in honoring the fallen. It pisses me off that that unity was only superficial, an illusion. The past six years has exposed faultlines within our nation that I am unsure can be healed, even among those on the right side of the political aisle.
I guess a few words came to mind after all. I have a few more choice words, but I'll save those for a different time and place. Thanks for your post.
Posted by: Dick at September 12, 2007 02:45 AM (3u1nU)
Posted by: Beth at September 12, 2007 03:05 AM (yqiXY)
Ditto that.
Flags are still flying proudly here in 'Bama as well (with Bush stickers on cars, even!). My sincere condolences to those of you in Moonbattia, USA.
/keep out, leftards; we have too many churches for your taste anyway
Posted by: Beth at September 12, 2007 03:11 AM (yqiXY)
That, and the abortion clinic killings. You can bet they'd have no problem profiling conservative Christians (or Jews, if they're pro-Israel) for terrorism, but God physics (?) forbid anyone actually raise an eyebrow about the quaint and cute peace-loving Muslims. That would be just like Hitler!
(Actually, now that I think of it, they do want to keep pro-lifers away from abortion clinics because pro-lifers are all doctor-killing terrorists!)
Posted by: Beth at September 12, 2007 03:22 AM (yqiXY)
Ace, I know you're not Christian, but I am, and with all my heart I say I will continue to pray for the USA. Not being American, it didn't touch me as much but surely conservatives and realists should stand together in the face of such danger.
I was asleep when I found out about the attacks. It sounded like something out of a damned Tom Clancy novel to me (well, it was!). And you know, I do believe it would take the lefties being killed ONE BY ONE by the very people they are trying so hard to appease and protect for them to wake up. But there is hope - Europe could very well die (or wake up) first and THEN the lefties in the US will see.
Posted by: George at September 12, 2007 06:56 AM (cjwF0)
Posted by: kyer at September 12, 2007 09:01 AM (/u6PI)
The left, the truthers, the Paulites, thinks of 9/11 as a tragedy the USA brought on itself; the non-paleo right sees 9/11 as an atrocity visited on the USA by a foreign enemy.
Tragedy.
Atrocity.
And that is a very wide gap to span.
Posted by: Mikey NTH at September 12, 2007 09:39 AM (O9Cc8)
Can't add anything more to the eloquent sentiments here, both from Ace and this gang of wonderful morons. Ace, I'll be proud to buy you a drink on Saturday.
I'm sure Ace will get around to mentioning it, but here in Massachusetts our empty suit governor, Deval Patrick, yesterday called the attacks "a failure of love and understanding." On 9/11. On 9/11.
Slimy, sleazy, and yes, treasonous assholes, every one. I count the days until I get out of this Copperhead hellhole of a state.
Posted by: Christopher at September 12, 2007 09:43 AM (SjUPQ)
Yesterday, while I was taking the escalator up from the subway, I saw a girl opposite me taking the escalator down wearing one of those terrorist rags all the lefties are sporting these days. I nearly jumped across and strangled her with it. I'd already decided not to go to Ground Zero, since I didn't feel like getting arrested, and that confirmed my decision.
By the way, did you hear some cocksucker defaced the Vietnam Memorial in D.C.? I'll be heading down for the GOE on Saturday. At this point, I don't really care if I get hauled away in cuffs. A man can only take so much.
Posted by: ticticboom at September 12, 2007 01:24 PM (gFMmu)
It seems to me, where there's war, and the U.S. is not involved, the one-third of us ace refers to finds little to protest about.
No. I do not believe this one-third is anti-war. If they can only find it in themselves to protest American wars, then it's not really war at all that they are protesting.
It is America
There may be a percentage that are true pacifist. I just think of them as enablelers. But for the rest? They take their self hate, their hate of capitalism, morality, and a long list of other projections and what do we see? The anti-war movement. Moveon and dailykos. Codepink and far, far too many democrats.
Posted by: matterson at September 12, 2007 02:56 PM (7KHbd)
OK, like a few other people here, I read this blog often and rarely comment, but I wanted to say a few things.
I remember where I was on 9 11 2001. I was at home as it was about lunch time here in the UK when I first saw the first bulletins. I switched on CNN, and watched as it unfolded.
It took a few weeks for me to realise that it was actually an attack, and for the reality of the human impact it had had; to realise that it actually happened and that people were actually killed. It was about a week later that I cried for the first time at the loss of the people who were brutally killed that day.
I've always loved history and geography but before that point I really wasn't into politics at all, although in retrospect, I would of probably fallen into the liberal camp. But, after the attacks of that day, I realised that not only America, but the West in general was under attack, and I wanted to know what happened, how it happened and most importantly why it happened. And so I started reading and researching; trying to learn about the reasons and facts and arguments that made up the whats and hows and whys.
On the political side, I realised that conservatism generally makes the most sense most of the time, and so from this period on I became a conservative. In this way, I guess I would have to describe myself politically as a neocon, using the classic definition.
But, although I hadn't learnt alot about America's history and politics at the time, I have always loved America. I always knew that it stood for freedom and hope and that it's men and women had fought against the tyrants and dictators for at least the last century, and even as a kid I wanted to move there.
The more I read and learnt about America, the more I loved.
Now, I admit that I am very much in the minority not only in my own country, but espocially in my chosen career. As a musician I am pretty much in the heart of Che T-Shirt, red beret wearing, Truthering, anarchist loving moron land, and while mostly it isn't a problem, saying you support Bush and that you're a conservative in the presence of some of these guys would draw the same stares and digust that a guy saying he loved black people at a KKK meeting would. So, it can be annoying and sometimes I think you get the correct impression that alot of people outside of the US hold it in at best disdain and at worst hatred.
But the point is, there are alot of people who don't live in the US who love the country. They share it's values, for those are their values. They respect it's fight, for they know it's their fight. And they love it's liberty because they realise that while they might not have it yet, there is hope that they will share in that liberty.
And that spirit, that ethos, is what attracts allies to stand by your countries side, be they Afghan, Pole, Russian, Chinese, Australian, Canadian or Englishman.
It is that spirit which unites us all.
And that brings me to the point of this email.
You wrote an excellent post about your feelings of the morning of 9/11, and your view that we were not really united; that it was a beautiful lie. And, I agreed with alot of what you wrote. But, I disgree with your final assessment of whether or not we were, or more importantly ever could be united, truly.
Allow me to explain. The left can be stupid and sometimes vicious, but mostly it is polulated by generally rational people. I'm not talking at all about the conspiracy theorist's here, as I'll come to that at in a minute, but your average moderate Democrat. Now, I know, some of the views they hold seem to us conservatives to be kinda crazy, for instance; 'free' healthcare. They believe that it should be paid for by the government, not realising that it's them that pays the government in taxes. Now, we know it doesn't make sense, and maybe even deep down they do too, but the underlying reason for the vast majority of people on the left who support this view is to help the poor and needy. Sure, maybe some of them want to get what they can from the government, or stick it to the rich, or have some other reason for supporting the view, but I believe most want to actually help.
So, I believe that most conservatives and liberal want similiar things broadly, for example less homelessness, more quality education for students, better healthcare, a strong economy and a secure homeland. They just disagree widly about how to get there.
Now again, I am not talking about the avarage Daily Kos, DU, Huffington Post readers. I am also not talking about alot of the Democratic leadership. Both groups are plainly far to the left. I am talking about the majority of decent ordinary Democratic voters.
You could counter that polls show that a third of Democratic voters are prone to believe conspiracy stories. But I believe that these polls are either biased, nuanced or flat out wrong, precisely because I believe most Democrats do honestly want the best for America. And again, that best may differ wildy from conservatives best.
But, I agree that there are alot of Democrats who do believe in conspiracy theories. So, the question then remains, after acknowledging that most Democrats want the best for America, is why?
Why do some Democrats believe the lunacy theories parroted ad nauseum by the far left? I believe the answer lies partly with Bush. As a supporter or Bush I admire much about him, but his one glaring downfall has got to be his inability to defend himself in the public media arena.
And so, the hard left has been largely unopposed to slander and denigrate not only our troops but the very foundations of our and societies for over 6 year now. And I believe that it is this constant attack upon our leaders, our forces and our traditions that has allowed many on the other side of the aisle to believe the lies and distortions parroted day after day by the hard left.
In my opinion, it is both the tautology of the far lefts vicious lies and the lack of public and determined defense by the Bush adminstration that has lead to the situation where you have relatively normal people starting to beleive these theories.
So, while I agree that we do have divisions between us; that Democrats and Republicans and conservatives and liberals are now at very delineated odds; I believe that this rift can be healed.
The first thing would be that the endless rants and screeds coming from the left need to be countered, daily. And I mean every day, against every lie that is shot at them, by anyone who has the ability to command a sizable audience. And whilst this may seem like propaganda, I would simply suggest countering with facts and reason. This would give people another side to the story, which would take away alot of the reason that normal people buy into the leftist paranoid delusions; most of the time, they simply don't have alot of other options to listen to.
Attacking their leaders for their anti-victory stances, highlighting their mistakes and simply keeping them from lying and propagandising unopposed would give moderate Democrats a reason to move to the centre, rather than to the left.
There are other things that could be done to coalesce our countries political rifts. And there is the undeniable fact that there will always be a difference of opinion about how to run the country, and that is a good thing. The left and right are never going to agree on certain things. It is that clash of ideas that makes deomcracy the best form of government.
But there has to be a respect.And the best way to achieve that is to rebuild the trust.
Anyway, I would be interested to know what you think.
Darkwolf.
Posted by: DarkWolf at September 13, 2007 03:34 AM (10SMW)
I've always thought you were extremely talented, but this is one hell of a piece of writing.
You need to do something with it. I realize you get a lot of traffic here, but it deserves wider circulation.
Just a thought.
Cheers
Posted by: Cassandra at September 13, 2007 12:01 PM (G/Ncc)
Posted by: Megan at September 11, 2008 12:32 AM (nQDsh)
Posted by: Spurwing Plover at September 11, 2008 12:33 AM (Pncvw)
When we learned the full extent of the damage, he apologized to me.
I hate to say I was right. I still wish it had been some nutjob with a Cessna. But here we are.
Posted by: Guy in Utah at September 11, 2008 12:44 AM (V3WTz)
Don't I know it, Tushar. I've spent a good portion of my adult life in Africa, or with West African immigrants here in America; they're sort of like Rumsfeld's "New Europe...." Meaning, they ain't France; they ain't Germany, and if they're infatuated with Obama about now, it has nothing to do with actual policy views.
Posted by: notropis at September 11, 2008 12:50 AM (cdoST)
Posted by: eddiebear at September 11, 2008 12:53 AM (dvqip)
I'm not trying to make comparisons or anything, but let me link my favorite 9/11 essay, James Lileks' one from 2003: here.
My personal recollection from Sept. 11, 2001, is a strange one. I was awakened at about 7:30 a.m. with a phone call from the father of one of my best friends from high school, telling me that she had died of a brain aneurism that previous night. And while I was talking to him -- it was a fairly long conversation -- and turning on the TV, I saw the report of the first plane hitting the WTC. So my memory of those thousands who died because of the terrorists is always mixed up with my memory of my good friend who died by random act of God that same day. I don't know what lesson anyone can draw; it's just the way it is.
Posted by: notropis at September 11, 2008 01:04 AM (cdoST)
Thanks for the post...I was over on Okinawa on that day (my wife was back here in the states), and I was watching the event unfold on TV...A typhoon had just made its third pass over the island, so the bases were locked down. I remember getting a call about security on the base going way up, Marines drawing weapons, and Hummers and LAV's going up the street to take up blocking positions on the base. The fear of what had happened and wondering if we were the next target for AQ was numbing...people crying when as they watched what was happening, it was so surreal.
You never really are prepared for war until you are at the armory drawing your weapon and drawing live ammo or opening up the narcotics locker in the aid station or clinic and checking on how much morphine you have on hand. The fear on the young men and women's faces, the questions of "What happens next" or "Can I call home and see if my family is OK" put a lot of pressue on those of us who they rely on to lead them in a crisis. Also, my thoughts returned to home, wondering what was happening and trying to get in touch with my wife to make sure she was OK didn't help matters at all. It was hell - a hell that I never want to go through again...
I retired from the Navy in May of this year - and never was given the chance to go over and do my part in this war. I've lost two people that I know (one was a Junior Hospital Corpsman, the other was a Corpsman that was a SEAL) to the people that hurt us on that day...and a day doesn't go by that I think of them and the others that I left behind, who still serve today.
Please pray for those men and women that serve our country, and for the families of those that have lost love ones.
Posted by: Eeyore's Swinging Sack at September 11, 2008 01:06 AM (FmHHv)
Wow! That one really got me thinking and remembering.
The one that really got me was the resistance and fear the left had of Afghanistan at the start. "The mighty Russians lost, the British were wiped out, oh my, we can't possibly win." You are right Ace.
And now all we hear is: "More troops to Afghanistan, attack Pakistan, Iraq is just a diversion." (Beat chest, thump desk).
And this is not much different than when Obama says that we adopted his "timeline" or Biden's claim that his breakup theory solved the problem.
Only by the most tortured of logic, libs. Those who re-write history are forced to repeat it.
Posted by: Robert at September 11, 2008 01:14 AM (Rb4Qc)
Listening to the radio in my car going to work as a 21 year old. I think it was Howard Stern, back when I thought that was cool, and I thought it was a joke.
I remember walking into work and seeing the look on my boss's face as he stumbled past me. At the time I didn't think about it, but it still haunts me. His voice, like he was already dead. "The towers are burning. I can't reach my brother."
Luckily, his brother was OK, aside from being there that day. I think that this was the day that I really started thinking about what it meant to be an American. This was the day that it wasn't some sort of apolitical game in school.
Never Forget.
Posted by: Josh Reilly at September 11, 2008 01:16 AM (swwkw)
For some stupid reason I distinctly remember it was drizzling that morning - odd for where I live.
But one thing I also remember were a few of the older men I worked with saying our way of life was about to change and it would never be the same. That scared the shit out of me, even though I agreed with them at the time.
Now, seven years later my way of life is thank god, exactly the same. How lucky we are. Liberals bitch about everything, they've never been happy and they'll never be happy.
They're pissed off they can't take hair gel on a plane even if it protects them from being blown to bits.
Posted by: topsecretk9 at September 11, 2008 01:16 AM (OY5Wa)
I have a few clear but somewhat disjointed memories from 9/11 and the days immediately after.
Oddly enough, the first thing that struck me was the Wile E. Coyote-style outline left by the first plane - it was surprising to see the mark of the engines, wings, and tail assembly.
Then there was all of the paperwork blowing around. I work as an attorney, and I've always hated paperwork. On that day, it finally seemed as trivial as it really is.
I also remember thinking that George Carlin finally got his wish. He once did a rant about how he wanted to see people on fire, buildings collapsing, etc., but that it always happened in someplace far away, like Pakistan. He wanted it to happen closer. Well, George, you finally got it. Hope it was everything you hoped it would be.
A couple days after, a friend and I went out to a bar. The place was mostly empty; however, there was a very granola-looking (tie-dye, Lennon glasses, long hair, unkempt beard, et.c) guy playing guitar. After about a dozen songs, he said that there was a song that he "had to play because of what just happened". My buddy and I fully expected to hear "Give Peace A Chance" and were ready to pound the the singer.
Instead, he played "Coward of the County". Abso-fucking-lutely perfect fit for the mood.
Apropos of the original post, I had noticed a couple years back that those friends I had who were liberal and I had just stopped talking and associating. Oddly enough, I don't even miss them, although several were very good people and almost like brothers.
Posted by: Fa Cube Itches at September 11, 2008 01:17 AM (Tz2XN)
I was naive about our unity. Such a sad reality to come to. But you really explained the reasons well.
Posted by: Amused Observer at September 11, 2008 01:23 AM (Y2UKK)
To say the least, I was less engaged in politics and international affairs then.
I saw the second plane hit live and realized instantaneously it was a terrorist act and war. I worked for a Canadian company which called U.S. businesses. The company wanted us to make calls and I said, "No way; they're at war. There's no way you can call the U.S. today." I saw this instantly.
Yet, emotionally, I didn't get it until later that evening.
Posted by: Christoph at September 11, 2008 01:24 AM (hawOV)
Posted by: Dead Career Sketch at September 11, 2008 01:25 AM (UjwY0)
Posted by: Jones in CO at September 11, 2008 01:26 AM (KOkrW)
Posted by: baxtrice at September 11, 2008 01:31 AM (QtEAK)
I know that we have many friends out there...many of them are part of the "band of brothers" that wear the uniform of a soldier, sailor, airman or marine. Here are the countries that are still part of the War on Terror:
Albania Armenia Australia Azerbaijan Belgium Bosnia/Herzegovina Bulgaria Canada Croatia Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominican Republic Egypt El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Italy Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lithuania Macedonia Moldova Mongolia Morocco Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Norway Pakistan Poland Portugal Republic of Korea Romania Russia Singapore Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden Thailand Tonga Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Kingdom YemenSome of these countries were under communist control until the early 90's...and here they are trying to help defeat terrorism in any way possible - providing troops, logistical help or teams to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I believe in this one thing - that the fight against Islamic terrorism is a fight to the death for all of us...if we lose it, the West will enter into another Dark Ages that will be full of oppression and bloodshed that will have no equal in the annals of history. WE MUST WIN or everything that is Western culture will disappear, and our children and grandchildren will not be able to enjoy the liberty and freedom that we enjoy today.
Posted by: Eeyore's Swinging Sack at September 11, 2008 01:33 AM (FmHHv)
I was in a conference room, completing my last job with a company, handing over a site to a company, for whom I was going to work for the next day. We had 20 people in our facility and a host of folks on speaker phone who began giving us play by play. We finished our business, I drove to my new job site, told all the mooselimbs to go home and be chill, one wanted to argue right and wrong, I told him to go downtown and protest soo I could go to his funeral. I went and picked up my kids from school, told the wife to come home from work and we prepared for more. When nothing else happened, I knew we'd be in for a long and bloody one with the one hit wonders.
If we're willing to allow a continuing legacy of one hit wonders, with "discussions" and communications with their power base, my great grandchildren have a fight on their hands. If we contiinue to present the salt lick for the radicals, and keep our studs exterminating the salt lickers, we'll eventually overcome them by the rules of natural selection. If not, they do.
suck it.
Posted by: Humanitarian2112 at September 11, 2008 01:33 AM (qM/ym)
Posted by: Humanitarian2112 at September 11, 2008 01:45 AM (qM/ym)
Here's what I remember.
I wasn't sure of the time. I had missed the earlier train into Manhattan that day due to a whole pile of personal catastrophes going on at home and was a bit late to work. As I was settling in, one of the reps called in saying that he was running late due to a fire at the World Trade Center. Doing business in Manhattan, you get used to these sorts of things and the mind instantly shifts to "Great. Downtown is going to be a wreck all day. How do I need to rearrange my schedule and make sure everyone is where the need to be for that day's meetings"
Everyone looked out the window toward downtown, but 1 Penn Plaza is in the way. So, we did what all office people do... check the news sites... except all the sites were crashed, presumably from too much traffic hitting at the same time. It was an open office with low cubicles, so no one had a radio. Next step, make some calls and find out what's up. All phonelines were busy. The largest city in the world, where over 8 million people live on the phone or the internet 24/7 and we can't get a website to load or a phone call out on regular lines. Okay.. cell phones. Nope... only network busy, try again. Scattered incoming calls start coming though from coworker families asking if they are alright. Well, sure... it's just a fire at the World Trade Center, right? We're a couple dozen blocks north across from Madison Square Garden and down the street from the Empire State Building. Whaddaya mean a plane hit the WTC? Must have been some drunken billionaire on his way to Martha's Vinyard in his Sesna. Moron... how do you miss the tallest building in Manhattan? More calls... 2 planes? Nah, someone's confused. People are calling news agencies looking for their 15 minutes of eyewitness fame. How do two drunk billionaire fly their planes into the same building on the same day?
One of the service techs get's creative and rigs up a TV with a close hanger... the conference room is under construction and there's no cable run yet. Then the world changed. Everyone can fill in the blanks from there for the most part.
Manhattan stopped being a real place. Unreality decended in seconds and lasted for nearly a year. People that sat next to eachother on trains for decades without a word were all of a sudden casual aquaintences. But the strangest part was the silence. Dead quiet... even days later. The uncomfortable new sense of aquaintence ended when the train stopped at Grand Central Station each day, as if an unspoken consensus was formed that we'd all arrived at a funeral home. No horns, no radios, the only voices were low whispers. The quiet seemed appropriate until you look toward the unmoving line of ambulances on the West Side Highway and starting hoping one would move... that the would be needed to transport an injured person. But they sat there, silent and unmoving.
In the weeks that followed, the only thing that broke the slience or hushed tones was when our President came on TV. Murmured conversations halted, all attention went to the screen and we all watched with a mixture of admiration for that man and hatred for the ones that did this to us. Then, explosions of sound as cheers erupted through each one of Bush speeches. After he finished, a mixture of reverent revelry and happy anger broke out and we celebrated. All was not lost. We'd been dealt a horrendous blow, but we were still Americans and never more proud to be so. We morned, but past that we were going to show the world that we were stronger and better than any country on earth.
That was real then. For the first time in my life, we WERE the United States of America in name and spirit. Those who were around remeniced about a similar spirit after Pearl Harbor,and were glad to see it again, but also warned us that it tended to fade faster than we thought. We all shrugged it off then. Nope. This was different. They hit our home this time, not a obsure island that was barely a state at the time. They hit civilians, not a military base. This was different.
I wish the old timers had been wrong. At least we can still be proud of their generation. Our, unfortunately has started to become a divided and pointless embarassment as half our leaders and half our country all but deny what happened on 9/11 and how it changed things. To them, it's nothing but a political poker chip, one that never seems to end up in their pile. So, now rather than respect our memories, the lost, the fighters and the doers; they despise them while feining "politically correct" respect when it suits their purpose. They hate us for remembering and for having a sense of honor. Thank goodness not everyone is Keith Olbermann.
Posted by: Damiano at September 11, 2008 01:45 AM (aSQmq)
And I will not watch television today.
Posted by: Jones in CO at September 11, 2008 01:47 AM (KOkrW)
Because of this, the pieces of shit at Gawker (not going to link) can yuk it up at the prospect of nuclear terrorism, Troofers can play in dreamworld, etc etc.
But evil is still out there, waiting for nukes, waiting for us to look like the weak horse again so recruiting can flourish again...
Posted by: someone at September 11, 2008 01:53 AM (2z2WN)
Posted by: runninrebel at September 11, 2008 01:54 AM (qAMnO)
My memories are a lot like others here, but I've never actually written them down. I'll try to keep it short.
I was in college in Boston, second day of classes. My parents had just dropped me off that Sunday and I was already feeling homesick. Both my roommate and I were getting ready for the day when my roommate's friend rushed in and turned on our TV. Both planes had already hit, and the friend, staring at the flames, said, "I bet Bush did this on purpose."
Then I went to my first class (Essay Writing: US Multiculturalism, a requirement), which was shortened--but only because it was the first day of class. Someone asked the instructor if she had heard the news, and she just said, "yeah."
After class, a couple of us students shared an elevator with a faculty member who was in tears. She said that one of the towers had fallen. We all just kinda looked at each other, not sure if we actually believed it.
And then, to get back to my dorm room, I had to cross Boston Common. People were everywhere--and I could hear rumors all around me. One tower had fallen. No, both towers. No, they were still standing. There was a car bombing at the Capitol. There was a car bombing at the Massachusetts Capitol building. There was a car bombing on Mass Ave. These weren't students, these were adults, businesspeople who worked downtown, trading information as they headed for home.
Back in my dorm, one girl down the hall was hysterical. I looked in, saw some kids just kinda hugging each other. Then I shut myself in my room (my roommate wasn't there) and went online, IMing friends and family since the phones weren't working, all while watching the TV reports, trying to figure out what was going on.
Sometime later, a college friend came and got me, and we headed back across the Common to get lunch. By then, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the park was completely deserted. We saw one plane in the air and knew from the reports that it was a military guard. Still, I had to pray, please let that be one of ours. It's one of the eeriest sights I can remember ever seeing.
Of course, within days, students were organizing a peace protest. It wasn't very big, and they got into a shouting match with construction workers on lunch break.
Posted by: Mary at September 11, 2008 01:54 AM (soQn5)
The only thing I could add -- aside from my own personal memory of the event, which is not partticularly unique -- is that much of the opposition from the Left comes in at least two flavors.
There is the hardcore opposition -- the New Left and its descendants who truly do see the US as the enemy in the first instance.
The second, likely much larger group, are progressives who see the US (and Bush especially) as the enemy as a psychological defense mechanism. After all, if Bush/Cheney/GOP/US neocon foreign policy is the problem, they can fix it and make it go away. They think have some measure of control over the situation. That's what drives much of the "war is the ultimate evil" crowd. War is chaos, the breakdown they cannot accept. It is the ultimate regression for Utopians, the ultimate confrontation with the reality of how unperfected humanity is.
Posted by: Karl at September 11, 2008 02:00 AM (acC/M)
Neither of you pummeled him/her?
Posted by: someone at September 11, 2008 02:01 AM (2z2WN)
I sat on the couch to drink my first quiet cup of coffee for the day, with NBC tuned in for the weather report. They broke with the story of a plane having hit a tower, and changed the camera shot to show the scene. As I watched, the second plane hit, and I thought, "Dear God, help us, we are at war." And I heard this oddly high female broadcaster's voice (Couric?) raised in shock, "Has anybody called air traffic control?"
At that point, I lost all remaining shreds of respect for the media, and my respect for Bush increased exponentially throughout the day. And I thanked God in my prayers that night that Al Gore had lost the election.
Posted by: texette at September 11, 2008 02:03 AM (H4R1P)
I vaguely remember reading this post last year. I must have only read a few lines and decided that I really didn't want to reminisce because I didn't remember the similarities of Ace's day and mine until this repost.
Woke up to the radio, late in the morning because I was also in between jobs. Thought the radio guy was performing some radio theater, but there was a certain pitch to his voice. His vocal chords were taught and he was more high pitched than usual. I was thinking that either he had just become a idiot savant actor or there was something not right. He went on about how many people could be in the buildings and how terrible this was. It didn't make any sense.
It still doesn't make sense. A bunch 6 century throwbacks that think they can overcome history and drag us all down into the mud again. It doesn't make sense until you realize how few people are genuinely involved with Western Civilization. How the vast majority of our 'elite betters' are so involved with their own adolescent sense of fairness and self-worth that they can't bring themselves to admit that the West is not a demon plague that has only become successful by destroying other cultures.
Unfortunately, Ace is right. We will be more divided when that nuclear explosion goes off, that reservoir kills a town, or that coordinated attack on the day after Thanksgiving. The only saving grace is that we may have more allies outside of the West because of our cautious and professional military and diplomatic service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Posted by: adamthemad at September 11, 2008 02:04 AM (aVVGO)
Posted by: Mr._Chumpo at September 11, 2008 02:14 AM (i73Rf)
That was perceived as the greater evil.
But also, there was unwillingness to allow or admit that Islamic radicals are what they are. That reality seemed immoral and as impossible to them as those burning towers were to you.
Posted by: SarahW at September 11, 2008 02:14 AM (7sl9X)
Thank you, Ace. One of your best.
I was woken up by a phone call from my best friend, who told me to turn on the tv, a plane had run into one of the towers. It wasn't quite a minute later when the second plane hit.
What I remember the most about that afternoon was how quiet it was, with no planes flying overhead. I lived near PDX, not right in the flight path but close enough to see and hear the planes. The quiet was odd, eerie.
It was such a beautiful, sunny northwest fall day, it just seemed unreal. And I was immediately pissed, ready to kill whoever had a hand in the attack.
I was at the recruiter's office two days later to get back into the Corps.
Posted by: DPR VIII at September 11, 2008 02:16 AM (4XUD3)
I had just started my senior year in high school. My dad had come into my room to wake me up and told me two planes had hit the WTC towers in New York and the news was calling it an attack. Having never been to New York nor know much about its skyline, I didn't know what he was talking about and didn't think it was a big deal. When it sank in, I shot out of bed and ran downstairs to the kitchen, where my parents were watching TV. I couldn't believe it. I went to school, listening to Bill Handel on my way like I usually did. I remember him announcing the first and then the second tower coming down and the human chains that formed in the falling debris. I remember getting to school and hearing that another plane had gone down in PA. I only had 4 classes my senior year so I went home early and the roads were deserted. Everything had shut down. My dad had come home early from JPL because they'd told everyone to go home. I spent the rest of the day watching Peter Jennings and the footage, thinking, "It looks like a movie. How can it be real when it looks just like a movie?"
It was 9/11 that plunged me into politics and led to my discovering I'm a conservative. I wanted to understand, to know why this happened. Last year I was able to go to New York for the first time and I made sure we went to the WTC site. I didn't think after 6 years, it would have that much of an impact on me. I stood there, looking at the names written on the boards and simply cried. To this day stories from that horrible morning bring me to tears. I can't read or listen to them or I'll bawl like a baby. I saw "United 93" when it was in theatres and I'd never cried so hard in a movie in my entire life. I wish idiot liberal douchebags could get past their narcissism and hatred and see it as an attack on the good lives they lead here, but they never will. I, for one, will never forget. And I'll never surrender. I'm glad for blogs like these. It comforts me to know that there are people who will always remember and will always fight. I haven't traveled very much outside of the US, but I know, despite all its flaws, this is the best damned country in the world.
Posted by: wherestherum at September 11, 2008 02:20 AM (wET2y)
I blacked out for a while, that morning. I had seen the shots before I left for work of the first impact, and at work we saw the second hit. At the time I worked for a small software dev company - all of us crowded around a monitor hooked to an old computer that we rigged a clotheshangar antenna through a TV card someone had in their desk. After the second hit, I remember saying, softly, like a benediction, "War." Just, "War," a breath, a whisper. And it was like I was surrounded by a chorus, all breathing, whispering yet nearly singing - "War, it is war." And not in any voice was a sound of glee, or anticipation, but of deep, deep sadness and an unforgiving anger.
Our boss walked in, and I remember how hard he tried to not show how shaken he was. He just said, "Go home. We're not open. Go to your families." and we left.
I do not remember the drive home except for the voice of one of the morning talk radio people, local, patiently saying that "Perhaps it is not yet time to consider Genocide, but we can get back to that in a bit." I remember laughing hollowly at how carefully he said that, but we were all feeling like we had to hold on a bit longer, there were people still hurting in those towers. Not now, perhaps in a bit, we'll revisit the topic after these messages.
I remember closing the door and turning on the television, seeing those pople falling like rain, seeing the replays interrupted by the first tower crumbling. Then, it was like a flicker of time passed, my hands still holding my keys as I sobbed as the second tower fell.
Then, and only then, did I feel rage. Rage pure and, for want of a better word, holy. Rage for my neighbors deaths, for their families' pain, for the children turned into ash and grease and pictures on a wall.
I don't remember much of that day, only bits, flashes. I do remember Michael Moore later that week, complaining that the terrorists didn't kill just Republicans like he wanted them to.
I've never hated a single person more in my life than that chunk of fat communist shit.
And at that point, I knew - next time there won't be anyone shifting their feet uncomfortably. Next time there ain't going to be unbelieving stares. Next time, the chorus will be louder, and those like him - well, they'll find out what the difference between "opponent" and "enemy" actually is.
Posted by: Inspector Asshole at September 11, 2008 02:23 AM (dgwqi)
Ace, I was at USN Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, less than a year out from working at the late great software chain Electronics Boutique and the still-happy hotel chain Holiday Inn. My class was taking the dreaded Seamanship exam, with its focus on plotting the hated manuevering boards, and happy that we were taking Test 1, the "easier" of the three possible tests.
So, the test was temporarily stopped by the proctor, and my class was mostly concerned that we'd miss out on Test 1 and have to take a more difficult version. But then a lieutenant commander -aviator of some type; he was wearing his "pajamas"- runs in and shouts, "WE ARE AT WAR!" And so we were.
It was a little while before us Officer Candidates were told the whole story of what was happening. We were eventually allowed to finish our tests (I passed - barely) and were invited into our Class Officer's office to watch the coverage of this despicable attack on our country. I remember very well that we were watching, of all things, MTV. Later, we were invited down to the classroom in our Battallion building to watch President Bush address the nation. I don't remember what he said. But I understood we would have to give a hell of a beating to those responsible. And I remember all of our bloodthirsty USMC Drill Instructors taking a break from beating us into shape and instead staring at images of aircraft crashing into towers and looking like they wanted to kill somebody RIGHT NOW.
It was, and is, a hell of a memory. I missed out on the pounding of the Taliban, though I did have my turn in deploying to the Gulf and supporting TLAM strikes that hopefully killed large numbers of murdering Ba'ath shitheads. But I don't think I've done enough. We all have a great burden to carry. This day, and every day, we should be proud to be Americans, citizens of a nation that still holds dearly the principles on which it was founded. So many strive to destroy us from within and without, but if we remain mindful of our DUTY and LOYALTY we may yet prevail. As a wiser man than me once said, "These are the times that try men's souls."
God save America.
Posted by: fiatboomer at September 11, 2008 02:23 AM (c0NSb)
Thanks everyone. It's interesting, though sad, to read everyone's experiences from that day.
Posted by: ace at September 11, 2008 02:30 AM (1WR4H)
Posted by: SarahW at September 11, 2008 02:48 AM (7sl9X)
Posted by: SarahW at September 11, 2008 02:52 AM (7sl9X)
Professorblather
Thank God you two posted; also the kid who was eleven on 9-11-07.
I think it is too easy to believe that we're f'd beyond all hope. One only has to look at our outstanding military men and women. They may or may not have to endure the cheep crap from the one world whacko's on a daily basis, but they are tuned in I'm sure to the MSM and yet, they do what they do for all of us; despite religion, race, or creed. That is why the goat eaters hate us. We tolerate dissension; lo we welcome it for in the crucible of American politics freedom must be exposed to the harshest, most virulent ideas lest we grow too accustomed to not having to fight it out. I'm not into long posts; so I'm going to cut it with this. Throw the Dems off the hill and out of your city halls. Take them back America.
Posted by: Mr._Chumpo at September 11, 2008 02:57 AM (i73Rf)
We need to see those images. They do not just belong to the families of the dead. They belong to all of us and we need to see those horrible, jarring images of what could have happened to any of us. We can't ignore enemies who shake their fist in our faces.
I take national security seriously and thank God we have a President who was willing to do what was necessary to create a base from which we could fight terrorists another continent away.
Creating a fledgling democracy is just a beautiful, sweet byproduct of taking it to them instead of them coming here. Saddam was no longer able to use any kind of weapon as leverage against us. And since he was dead he couldn't be bought by any terrorist groups to stage any actions against the us on our own soil.
We have sucked so much financing, manpower and weapons from the terrorists it's been SEVEN years since they have managed to successfully put another attack together. What is more important to terrorists? Another attack here or preventing a Democratic State in the middle of terrorist central?
Those of you who enlisted after 9/11 because of 9/11 have helped to keep your country safe. Thank you.
SEVEN YEARS.
Posted by: mare at September 11, 2008 03:05 AM (xMkst)
9/11 seems like it was just yesterday. It's the most historic day probably ever in my life. I still get very emotional about it.
Today is a very tough day for me.
Never Forget.
Posted by: thebronze at September 11, 2008 03:11 AM (YlH3h)
Posted by: perineumpirate at September 11, 2008 03:17 AM (rKSJ1)
Posted by: dan at September 11, 2008 03:17 AM (d61bk)
Posted by: Jimmy at September 11, 2008 03:34 AM (gJFp6)
Jean Chretien, the Canadian Prime Minister said on September 14th 2001 "In the end, it is not the words of your enemies that you remember, it is the silence of your friends."
He could have been talking about himself! On September 12th he said "And I do think that the Western world is getting too rich in relation to the poor world and necessarily will be looked upon as being arrogant and self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. The 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more."
That was a real proud fucking day to be a Canadian! The S.O.B. wouldn't even go to New York for the longest time the way many other leaders did until the Canadian public embarrassed him into it. The Iranians held a candlelight vigil and he couldn't even pretend to give a fuck.
Yearly, I have heard every Sept 11th , the memorials and never really paid them much attention because they were bullshit. You have liberal newscasters sitting there trying to pretend to be solemn and concerned while trying to work in a cheap dig in about politics. What you said wasn’t bullshit.
What I felt on Sept 11th was utter blind rage. It was strange. I knew it was real, but I had a hard time really grasping it. It had a movie like feel about it, until the Towers collapsed and the huge white clouds of dust swept through the streets. That was when I realized it was really happening. It was the people running through the streets that made the unbelievable suddenly believable.
Posted by: Travis at September 11, 2008 03:45 AM (/XCyf)
Audacious and proud and no one can ever take that from them. Citizen soldiers indeed.
Posted by: 13times at September 11, 2008 04:29 AM (zlSE6)
On a brilliant and cloudless fall day, my friend Mark borded a plane bound for LA and a new career as an NHL scout.
At about that same time, I was enjoying the cool breeze against me as I rode by motorcycle in to work. As we were pulling the bikes out of the wearhouse, a guy came out of the shop next dooor and told us that a plane had hit the WTC. We went to the show room, fired up the big screen, and I remember thinking as I watched the smoke rise, "wow, somebody really f'd up". Not long after, out of nowhere, the 2nd plane hit, and I blurted out, "That's no accident". I didn't know it at the moment, but I had just watched my friend die.
Later that evening, emotionally wrung out and numbed by watching the news all day, still not able to grasp what I had seen, I went upstairs and flipped to Sportscenter. I thought I recognized a name on the bottom of the screen crawler ...Kings...Bavis...travelling...I didn't catch the whole item. I kept watching, eyes glued to the crawler, the commercials and announcers not even registering in my ears. And then I read what I was desperately hoping not to read. I waited another cycle, and it was the same news. Mark and his boss had been on the 2nd plane. Fuck.
The next morning, riding to work, it finally hit me. I remember crying inside my helmet, for my friend and for all of them. And feeling absolutely powerless, and frustrated, and pissed off.
So I'm not a guy to get trutherish around. I'm not violent by nature, but throw that shit my way, and we will fucking fight. And it will not end well for the truther, I guaran-damn-tee it.
Gossdspeed, Markie. Gimme a T...
Posted by: Roachman at September 11, 2008 06:43 AM (hNhHc)
Posted by: juno at September 11, 2008 07:02 AM (7uTCa)
Regarding any "unity", my daughters are in NYC and once we found out they were ok (which took a while because communications to there were screwed) we started getting calls from friends in France to make sure everybody was ok. But domestically I didn't have any illusions that the Kuciniches of the political world would make a show of being in support of the country before they began to undermine it again. In fact I told my conservative buds starting that day "There is a percentage of people here that are glad this happened." Most of them agreed immediately; a few started to say something contrary to that but thought for a second and nodded their heads.
Posted by: Captain Hate at September 11, 2008 08:02 AM (r9x7Q)
I go back and forth between agreeing with your view that the left believes war is the greater enemy, and the view that the left just genuinely hates American and sides with her enemies. I have a lot of a friends on the left, so the latter view is a painful one for me to hold for any length of time.
I've got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach today, as I do every 9-11. Today I have a job interview to go to. It's going to be hard to focus appropriately.
Posted by: Farmer Joe at September 11, 2008 08:11 AM (nYv/9)
Posted by: Dogstar at September 11, 2008 08:19 AM (6AcsH)
Memories dear,
Never forgotten.
God Bless US.
Thank you, Ace, for thoughtfully reminding us of your 9/11/01 experience.
"they were struck down by the cultists of a Murder God."
"Liberals held that greater than any enemy was warfare itself. The necessary implications of this were that all possible courses of action were preferable to the United States engaging in acts of warfare, and further, that it must be true that the United States had within it the power to avoid all war simply by modifying its own behavior."
Liberals SAY warfare is the enemy and demand America modify its behavior. [Behavioral Psychology Mask Facade, whitened sepulchres]
Liberals declare WARFARE the enemy, yet are the WARFARE agents themselves. Who attacks all decency? Liberals. Who denies all proper etiquette and decorum? Liberals. Who attacks voters on their way to the polls, or delegates on their way to their Convention? Liberals.
Liberals require Conservatives to modify conservative behavior, unwilling to modify their own Liberal warfare against America emanating from Capitol Hill through every neighborhood where Liberals coalesce.
"Let there be Peace On Earth and let it begin with me" is not what Liberals sing at rallies, conventions, and in the booth.
The hoary fact remains, Liberals Are Warfare, the tools of revolution.
Liberals, socialists, internationally behave as described in: "an America that blunders and bullies around the world like a drunken soccer rowdy with a can of petrol and an appetite for destruction."
Liberals Change By Force. Liberal Force not only deprives us of rights, it inflicts pain, suffering, and TERRORISM.
"They have a hammer. But their nails can only be driven deep into American wood, staking through American flaws and American blunders and American arrogances, and cannot be driven into any other external enemy. To even acknowledge an "enemy" is to acknowledge that sometimes war is quite justifiable -- even necessary, both practically and morally -- and that they cannot permit themselves to do."
The bottom line: Liberals feign pacifism.
Pacifism (that Liberals are without) would provide cover for their own iniquities, as Liberals deny their own identity. Liberals were impotent to protect America from 9/11 and deny any responsibility for their own faults that led to the tragedy. Who hides his birth certificate and college transcripts? Who's senatorial record leaves him the MOST liberal of all? And who has yet to acknowledge to himself and all others who he is, let alone who sent him, or what "Change" means? Obama, and his Liberal masters who MOST CERTAINLY ARE NOT PACIFIST.
Posted by: maverick muse at September 11, 2008 09:02 AM (F1b/5)
BUILD THE FUCKING TOWERS AGAIN, ALREADY, DAMMIT!
Or not, I don't know, but stop with the light shows and the ceremonies and nurturing the site as nothing more than a tourist site hole in the ground. It's unseemly. Stop being such pussies about what happened, New York pols!
The only ceremonies I have any patience for at this point are groundbreaking ceremonies. Seven years of "poor me" is not the American way. It's the squishy liberal way, and that, like I said, is unAmerican.
Posted by: Kensington at September 11, 2008 09:36 AM (xFNQx)
Posted by: Looking Glass at September 11, 2008 09:44 AM (/j9WY)
Thanks, ace, TusharD, and everyone who has shared their memories.
9/11 stands out for me because we'd had a hailstorm earlier in 2001, and the roofers showed up as The Wife is freaking out over the TV, and I have to leave to go to work (next to our local federal building). Not much work got done, especially with people freaking out worrying I also remember my boss at the time saying if we needed to we could go home, but with the implication we were pussies if we did. Asshole.
I remember watching. and watching.and watching.
I remember driving around with The Wife and seeing the line at the blood bank going out the door and around the building.
I remember an inchoate, white hot rage. I feel it everytime I think about 9/11.
Never forget.
Never surrender.
Posted by: Harry Callahan at September 11, 2008 09:48 AM (fagDq)
It was quite surreal having to defend the USA from a bunch of New Yorkers, especially on the issue of terrorism. As I kept making my points, their anger shifted from America to me, and the night unfortunately ended on a less than cordial note.
I've always suspected much of the reason for the rabid anti-Americanism on the left (including the media of course) is due to what America represents. I'm not sure about the anti-war thing though, because they sure know how to turn a blind eye to any war the US isn't involved in.
Anyway. My deepest sympathy for all who lost loved ones on this day in 2001, and gratitude to president Bush and America for making all the tough decisions after 9/11 and for actually following through on them. You've got friends all over the place, even though you wouldn't know it from reading European newspapers.
Posted by: Chris at September 11, 2008 09:52 AM (QIfim)
I think Krauthammer had it right when he recently said that history will look back at Bush in awe for keeping us safe after 9-11.
Posted by: joe at September 11, 2008 09:58 AM (TOly9)
Posted by: adolfo_velasquez at September 11, 2008 09:58 AM (20VI8)
Posted by: RajivVindaloo at September 11, 2008 09:59 AM (Rn2+D)
It was the most amazing sight, the line was literally out the door, and around the building...some 400+ strong. After I was there for awhile a big truck pulled up and two guys hopped out and opened the back door. Inside were dozens of 6 foot long sandwiches and cases of bottled water. Apparently one of the guys owned a deli or something and of friend of his was on line with us and called him. The guy, I never caught his name or the the name of his store, just started making food and brought it down.
I was there for about 4 or 5 hours when they realized they couldn't collect blood from everyone and started giving us appointments over the next few days. Little did we know there was very little need for blood donations, for the most part people either walked away or died.
Posted by: DrewM. at September 11, 2008 10:04 AM (hlYel)
The thing that really gets me is the fact that the site is still little more than a whole in the ground.
Me too. That's shameful and weak, and everyone responsible for holding up reconstruction should be made notorious. A giant fucking gap in one of the world's greatest cities would be inexcusable for any reason, but one caused by murderers that takes a decade to remedy is unacceptable.
Build giant buildings adorned with angry eagles, and get it done.
Posted by: UGAdawg at September 11, 2008 10:09 AM (vfDNl)
Posted by: NickG at September 11, 2008 10:20 AM (XjVoo)
Ace - many thanks for being willing to tell the truth. We have 2 enemies to fight.
Tushar D's comment is a good one "I sometimes wonder if we have become too civil. For most of human existance, your enemies were not treated as humans."
I don't wonder - I'm certain we're too civil. Germany and Japan were not handled with kid gloves. We bombed their cities with the intent of killing civilians. We won, and those two nations now pose ZERO threat. They learned their lesson. An unprovoked, murderous attack of the kind we experienced on 9/11 deserves retribution with unlimited violence. A few depopulated cities would have gone a lot further toward insuring peace than anything else we've done so far. Perhaps we should take a page from Rome's book - crucify an AQ every so many feet all the way from Baghdad to the sea...
Posted by: Reactionary at September 11, 2008 10:22 AM (H7yZC)
I was at work-which at that time was teaching community college (now I'm full-time military). A friend and I had gone to the cafeteria for some coffee and the TV showed the first tower burning. I thought it was an accident (like the B-17 crash years ago) and headed back to my office. By the time I got there, the second plane had hit and I knew it was "directed action". I went ahead with class, trying to figure out what was goiing on and students were filtering in with reports of what was supposedly happening in D.C. (remember the reports about a bomb at the State department?).
I went ahead and cancelled my second class for the day. The next day I tried to talk to my classes about what had happened, but many did not seem particuarly interested-which stunned me. I knew that this was a world changing event, but far too many of my students seemed to think that it had no bearing on their lives. The college had a predictably sad memorial a few days later, and I knew then that I was going to butt heads with many of my colleagues because I wasn't sad-I was angry.
I went to drill that weekend at Ft. Pickett. There was security on the gate for the first time ever and I had to show my ID to get on post-at least there the idea that we were at war was being taken seriously. The battalion was doing gunnery and most of the guys were fired up-one kept talking about going to pluck Bin Laden's whiskers-and I thought "Hell yeah" screw this self-absorbed "I'm so scared and sad" craven bullshit. Well, it was the beginning of the end for my academic career.
Right now I can hear the sound of gunfire behind me while the unit I am supporting is doing weapons quals. I'd rather listen to that than some spoiled teenager talk about how boring Geography is. These guys are mechanics and-other than the officers-few have college degrees, but they all understand where their duty lies. I'm certain I know who has gotten the better education.
Posted by: CavMedic at September 11, 2008 10:24 AM (tc3dx)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
With the exception of the stupid Gilbert Gottfried jokes throughout, a good examination of the nonsense that has gotten in the way of reconstruction. Obviously NSFW for language. Put the headphones on for this one.
In short, Pataki and the LMDC need to be called out and publicly flogged.
Posted by: Slublog at September 11, 2008 10:34 AM (R8+nJ)
Posted by: Evil Old Rich White Guy at September 11, 2008 10:42 AM (Tcw2v)
Being a glass-is-half-full guy by nature, I want to share an optimistic memory from that time, not the day itself, but the aftermath.
I was out to lunch with my two best friends from work, lovely women, one German the other Japanese. They were baffled by the sudden blossoming of American flags on every car, lawn, mailbox and lapel in sight. It was something you'd never see, never contemplate in Germany of Japan.
So I tried to explain American patriotism, how it differed from the vile nationalism that both of their countries had had to purge from their systems. And whether or not I got through to them or explained myself well enough, I had an epiphany. My two best friends were German and Japanese. My mother still hates Krauts and Japs, there are some generational things that she can't overcome.
But when those two nations channelled their most evil impulses and unleashed them on the world we Americans kicked the crap out of them. And then we did the unprecedented in the history of conflict and conquest. We fixed them. We befriended them, gave them a start on rebuilding, guided them to harnessing their most decent impulses in recreating a civil society.
2001 was just 56 years after a calamitous war for the soul of civilization, yet me having lunch with (and to be frank, sexual fantasies about) a young German and young Japanese woman was the most natural thing in the world. That to me is proof of the long-term power of the American ideal. It works because it's right. It will keep working as long as we remain American in those ineffable ways that can't be bumper-stickered.
Posted by: Prufrock at September 11, 2008 10:48 AM (vISQb)
Thanks, Ace.
Posted by: FireHorse at September 11, 2008 11:03 AM (+dm+A)
I remember walking into my boss' office and we were going over the month end financials, and he said "did you hear that?". He listens to sports radio so I thought it had something to do with sports. He then said "they say a small plane crashed into the World Trade Center". I was thinking it was a single prop, then I thought it must be something becasue of the air space restrictions (my brother at the time worked for INS at JFK). Then we heard that another plane hit the other tower, and my first response was "it's an attack", my boss looked at me strange and said "do you think so?"
So I went to my desk and started looking at the news online. I immediately got a call from my mother she said we were trying to find out were my oldest brother was becasue he was flying to the west coast, and also my brother that worked at JFK also had an office downtown that he was at a few days a week. My mother called me back a few minutes later and told me my oldest brother had flown out on Monday and was in Salt Lake City, she had just spoken to my brother that worked at JFK and he told her to "go home and stay home".
The company put televisions in the main lobby and as soon as they did the first tower fell. Needless to say the rest of the day was a haze, we decided to stay at work and manage the best we could. After I had talked to my mother I called my wife and told her to go home, and she did.
My biggest memory was driving home and seeing the looks on people's faces, they looked angry. The whole thing didn't hit me until a day later when we finally got to talk to my brother's wife in NY. I asked how he was doing. I could tell she didn't know what to do or say to him. She said to me "he got home after being at work for almost 30 hours, he was wearing some body armor and the first thing he said was "I lost a lot of friends" and she asked how could she respond to that" so she just hugged him and took him inside. Her brother is on the NYPD, but was not at the scene.
My brother's co-workers that were in the downtown office went to help out before the collapse, a few of them were killed. My brother was not there that day becasue on 9/12 he was going to be part of the group taking Omar Abdel-Rahman to his sentencing. My other brother in Salt lake City ended up getting together with 2 other guys and renting a car and drove back to Massachusetts.
On Friday night, we went out for my father in law's birthday, and I remember I told everyone I felt guilty going out and trying to enjoy myself. Some things have changed over the years and some have not. I got into politics after 9/11 because I could not believe the crap I was hearing. It was vile and most of it still is. These people have no idea of what they are talking about, and it scares me when I hear some politicians saying the same things as people I would call "kooks".
A post for another time is me theory on how the Camp David Agreements got Al Qaeda started, not intentionally, but how sometimes when you think you have a "peacefull" solution it has the exact opposite effect.
Posted by: Craig at September 11, 2008 11:05 AM (0nkpj)
from www.lileks.com - 2002
I watched part of the CBS 9/11 special last night. (I don’t know if it’s been broadcast yet; I got the DVD at Target.) It is a pity that this particular historical record contains so much Bryant Gumbel, but it has its moments. In the middle of an interview with a woman who saw the first plane hit, she gasps Oh My God, another one - and it reminds you again of that moment, the point when you grasped exactly what was happening, and the ground swayed. I’d say it brought it all back but it never went away. There hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought about it.
That bothers some people. There’s an attitude in some quarters that there’s something unhealthy about thinking about 9/11, certainly in dwelling on the details. They’ll allow a certain amount of regret and dismay. They’ll permit you a brief spasm of anger, but it had best be followed with a nuanced assessment of American foreign policy. Remark that you had a nightmare about your daughter getting smallpox or a nuke in New York, and they’ll roll their eyes; tut tut the lad’s gone mad. These people are no doubt bracing themselves for the first anniversary, but for different reasons than you might have. They can’t stand people who won’t let go of 9/11. Once they washed the ash off their car it was over for them; why can’t it be over for everyone? Do you really think your inability to move along makes you a better person? Stop waving the bloody shirt. Send it to the cleaners already, and leave Iraq alone.
Tonight I was googling around looking for a picture of Christine Hanson, the daughter of Kim Ji-Soo and Peter Hanson. She was two. The family was flying to Disneyland when the terrorists slaughtered the flight attendants, stabbed the pilots to death, and drove the plane into the building. (Yes yes, we know what happened; don’t be so dramatic, and Disneyland? Please. You’re getting bathetic.) My wife came up with Gnat to say goodnight while I was searching; I gave the little tot a peck on the lips and told her daddy loved her, and went back to work. As I heard the crib rail go up I heard a particularly deafening jet pass overhead - one of the old unhushed cargo planes that makes the china rattle at Jasperwood - and I remembered something from last night.
.......
Little Christine was (my daughter's)age, give or take a month; bin Laden’s lackeys killed her - and did so to ensure that other fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters died as well, preferably by the tens of thousands. This little girl’s death wasn’t even a comma in the manifesto they hoped to write. They made sure that her last moments alive were filled with horror and blood, screams and fear; they made sure that the last thing she saw was the desperate faces of her parents, insisting that everything was okay, we’re going to see Mickey, holding out a favorite toy with numb hands, making up a happy lie. And then she was fire and then she was ash.
I feel the same anger I did on 9/11; I feel the same overwhelming grief. Nothing in my heart has changed, and God forbid it ever does.
Posted by: Evil Old Rich White Guy at September 11, 2008 11:07 AM (Tcw2v)
Posted by: Slublog at September 11, 2008 11:19 AM (R8+nJ)
Prufrock at September 11, 2008 10:48 AM (vISQb)
You're so right. I would think about that at work often when I worked for Tokio Marine and Fire Insurance Company and especially on Dec 7th. Thinking back it may not have been funny or the right thing to do but I jokingly gave the various Japanese account managers through the years grief on that day. I'm sure they thought about an August day to themselves.
Anyway, 9-11 was a weird mixture of rage, pride and sorrow for me. Maybe too soon but sorrow almost immediately took a backseat to rage. I wanted action and I wanted it yesterday. I come from a familiy of NYC firemen on both sides except my father who was a career military man. Nothing is as frustrating as not being able to do anything to release that rage on the proper parties. Unfortunately the left continues to flame my rage.
Posted by: polynikes at September 11, 2008 11:24 AM (m2CN7)
Posted by: toby928 at September 11, 2008 11:34 AM (evdj2)
I know someone whose wife was not in the towers because she stopped to vote in the primary before work.
I know a firefighter who lived because he grabbed hold of a beam as one tower collapsed and rode it out.
I know entire neighborhoods in the outer boroughs were devastated by the loss of hundreds of cops and firefighters that day.
Days after the attacks, I went into NYC to visit my daughter, a college freshman who was coming into town from PA for a pre-paid group visit to the theater district. I recall standing in the middle of a completely deserted Broadway at 6 pm, not seeing a car moving in either direction, with that plume of smoke coming from downtown.
I find Trutherism the most offensive belief on the planet. I hope no one ever spouts that garbage to my face, because I don't think I could control myself. My only defense could be that Trutherism = fighting words.
Posted by: joe at September 11, 2008 11:42 AM (TOly9)
"Thank God for the Leftists who did NOT join in with the blame America crowd, the ones who did NOT forget."
I'm thinking of Christopher Hitchens and Armed Liberal, primarily, but there are more, some I just met briefly, some I knew for years and never suspected they'd say the stuff they did. Bless every one of them.
Still reading the comments. Very good.
Posted by: Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight at September 11, 2008 11:47 AM (gIga4)
To expand, just a little bit, on the point I made earlier, in the weeks following the attack, New York put up a display which shot two luminous colums of light into the sky from the WTC site. In 2001, it was cathartic and moving. In 2002, it was still so.
In 2008, I find it disgusting because of the fact that nothing has been built on the site. Instead, maudlin liberals get to clutch themselves over a light show which grows steadily more pathetic every year. Initially, it was a sign of American spirit and perseverance; now, it is a sign of weakness, and the elevation of touchy-feely woe-is-me isn't-it-so-sad hand-wringing over can-do American exceptionalism.
BUILD SOMETHING POSITIVE, DAMMIT!
Posted by: Kensington at September 11, 2008 12:02 PM (kFwRi)
BUILD THE FUCKING TOWERS AGAIN, ALREADY, DAMMIT!
Indeed. I have always been dismayed that the Towers were not rebuilt, better and at least one story taller than they were, with an anti-aircraft SAM battery on top of one of them.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at September 11, 2008 12:15 PM (ujg0T)
We here in Britain feel very close to our American kin today.
My company held a two minute silence this morning and my prayers were for the families of those lost on that horrible, horrible day.
Never forget that you have many true friends around the world who share your pain and grieve for your loss.
As always, I will be praying for all our Service Men and Women on active duty and their families.
God Bless the United States of America
Posted by: The Thin Man at September 11, 2008 12:19 PM (7cE0t)
Excellent essay. Thanks for reposting.
Posted by: maxxman at September 11, 2008 12:22 PM (OYeDg)
These fuckers are doomed, in much the same way as slavery, the Confederacy, and free silver. It will take time for them to age and die off, and for young fools to wise up, but it's coming.
Great post, Ace.
Posted by: trentk269 at September 11, 2008 12:28 PM (WUM14)
And how richly ironic that the very first people to be hanged or lined up in front of firing squads or buried in the ground up to their necks and then stoned to death by those charming mullahs who'd be running things, would be those who are currently leading the "liberal," appease-the-Muslims front:
homosexuals, radical feminists, fornicators, adulterers, abortionists, pornographers, earth-worsippers, ACLUers, etc., etc.
Posted by: mohammeds9yearoldwife at September 11, 2008 12:30 PM (wgyYI)
I was at work, over an hour early for a change. Coworker's were listening to the radio and told me about the first plane. I work in a library so I setup our tv to watch the news. Everyone thought it was a small plane, an accident, just news. We felt bad but it was still just news. Then the second plane hit. I shut the tv off and my coworkers thought I was crazy. I told them I needed to move the tv to a public place so that when we opened the public could watch too, this wasn't just news any more. I watched the towers burn and I prayed to myself. I prayed the buildings would stand. I had watched documentaries about the first bombing in the basement, especially after OK city. How the towers could have come down. I prayed they wouldn't. We are in Fairfield County, CT. We knew that there were people there we knew. Then the towers fell. I hadn't voted for Bush or Gore but I thanked God Bush had won. I would never cast a "protest vote" again. My wife called and said she wanted to get my daughter from school but wasn't sure if she wasn't being crazy and I told her to go.
I remembered at that moment a conversation my best friend and I had about Saddam Hussein back in 1996. He had always been conservative, a Forbes supporter that year. He was worried about a nuclear attack from Iraq, that we should not have left Saddam standing. I agreed about Saddam but I told him he was nuts to think any country's government work ever attack us with a nuclear weapon. He asked why? He said they could hit NYC or DC. I said they wouldn't try because they had to know we would respond "in kind". The American Public would demand no less than what was done to us. We were not like other countries in that respect. We could absorb one hit but one hit would be all of Iraq.
Every day I get up and honestly try, with all my heart to be kind. It has been a conscious effort since I was a teenager. When the second tower fell I stopped feeling kind, for that day and many to come. Eventually I got back mostly to feeling kind and trying to always be kind. I still can't read books or watch movies about it. I donate blood every 60 days like clockwork, before 911 I had done it twice in 20 years. But on 911, every 911, I don't feel kind, I still feel "in kind".
Posted by: Rocks at September 11, 2008 12:46 PM (Q1lie)
I'm a former die-hard Democrat, so take heart that some liberals did wise up that day.
Posted by: Max Power at September 11, 2008 12:49 PM (q177U)
Posted by: Kensington at September 11, 2008 12:57 PM (kFwRi)
Mine is not such a stirring story. I was headed to work, fresh out of graduate school, when my father called me to tell me that the first aircraft had gone in, and when it happened, his two patients in the waiting room (both F-15 jocks) sprinted out the door and headed back to NAS New Orleans. I found out later that they were in the air less than 30 min later with a full load of Sidewinders and AMRAAMs, preparing to down any aircraft in the air.
I spoke later that day to my friends in NY, who for the first time realized that there was evil in the world, not perpetrated by the US. That lasted about a month.
I reflect upon it now and note with some satisfaction that the generation of protestors in Vietnam are passing out of the grasp of power... they have their willing sycophants, but their numbers are slowly decreasing- resulting in the remaining ones yowling more loudly.
As before- what we do have an opportunity to do in this country is educate people about what it means to love your country. For every imbecile academe out there, there is a new arrival to this country who loves our nation. For every Ward Churchill, thre is a Bobby Holik (Czech immigrant, plays for the Devils in the NHL- patriotic to the hilt and an unapologetic conservative)... for every Code Pink tool, there is our beloved Tushar D (never have I been more grateful than today that you are in this country, Tushar... we are truly blessed in this land to have you here). In this election cycle, we have seen the veil of advocacy journalism ripped away, exposing the venom of the left, to be countered with the open arms of the right. For every fool who blames the world's ills on the US, there is one of us to counter them with a reminder that our nation is the beacon... the shining city on the hill. We do not face it alone- we have true friends abroad- but it is time to reexamine those friendships, that we might note and reward the new generation of nations taht truly have our backs.
We do, in this 21st century, offer the world a path forward... regrettably, we will have to drag our own nation's leftists into it. Where America leads, our friends will follow, and our foes will be unable to resist the basic human call to freedom.
Wow. That was all over the place, but thanks for reading.
tmi3rd
Posted by: tmi3rd at September 11, 2008 01:04 PM (Gz0u5)
Today is a day to look back in anger. It is also a day to look back in sadness but perhaps we should all spare a moment to look back with gratititude to those who stepped up to face this menace, particularly our flawed but courageous President who has been given little credit for 7 years of relative peace at home.
God bless George Bush and all those who serve.
Posted by: captkidney at September 11, 2008 01:13 PM (/RDxc)
I was a sophomore in high school on 9/11/01. I remember being in choir and the teacher coming in white as a sheet saying something about a plane hitting the WTC. Like a lot of people I thought it was just a private plane doing something stupid. It never crossed my mind that it was a deliberate attack. But something about the look on the teacher's face said this was serious business. I remember the whole class going dead silent, and instinctively I pulled out my rosary to pray. (In Mississippi we never bothered too much with that whole "no prayer in schools" thing.)
Then in the next class someone said, "A plane hit the WTC." We said, "Oh yeah, we already heard about that." "No, this is another plane." Another plane? Another plane?
It just didn't seem real. And then we turned on the TV and I saw the people falling, falling so far down, and it became horribly real.
I remember going to a college info night with my dad that night. We had to drive to the "big city" about an hour away. It was very, very eerie. The roads were totally empty. The lack of airplanes in the sky was conspicuous. Our world had changed in an instant.
Incidentally, the college info night was hosted by a couple of "elite" colleges, places like Harvard and Duke. I am glad I didn't go anywhere like that, even if it means my resume will be sneered at by people like Barry O. I chose to go to the state university and the people I met there were the salt of the earth. Many of my classmates worked part-time to pay for their school. Some did a few years at community college and then began the slow, painful crawl to an engineering degree. They were all there for a degree, not to protest against the Iraq war or what have you. They were too busy working their asses off to bother much about that kind of thing. Parents - sending your kids to a college like that may just be the best thing you can do for them. (That, and there were three times as many College Republicans at my alma mater as College Democrats. The yearbook picture was great.)
Posted by: Angry Beaver at September 11, 2008 01:14 PM (7sVL1)
My eldest child was only a year old at the time and I had always wondered how I would explain how this thing happened. I think I'll sit down with her tonight and tell her about the children that died in the towers while on a school field trip.
I wish that they would make a docu-drama of that.
The schools will never even touch the subject.
Posted by: Cluebat from Exodar at September 11, 2008 01:24 PM (y67bA)
I am tired of hearing the term 'tragedy' associated with 9/11. A tragedy is a hurricane. A tragedy is an earthquake.
This wasn't a 'tragedy', it was an 'atrocity'.
Posted by: pistolero at September 11, 2008 01:28 PM (QuCVu)
I remember going outside in the middle of that clear day 7 years ago and seeing no aircraft in the sky.
Normally, you can see the planes out of NYC heading south, the Philadelphia traffic heading west and a few heading into Allentown going north, but on that day .. there wasn’t a one in the sky.
Meanwhile, you knew from the TV that their was chaos in at least 3 directions around you.
It was eerie.
Posted by: Neo at September 11, 2008 01:30 PM (Yozw9)
Posted by: Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight at September 11, 2008 01:38 PM (gIga4)
Posted by: INCITEmarsh at September 11, 2008 02:02 PM (ULsz9)
I left work early and went home. I walked up to my high school's athletic fields which are on a ridge about ten miles west of Manhattan. Southern Manhattan was covered by a cloud of dust and smoke. I could not believe that the Towers were gone. I had walked through those lobbies thousands of times during my years of commuting from NJ to NYC and the idea that those massive buildings had been reduced to a pile of ash was incredible.
I saw Father Kelley, my high school principal, at the ball field that day. I am sure he did not remember me. He did not say anything. He just looked up from his rosary and blessed me and went back to his prayers.
Posted by: Sean at September 11, 2008 02:30 PM (3LifV)
Auden's "There Will Be No Peace
There Will Be No Peace
Though mild clear weather
Smile again on the shore of your esteem
And its colours come back, the storm has changed you:
You will not forget, ever,
The darkness blotting out hope, the gale
Prophesying your downfall.
You must live with your knowledge.
Way back, beyond, outside of you are others,
In moonless absences you never heard of,
Who have certainly heard of you,
Beings of unknown number and gender:
And they do not like you.
What have you done to them?
Nothing? Nothing is not an answer:
You will come to believe - how can you help it? -
That you did, you did do something;
You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh,
You will long for their friendship.
There will be no peace.
Fight back, then, with such courage as you have
And every unchivalrous dodge you know of,
Clear on your conscience on this:
Their cause, if they had one, is nothing to them now;
They hate for hate's sake.
Posted by: Sean at September 11, 2008 02:34 PM (3LifV)
Thanks for posting this. This is always a tough day for me as I have to hold myself together for 3 memorial services. The first is for Fr. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan Friar who was the chaplain for the FDNY & who was the first responder to killed that day.
The 2nd is at Ground Zero, for my 6 best friends of over 18 yrs when they were killed. I was on the phone with 2 of them, both firefighters, who were in different towers and were communicating with me via cell because they're radios had failed. I had their calls patched into a conference call so we could all know what was going on. The sounds of the building collapsing around them and their last breaths were the last few sounds are what I still vividly remember about that day.
The 3rd memorial service is mid-afternoon at work, for my long-time colleague and mentor. It is perhaps the toughest, for I must stand amidst alpha-boys dressed in suits who have no memory of who he was. They remember what they wrote about him in the book and movie (We were soldiers once) and try to establish a connection to him through that. It was he who alerted my awareness to the growing islamofascist hatred towards Americans. A socio-political awareness that willl now never leave me.
Though its been 7 yrs, and the pain is less raw, it still feels to me at times like it was yesterday. Nothing will fill their void, nothing will ever let me forget. The pain and awareness is too indelible.
Posted by: Journey at September 11, 2008 02:49 PM (etwyR)
Daniel Brandhorst, of Los Angeles, California, was a lawyer for PriceWaterhouse.
David Brandhorst, 3, was from Los Angeles.
I have a three-year old son who likes to spend time with his Papa. I'm just kind of numb when I look at that list.Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at September 11, 2008 03:23 PM (5aa4z)
The poem from Sullivan's old site reminds me of others who talked big in the days and months affter 9/11.
Matt Welch was another one (see http://www.mattwelch.com/archives/2001/09/16-week/ and scroll to the bottom for his quote about how he favored a "global war to fight terror".). Welch regularly whines about what we have done to prosecute that war now as editor of Reason.
But they either weren't serious or they didn't understand. War gets UG-LEE and bad stuff happens (the best saying that illustrates that is that "war is not about making choices between good and bad, but between bad and worse"). What they wanted was some sort of moral crusade with shooting-which is what many seem to think war is, but does not match the reality. War is serious, nasty, deadly business and most liberals-with the honorable exception of Hitchens and a few others-are not willing to compromise their moral vanity to see it through.
Posted by: CavMedic at September 11, 2008 05:43 PM (tc3dx)
You have no idea, when you get in that rig, what God is calling you to. But He needs you, so keep going. -- Fr. Mychal Judge, re-dedicating a firehouse on Sept. 10, 2001
Thank you, Journey, for mentioning Father Judge, and for taking time out of your day to remember him.
Posted by: FireHorse at September 11, 2008 07:03 PM (+dm+A)
Indeed, my theory is that this is the main reason why we haven't seen anything resembling a sequel to that attack since then - not just because it's become a lot harder to pull off, but because Islamic supremacists belatedly realized how counterproductive 9/11 itself turned out to be.
Posted by: Joshua at September 12, 2008 12:48 AM (MpX/t)
Posted by: ace at September 11, 2009 01:03 PM (d6tLI)
Posted by: ace at September 11, 2009 01:03 PM (d6tLI)
Posted by: EC at September 11, 2009 01:07 PM (mAhn3)
That's where we are. But that has always been where we were; the crap about "unity" was always a lie.
And until the summer of 2008, President Clove Cigarette had a Truther as his spiritual advisor, pastor and good friend (who married him & his wife and baptized his children) of 2 decades.
Obama repeated the whole "and we came together as a nation, we were united" crap in his speech today. Strange, considering on the Sunday after 9/11, his very own pastor, spiritual advisor and good friend gave a sermon which stated that America's chickens had come home to roost. Doesn't sound like "unity" to me. And this sermon only came to Obama's attention 7 years later. Uh huh.
It disgusts me to have Obama sitting in the office of the Presidency in general, but especially on this day.
Posted by: Michael in MI at September 11, 2009 01:07 PM (ObTcs)
I see you've been spammed, ace. R u OK?
Posted by: Starboardhelm at September 11, 2009 01:07 PM (SgSfB)
9/11 remembrance:
Nothing on the front page of my paper this morning. Buried inside, a single AP article about the museum, and an AP article about muslims still fearing unspecified "backlash" on this day.
The quote that caught my eye was: "I get a sick feeling in my stomach every year", said Nancy Rokayak, 45 of Charlotte, N.C., who covers her hair in public. "I feel on 9/11 others look at me and blame me for the events that took place."
Events that took place. Sheesh. They were attacks. Attacks by muslim terrorists.
Note that she doesn't get "a sick feeling" because she knows that it was her co-religionists who, in the name of her religion, deliberately murdered those innocents and forever befouled her religion. No. It because us "others" might look at her funny. And, with no proof whatsoever, thinks that those "looks" mean these "others" blame her, personally, for those "events". Unreal.
Well, I get a sick feeling thinking that there are muslim terrorists out there, hiding behind her skirts, plotting to kill people like me for no reason other than that we are the "other".
Also, nothing on the Google page again this year.
Posted by: Starboardhelm at September 11, 2009 01:08 PM (SgSfB)
Posted by: Mr. Pink at September 11, 2009 01:09 PM (qXnkV)
Posted by: ace at September 11, 2009 01:11 PM (d6tLI)
Posted by: DPR VIII at September 11, 2009 01:12 PM (4XUD3)
Posted by: Crusty at September 11, 2009 01:15 PM (GvSpB)
Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at September 11, 2009 01:16 PM (5aa4z)
Posted by: wHodat at September 11, 2009 01:16 PM (+sBB4)
When will we stop listening to the leftists?
Posted by: wHodat at September 11, 2009 01:18 PM (+sBB4)
Posted by: carin at September 11, 2007 01:15 PM (ECLiw)
That is one of the biggest things that bothers me about the liberals. We have been pouring money into the inner cities since 1965 and have had absolutely no results. We have created generation after generation of welfare families. Why can't the Republicans get the message out that the only way to stop the cycle of poverty is through education and commitment to hard work. Somehow we have to get that message through peoples' collective heads that all the current entitlement programs are doing is creating more and more poor people because there is no incentive to do better.
I had a grilfriend when I lived in Phoenix in the 80's. She was on Section 8 which assisted her with her rent and she got some food stamps. They documented every dollar she made and adjusted her payments quarterly. I finally talked her into going to college. She took out a Guaranteed Student Loan and went back to school. The very next time she came up for reappraisal by Section 8, they took away her food stamps and lowered her rent assistance. The system is skewed to keep you in that cycle and never let you out. I suppose that's why many of them vote Democrat because they don't want to change the system and Republicans are seen as the bad guys for wanting to actually help people become productive citizens.
Posted by: Bill R. at September 11, 2009 01:19 PM (EhlQq)
Posted by: Mr. Pink at September 11, 2009 01:19 PM (qXnkV)
Posted by: Bill R. at September 11, 2009 01:20 PM (EhlQq)
Eight years ago, I turned on the news to get the weather report before I sent my kids off to school and saw the second plane hit the Twin Towers. Today I'm reading the blogs, listening to Rush and crying.
No, not for 9/11. I lived through all of it and knew that the unity wasn't going to last. I grieved for the victims and cheered the troops for their heroism. Today I'm sitting here with tears running down my face at the ongoing destruction of my country by its own president, our lawmakers and the mainstream media. I'm scared that by the time we the people get the chance to undo the horrible mistake that many made last November that it will be too late.
I am watching my country falling apart before my eyes and I find myself grieving for its loss, for the diminished future that it leaves for my children and grandchildren, for the loss of the great hope this country promised, sacrificed on the altar Liberalism, and for the loss of our cherished freedom.
9/11 was a dreadful day. But it was just the beginning of the destruction, because the Democrats made the conscious decision after 9/11 to fight Bush and cause us to lose the war. All for the sacred cause of their own power.
I pray with all my heart that those of us that love freedom can still turn this situation around. But I'm more terrified now than I have ever been in my life. Even on 9/11.
Posted by: Nancy at September 11, 2009 01:20 PM (3TdgB)
Posted by: wHodat at September 11, 2009 01:21 PM (+sBB4)
I posted this comment on an earlier 9/11 thread:
Forgive me. I can not in good conscience share in the breast beatings and lamentations of this day. It is a spectacle of symbolism over substance, more pathetic than cathartic. None of you know me, but I think you've seen enough of me here to at least have a picture in your mind of what I am, if not who I am. I expect to catch some shit about this post, but c'est la vie.
I marvel at the bravery of the policemen and firefighters that perished that day. I do mourn for the innocent lost. I puff out my chest in pride of the young men this nation has produced that have fought and died on the battlefield. And all of this is for naught.
Eight years later, who are we and where are we? A Marxist Muslim sits in the White House. A cabal of bankers and politicians has stripped us of our wealth and made millions of us dependent on them for sustenance. They are destroying our currency, or confidence, and our nation. Ground Zero? Eight years later, it is still a hole in the ground, our people too paralyzed by symbolism over substance to move forward. Eight years. Eight years from John F. Kennedy's speech about going to the moon, Neil Armstrong put his foot on lunar soil. We are told now that going to the moon by 2020 is cost prohibitive, despite the technology to do so residing in a museum. Eight years after Pearl Harbor, the war was long over. And we can't put up a fucking building because we are infighting and navel gazing. I don't think another building should go there, actually. Fill it in, plant grass, and put up a Judeo Christian chapel where people can wonder at the immensity of the events, and put them into the context of our relationship with our Creator. And the first mother fucker that asks which way Mecca is should get a round behind the ear.
I spoke last night to a man who sacrificed his mind. Another father on my son's soccer team, he is intelligent. But he is slow to speak, and must think mightily to put together the words he wants to say. His problem is that too many explosions in his vicinity in Iraq left him with brain injuries. He will never be the same. I spoke to another man at the local rural carryout. He was elderly, and tired, and had come in with his grandson to get bait to go fishing. You see, his pudgy, cute, 7 or 8 year old grandson has leukemia, so Grandpa is spending every minute he can with him. These men I admire. Not bankers, that mold that lives on my money. Not politicians, who are merely whores, and surely not their johns, the masses of social climbers and greed hawkers that surround them. Men who do things, who have values and traditions and principles that are American.
On the whole, though, our people are not strong and vibrant. They are lazy, fat, and stupid. They are net takers, not producers. They are illiterate, complacent, and without the intelligence to discern the simplest of truths. They are little more than serfs, anymore.
Yes, I mourn the dead of September 11, 2001. But I mourn America most of all. I fear that my children will join the masses of lemmings that day to day stumble through life unaware, blindly going with the crowd towards the darkness.
Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at September 11, 2009 01:23 PM (5aa4z)
Thank you, but it's not threadjacking. This post has always been for commenters' own remembrances and observations. Stuff doesn't have to be about what I wrote. Especially given this is two years old and twice-reposted.
Posted by: ace at September 11, 2009 01:23 PM (J3zFt)
President Clove Cigarette.
Ace is on a roll today. Now just remember, He Of The Unicorn Tribe expects this, 9/11, to be a day of service. I like what Ace is serving.
Posted by: George Orwell at September 11, 2009 01:24 PM (AZGON)
Posted by: maddogg at September 11, 2009 01:25 PM (OlN4e)
"Especially given this is two years old and twice-reposted."
And still relevant.
It's a sample of why I visit as often as possible.
Thank you, Ace.
Posted by: Jess at September 11, 2009 01:27 PM (3CIiV)
http://tinyurl.com/n2u7wp
I reposted my post from 2 years ago, considering the 4 people that visit my blog (heh) it generated a lot of convo because my was political also
Posted by: Lord Nazh at September 11, 2009 01:30 PM (iDUNW)
Thanks, Ace. Yours is a good essay, and it was worth reading. You do honor to the subject. (I usually avoid reading anything about 9/11 nowadays, even by people on the right, because about half a para in, the authors saddle up and start riding their favorite socio-religio-political hobbyhorses hell-for-leather in alll directions for about 10,000 preachy words.)
Posted by: Minnie Rodent at September 11, 2009 01:32 PM (2Y+xz)
The cultural, intellectual jihad waged by some of our own citizens will be rather more difficult. Just in the last few days we have someone "respected" like Tommy Friedman praising one-party autocracy. He don't need no stinkin' republic.
Friedman has the blackened soul of G. B. Shaw, with none of his talent and all his breathy prurience for dictators. Shaw wrote an entire play lauding the ascendancy of men like Hitler and Mussolini, "The Apple Cart." I wonder if Tommy F. likes reading it aloud, pacing his study in silk dressing gown.
Posted by: George Orwell at September 11, 2009 01:32 PM (AZGON)
Posted by: IC at September 11, 2009 01:33 PM (jZNCU)
Posted by: Drew in MO at September 11, 2009 01:35 PM (X9SIH)
Wow. Here we are, 8 years later.
"Yes, I mourn the dead of September 11, 2001. But I mourn America most of all. " Well said Herr. And ace, spot on.
Posted by: Bosk at September 11, 2009 01:36 PM (pUO5u)
It is incredible - in the unbelievable sense - that what you wrote last year is even more appropriate now.
Socialization of America is a process and all of this administration's "It must be done NOW or something bad will happen!" emergency drama will only ensure two things:
1) America will become a Socialist country.
2) Even this, because of the haste, will be done poorly and the likely outcomes will be even more dire.
There are people in this country who will wholeheartedly resist being socialists.
This aint gonna end well.
Posted by: Hussein the Plumber at September 11, 2009 01:37 PM (/+GDy)
They think to themselves "well thats a good way to seize power", and need a bogeyman to make their thoughts of how cool it would be to have a Reichstag Fire type ploy on thier behalf in this country.
Posted by: Rickshaw Jack at September 11, 2009 01:38 PM (6AynU)
I have a 3 1/2 year old son. This morning he woke up early, and since I had the front door open to get some cool morning air, he noticed I had the Flag at half-staff. He asked "Daddy, why is our American Flag like that?" And I asked him "Like what, son?" And he replied "Why is our American Flag bent over like that? What happened to it?" So I explained that today is a very important, very sad day, and I told him how the terrorist bad guys had taken over planes full of Americans and flown them into tall building full of Americans and other people, and flew a plane into the building that's home to our Soldiers, and finally, how there was one plane that the terrorist bad guys took over, but the Americans on board found out what happened to the other planes, and so they fought to take the plane back from the bad guys, so that they couldn't fly it into another building full of people. And I explained that the bad guys knew that they couldn't beat the Americans on the plane, and so they crashed it into the ground and killed everyone on the plane instead. And I explained how the Firemen went running up into the burning buildings while everyone else was running out, so that the Firemen could try and save people trapped up high where the planes hit. But the buildings were so badly damaged that they fell down, and killed lots of people, and lots of Firemen. And so today is Patriot Day, the day we remember all those brave Americans who died, and we fly the Flag at half-staff to honor them. And we honor all the Soldiers who are out there, hunting down and killing all the terrorist bad guys all over the world, in our war against terror.
He had listened all along with his eyes wide open, without asking a question. Which is rare for a 3 1/2 year old.
Then he said "Yeah, we've got to kill all the terrorist bad guys and hippies."
Indeed.
Posted by: Uncle Jefe at September 11, 2009 01:39 PM (+3fAP)
Well done Ace.
When I was commissioned many years ago I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And we do have domestic enemies.
Posted by: LGoPs at September 11, 2009 01:40 PM (4x8W0)
Ace, a great post as usual.
After 9/11, I longed for the nation to return to normal. I figured that those on the left would finally get a dose of reality that would snap their head around and make them realize that there is evil in the world, and we're not the root cause of it.
Stupid me.
Posted by: BackwardsBoy at September 11, 2009 01:41 PM (ZGhSv)
On 9-11 I remember judoka and lacrosse players on flight 93.
I remember firefighters who had to know they had little chance of living through the attempt, trying to save the trapped.
I remember cops who drove in while those with a greater sense of self preservation drove out.
I remember servicemen and woman of all stripes who saved their comrades at the expense of their own burning flesh.
And I remember ANGER. Because that is the only appropriate response to evil.
Posted by: kidney at September 11, 2009 01:42 PM (pOUE9)
Posted by: kidney at September 11, 2009 01:42 PM (pOUE9)
No, not anger. Rightous indignation.
Posted by: Dave C at September 11, 2009 01:44 PM (La0Tt)
1. Sit down, and do what the hijacker's are demanding of you.
2. Trust that somewhere, liberals in their heart of hearts, love this country as much as I do.
Posted by: UncleFacts Summoner of Meteors, Overseer of Burghers at September 11, 2009 01:45 PM (vZVv7)
Ace can you please post Evan Sayet's speech "Regurgitating the Apple".
I mentioned it in another thread, and i re-read it today. It does a great job(read:entertaining) of illustrating some of the points you make in this thread. Especially the realization for many middle of the road americans, or americans who considered themselves liberal, that their leftist cohorts really did hate america(or as you state it war, which is always americas fault).
I think it would be a great viewing for those that missed it several years ago, especially today, when we are told by the media that we were all united behind 9/11 until Bush went off the rails to retaliate against the perpetraters.
Posted by: Ben at September 11, 2009 01:46 PM (wuv1c)
It infuriated me then, and it infuriates me now. Meaningless expressions of sympathy from people who despise America? You can take that shit and shove it up your ass.
I know we have friends, but I also know we have enemies.
Posted by: Dave in Texas at September 11, 2007 01:41 PM (pzen5)
There were some sincere expressions of sympathy too. I happened to be living in Rome at the time of 9/11. It was a uniquely odd experience to be living overseas when such a blow is dealt to your own country.
It was probably around 4 PM when someone told me: "hey, a plane just ran into the World Trade Center!" At first I assumed he meant a small Cessna or Piper, but I decided to go check out CNN on tv anyways. Holy shit. I ended up staying there for hours watching all the events unfold after that. When the second plane hit is when I got scared. It was officially no freak accident... across the ocean, my country was under attack. I don't remember feeling much emotion other than complete shock as I watched the buildings collapse. After a while I started to feel a little anger and some fear, but for a couple days I was mostly just dumbfounded.
But the point I wanted to make was about my memories of walking around the streets of Rome during the week or so after 9/11. I suppose that because of the way that I dress, walk, speak Italian, and whatever else, I was always immediately pegged as being an American. I remember feeling as though I had a prosthetic leg or something.... every Italian that walked by me looked at me and gave me a sad smile, but then quickly looked away, afraid of shaming me by showing pity. Sometimes people stopped me on the street and simply said: "I'm very sorry for what happened to your country." Then walked away. All the store clerks exhibited an extra amount of patience with my poor Italian language skills, and did so with a warm smile.
Finally, I remember a pro-American rally in one of the squares in Rome about a week after 9/11. Berlusconi spoke, Andrea Bocelli sang, and most important Italian figures attended. I remember standing in the midst of the huge crowd and just seeing a sea of Romans waving American flags. Behind the stage was a big banner: "NON CI DIMENTICHIAMO" (we do not forget). There was a subtle feeling of agitation and rage in the crowd that such an attack ever took place. But mostly I remember the genuinely sincere comforting smiles that I got from everyone around me.
Being out of the country for an day like 9/11 was unmanning. But I will never forget the genuine warmth, understanding, sympathetic anger, and love that I felt from every person I bumped into there in Italy.
Posted by: dan-O at September 11, 2009 01:46 PM (+9Rf8)
They think to themselves "well thats a good way to seize power", and need a bogeyman to make their thoughts of how cool it would be to have a Reichstag Fire type ploy on thier behalf in this country.
Posted by: Rickshaw Jack at September 11, 2009 01:38 PM (6AynU)
It's classical projection which is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the Left. If you want to know what they want to do, just listen to what they accuse the right of doing.
They screeched incessantly about Bush l;istening in on phone calls. I never felt threatened by that since I rarely if ever talk to terrorists in caves. Now, I do feel threatened because I do not trust the left and what they are now listening for. They have made it plainly clear that in their mind the real enemies are conservatives.
Fuck them.
Posted by: LGoPs at September 11, 2009 01:47 PM (v/rEn)
I distinctly recall, only a day or two after 9/11, working in a ad agency and someone had left a TV on for news... W was speaking, and a noxious bitch of a scrunt in the office blurted out "If he's leading us, we're really fucked." No one in the group of ten or so even so much as sighed or blinked. This scrunt has kids, and raises them to believe as she does.
The enemy is within, and getting stronger.
Posted by: George Orwell at September 11, 2009 01:50 PM (AZGON)
Posted by: Drew in MO at September 11, 2009 01:54 PM (X9SIH)
Posted by: kidney at September 11, 2009 01:55 PM (pOUE9)
Posted by: RWC at September 11, 2009 01:55 PM (pnyH8)
After the first World Trade Center bombing in 93 I became what teachers and school principals would probably refer to derisively as one of "those kinds" of parents. You know, the parent who wouldn't let his children go on class trips to NYC and had his children either spend the day in the school library or take an unexcused absence and spend the day at home. I can recall at least two principals who called me and personally reassured me that one or the other of my children would be safe. "Then there is no need for me to sign a permission form, then is there?" I said. I knew the conversation would end shortly after playing that card.
I was one of the cranks that quietly kept saying, "They'll be back."
I'm still one of those cranks that quietly keeps saying, "They'll be back."
Different location probably, different methods probably, but enemies don't go away just because someone with a different ratio of melanin in their skin, or more naive about the nature of the world takes office. Enemies may become quiet for a while, but they always return.
I'm probably not the first Internet nut to say this but it's worth repeating - Those who do not learn from history are destined to annoy the hell out of me.
Posted by: I Am Jack's Gluteus Maximus at September 11, 2009 01:56 PM (8XI4A)
Posted by: RWC at September 11, 2009 01:58 PM (pnyH8)
I too didn't realize that an event like 9/11 wouldn't change the Left's views. I should have known.
It is historically documented throughout our history.
Look at the Soviet Union and it's supporters in America. The fact that people still supported the Soviet Union after the 1930s proved that it even the murder of millions in the Holomodor wasn't enough to kill the ideological movement, even if the ideological movement killed millions.
Even worse is there are people who after 1991 STILL are self proclaimed communists and apologists for the Soviet Union. If killing tens of millions, enslaving hundreds of millions, partitioning sovereign nations, executions, losing countless amounts of radioactive material, destroying their environment(in a real way, like letting their nuclear sub fleet deteriorate at Murmansk, without dismantling the radioactive cores), having homosexuality as a crime punishable by being place in a mental hospital., and countless other crimes doesn't allow you to give up on your ideology then you are in the word of Krauthammer, a political anachronysm.
We should have known better, myself included. Nothing is kill the leftist ideology, the hardcore aspects of that ideology. I would venture to say if WMD would ever be released in America it will take about 10 minutes of repectful silence berfore Bush, Republicans, the Iraq War, etc are to blame. At least after 9/11 they waited a month(or 6 days in Bill Maher's case). I don't think they will maintain the same amount forsight the next time around.
Posted by: Ben at September 11, 2009 01:59 PM (wuv1c)
RACIST!
Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at September 11, 2009 02:02 PM (5aa4z)
I was in South Korea, on a typhoon evacuation from Okinawa. (Our jet can't fit into any of the hangars on Kadena, so when a phoon comes in, we load it up and go to another base that isn't getting hit.) It was our third day in Osan, as the typhoon had stalled out on top of Okinawa. My crew and I were out in the ville, having a good time. At about 10 o'clock, one of the other crewmen came up to the bar we were at and told us to get back to our hotel, that a plane had flown into the WTC, and Air Force OSI (Office of Special Investigation) were getting everyone back on base.
Once we got back to the hotel, we all congregated in our Mission Supervisors room, and turned on CNN. The second plane had just hit the tower.
The overwhelming feeling failure, of knowing that an attack on our homeland occurred on our watch... I know there was nothing that we could have done to prevent this. We were stationed on the other side of the world. But just seeing those images, of our countrymen dying, and being unable to do anything about it.
I know a lot of people signed up after the attacks. I am forever greatful to the young Soldiers, Marines, Seamen, and Airmen who heeded that call. Who knew full well what they were signing up for. They give me hope for the future of our country.
I've since hung up my flight bag, but I did so knowing that there are brave and dedicated men and women who picked up where I left off. God bless them, and those that came before me.
Posted by: Shenme at September 11, 2009 02:04 PM (JC+x3)
Sadly Ace I think you are correct. The libtards were never really with us after 9-11. Sure some of them talked a mean game but that was for show. Most of them simply shut up because they were afraid if they spouted their normal anti-American bullshit someone would pound their dumb ass in the ground.
I posted on the previous thread of how the liberals had “forgotten” and it was evidenced by the vote in NYC, especially Manhattan, had voted for Bambi. But looking at the 2004 election results it was virtually identical. In 2004 the residents of Manhattan voted 82% for traitor Kerry. That was only 3 years after 9-11.
They were never on board.
Hell Barbara Lee (DC-CA) voted against the authorization to use military force to go after the terrorists. 10 people refused to vote at all. In the Senate Larry Craig and Jesse Helms refused to vote. That was truly astonishing.
Posted by: Vic at September 11, 2009 02:07 PM (CDUiN)
The difference in the two main pages is stark. I've changed my bookmarks accordingly. Fuck Google in the ass with a rusty pipe.
GOOGLE. IS. DEAD. TO. ME.
FOREVER.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at September 11, 2009 02:11 PM (ahmBy)
Posted by: Jewells at September 11, 2009 02:12 PM (l/N7H)
I was a Gore-supporting (please forgive me!) "Bush is an idiot!1" liberal on 9/10. On 9/11, though, my eyes were opened quite wide to the fact that there were people out there willing to kill us all at the drop of a hat. The world was no longer a fuzzy-warm place.
From that point on, I decided never again to vote for another damn left-of-center politician
Posted by: Ignatz Mouse at September 11, 2009 02:13 PM (uHvsp)
Most of them simply shut up because they were afraid if they spouted their normal anti-American bullshit someone would pound their dumb ass in the ground.
That's one of my enduring memories from that time, actually. The silence for months on end from Hollywood and the left. For months! I remember commenting on it to my mother at the time. She'd noticed it too. The moonbats knew if they spewed their garbage their asses would be grass.
Posted by: Dack Thrombosis at September 11, 2009 02:15 PM (P33XN)
I've been very up front with the fact that I consider myself a classic liberal (in the true meaning of the word); I do not consider myself staunchly aligned with any political party or ideology other than what is written down in our Constitution, which I believe in completely and love.
On 9/11, I saw that Constitution and all it stood for being attacked, and I saw more than that. This country is more than just the Constitution and the flag -- it's the dirt beneath our feet and the people. On 9/11 I saw our Mother America attacked and her children killed and maimed by an enemy. It wasn't just about politics and ideology, and it never should be thought of as such. It was our mother and our brothers and sisters. We should always remember that: our own mother attacked and our brothers and sisters killed by an enemy who wanted this war. We should not rest until that enemy is destroyed and our mother, sisters, brother's blood has been avenged.
Anyone who does not think this way, who would not do this is a coward and not one of the people. Anyone who does think this way and who would is one of my own, and I would give my life for them. Simple as that.
Posted by: unknown jane at September 11, 2009 02:15 PM (+F54B)
Posted by: Ben at September 11, 2009 02:16 PM (wuv1c)
I regret I wasn't a reader here in 2007 when you wrote that, Ace. Great stuff.
Again you sound like Vanderbough on the national divide.
The funny thing to me is that the truther mentality isn't an exclusively liberal notion. There are plenty of truthers who also support Ron Paul. I've even run into variations of them in the threeper community.
Posted by: Scott J. at September 11, 2009 02:22 PM (/bVuS)
Nothing could illustrate the lying weasel philosophy any better than what is going on today. Commie Levin is in the Senate preaching “no more troops” for Afghanistan. Remember this was the war the commies said we were supposed to be fighting.
He is another one of those liberal scum bags who was never on board.
Posted by: Vic at September 11, 2009 02:23 PM (CDUiN)
Fox is reporting that “Jafar the pilot” (one of the chief 9-11 plotters) is traveling around the mid-East using a Saudi diplomatic passport.
Posted by: Vic at September 11, 2009 02:37 PM (CDUiN)
Bing was much more complete and results were more relevant. It found all the patents, video taped trial depositions I've given in Microsoft lawsuits, etc.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at September 11, 2009 02:39 PM (ahmBy)
Next class was English. I had already finished my vocab homework, so I was listening to the radio. The administration had also brought in a TV. When the 2nd Tower got hit, live, on TV, we were too stunned to say anything. The worst thing was the people who were either blown out or forced to jump. You could see some of them, standing in the sun, looking out onto the horizon. Then...Later, the Towers collapsed.
It was hard to know exactly what as happening. Radio reports said that there were 19 missing planes. Our school held a moment of silence & prayer at lunch. My friends and I wondered if it was the end of the world. The footage still makes me want to vomit.
Thank God for President Bush and his reassuring words. I don't know what would have happened if someone hadn't taken charge of the situation like he did.
Posted by: Miss'80sBæby at September 11, 2009 02:39 PM (zmiSr)
Let me clarify this for you then, because it's simple.
You disagree with one group, who we'll call Rs, because you don't like their ideas. You cannot refute their arguments with facts, so you insult and attack them, usually verbally. It's safe, they are civilized and won't resort to violence.
You have another group, who we'll call Ms, with whom you also disagree. Ms are dangerous. You are a coward who avoids any sort of physical confrontation, preferring to hide behind slander, innuendo, and lawsuits. Ms would kill you and your lawyer, if given half a chance. Ms are physically distant and can usually be ignored. Rs are even willing to put their lives on the line to protect you and yours.
What do you expect? Gratitude toward the Rs from your self-loathing ass? Not in this world.
Posted by: MarkD at September 11, 2009 02:41 PM (MMy4A)
Do you know if the Bing add on in Firefox is legit or not? I've been wanting to use it, but some of the reviews have said it's not authorized by Microsoft. The developer says it's legit, but i don't know enought to decide who's telling the truth.
Posted by: koopy at September 11, 2009 02:45 PM (HuXZG)
Great post ACE !
Posted by: jarhead at September 11, 2009 02:50 PM (65nBk)
Posted by: koopy at September 11, 2009 02:51 PM (HuXZG)
Well done, Ace. As usual you are one step ahead, articulating much of what I have felt but never quite put into words. You have a rare talent.
And to you and your fellow bloggers here and to those who have posted above. I typically keep a pretty low profile on 9-11 here in the blue heartland. Conservatives are rare, and my tolerance for smug liberals, never great, is exceedingly low today. A bit of a nasty reckoning for someone spewing a "Bush's fault" shot (way out of character for me) is not beyond the realm of possibility.
So thanks, all, for sharing this and these very personal recollections. I've spent a chunk of this day reading these posts and comments, and being very glad that there are many of us out there that share similar thoughts. Amazing in a way. In some ways I feel closer to my fellow morons than to some of my closest friends.
God bless America.
Posted by: RM at September 11, 2009 02:55 PM (1kwr2)
Posted by: Scott J. at September 11, 2009 03:09 PM (/bVuS)
Just pissed me off so much!
Posted by: Rodney at September 11, 2009 03:23 PM (h+oUx)
Posted by: Rodney at September 11, 2009 03:24 PM (h+oUx)
The Saturday after Tuesday, Sep 11, I got in my car and drove around Austin with my camera to see what had changed. A few flags were out, flying from homes, but I noticed most were sun-bleached. Not many folks had a new flag. It took about six weeks for the flag-makers to catch up with the sudden demand and fill the shelves with flags. I have half a dozen flags now, ready to fly at a moment's notice. A big one, a couple medium sized ones and a bunch of small ones.
I saw my first anti-war protestor in front of the Texas state capitol. He was a young guy about twenty who had wrapped a bedsheet around himself like a dishdasha as Arabs wear and topped it off with a keffiyeh, the Palestinian headgear. He said his name was Wes, a student who worked at the recycling plant.
Wes was frantically waving his protest sign while gathering up his bedsheet which kept falling off him. People in passing cars and pedestrians were yelling at him and he was yelling back with equal heat. It was a frantic scene.
It was not publicly known yet who had attacked us yet but Wes was sure that they had a good reason, whatever it was, because we had provoked them, whoever they were. I asked him if it were possible that the attackers had bad reasons for attacking us and were in the wrong. That stumped Wes for a heartbeat, but he just went on to his next talking point.
Wes ranted on about how we were living in a police state where people were afraid to speak the truth. I pointed out the police car with two cops in it sitting fifty feet away, providing security for the Capitol. If this is a police state, I asked Wes, why aren't the police arresting you? Wes got a blank look and swallowed, then went on to the next point in his rant. And on and on it went.
Wes seemed to feed off the fury of the passers-by who called out insults at him. A British couple strolled by and the Brit gave him an earful. Wes was taken aback to be reproached by a European and was quiet for half a minute, but then regained his footing and ranted on.
The next week, there were a few more protestors. The week after that, some more. Week after week, their numbers grew. I went down to see them but never caught them. Evidently, they only protested for a couple hours and struck camp when the TV cameras left.
I've been to about a dozen anti-war protests, mostly here in Washington, DC. In every one of them, without exception, the US is the target of the protest. I have never seen a single sign out of hundreds of protest signs that even mentioned Saddam, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, or Islam, let alone criticize them. So I disagree that these protests are anti-war. They make no protest against the war made by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, nor Saddam. These nominally anti-war protests are covertly pro-war, rooting for the other side indirectly. And they are no pacifists either. I've been attacked twice at "peace" marches, the only time I've been physically assaulted in my adult life, which includes seven years in the military, where nary a hand was raised against me in anger.
Posted by: Tantor at September 11, 2009 03:46 PM (SWvPS)
Until last week, President Clove Cigarette had a Truther as a high adviser/czar.
That we know about.
Posted by: Dave C at September 11, 2009 03:57 PM (La0Tt)
Posted by: Tantor at September 11, 2009 03:58 PM (SWvPS)
We make gruesome, blood filled, violent movies and we do not watch the horrific, painful events that occured that day. What is wrong with us as a nation? I do not relish those images. I watch them for the same reason I viewed the Danniel Pearl video. So I will NEVER, EVER, EVER forget what they did to us and what we NEED to do to them. I was a continant away in the west.....I smelled nothing. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. But for the images captured on tape, it was far away from me. I pray to GOD I never get closer.
We need to keep vigilant if we are to stave off these types of attacks into the future. Bush wanted to keep us safe.....and he did. Obama does not seem to have teh same gut level instinct to protect the nation he has sworn to protect. Palosi down right opposes its protection. For generations our sons and now daughters have taken an oath to. They do not flinch from it but go headlong into the danger so I can sit confortably at this keyboard, sipping a latte and airing my opinions. I bless them for keeping me safe these yearsa nd I extend my sympathies to all of those lost, and all of those who lost someone, 8 --- yes eight years ago this day.
Posted by: rightzilla at September 11, 2009 04:03 PM (rVJH4)
So, your hero invaded Iraq. Makes sense.
The liberals...
Jesus. Don't you mean AQ?
America...
I'm not sure you know what the word means. It's more than the all-purpose signifier you use to manage a consistently binary, us/them ahistoric worldview. You don't do irony: "America" created the monster Sadaam (Reagan!); "America" created the Taliban and AQ. Etc.
In any case, an immense pleasure for me is to read your anger, because your America cannot exist. RIP.
But the prose! Top form, ace. "Driving the nail into the American wood..." an oddly erotic metaphor. But it works!
Posted by: gharbzadegi at September 11, 2009 04:37 PM (8rmSO)
F*ck off, gharbzadegi.
Posted by: What we're all thinking at September 11, 2009 04:43 PM (uHvsp)
Once again what's this got to do with 9/11. Bush never claimed this so why are the Lefties? The claim was that Iraq was in violation of the UN sanctions - it was. Also the default position is that you are fine and dandy with a tyrant in power. Me I'm not and the world is a better place without Saddam Hussian. Should have taken place SOONER not later.
Bush also invaded Al-Qeada and took away the Taliban and Bin Laden's base of power. Of course Barack is looking for a way to lose the "Good War" as well.
Posted by: Rodney at September 11, 2009 04:45 PM (h+oUx)
I'm not sure you know what the word means. It's more than the all-purpose signifier you use to manage a consistently binary, us/them ahistoric worldview. You don't do irony: "America" created the monster Sadaam (Reagan!); "America" created the Taliban and AQ. Etc.
An how did Reagan create Saddam? He took power in 79, before Reagan was prez. During the Iran/Iraq war we somewhat supported him as the Ayatollah was seen as the greater enemy. Today that rings even more true.
We didn't create the Taliban or AQ either. All we did was help the Afghans in their war with the Soviets. How do you segue that to creating Muslim zealots? We have many muslims living in this country and have since its inception. We don't persecute them, in fact they live much better here than in their own former countries in many cases.
Is America perfect? No but I defy you to name one country in the entire history of the world that has done it better. And now people are actively seeking to destroy what we are from within and I will fight that with all that I am and all that I have.
Posted by: Bill R. at September 11, 2009 04:52 PM (EhlQq)
Posted by: gharbzadegi at September 11, 2009 04:55 PM (8rmSO)
Knuckleheads are hilarious.
Posted by: gharbzadegi at September 11, 2009 04:55 PM (8rmSO)
Yeah, you would be if this wasn't so serious. You want to oppose my beliefs? Come up with better ones. And then back them up with facts. Calling people names does nothing.
Posted by: Bill R. at September 11, 2009 05:18 PM (EhlQq)
I'm the daughter of Papa Ray. He loves Ace and this site. He is always showing me something here and I just love some of the comments, but that is not why I am posting.
My Dad is in Washington DC right now, I hope he doesn't get in trouble or get arrested and I hope he won't mind me posting his letter.
Anyway, I knew nothing about what had happened and none of the people I hung with did either and wouldn't have cared anyway. We only cared about ourselves and having a good time. I got away from that group after I spoke to my Dad and got a letter from him.
I'm going to try and post this letter that he to me and my brother. I think that even back then he understood what all of this meant.
Sept. 20, 2001
Dear xxxx and xxxxx
Last week as I was reading and sometimes looking up to see what was on the TV, I witnessed the start of the most awful and fearful period of our lives unfold. I feel that I should try and talk to you both about it more. I will, but I also decided to write this letter, because sometimes things are important enough to put down on paper.
We have been given the lives we lead now by a previous generation. They are often called the "Greatest American Generation". This is because with the help of our allies, they literally saved the world from domination and repression by two misguided and evil empires; Germany and Japan. They were determined to rule the world and destroy us (and the rest of the free world) as a country and a culture.
We now face another threat even more terrible to us and to our way of life.
Now, we and your children, (my grandchildren) are now involved in and exposed to this terrible conflict between ourselves and a people that want us to be destroyed, so that their concept of their religion and distorted beliefs can rule the (our) world.
There is no reasoning with them. They do not care to know of us or to understand or tolerate our beliefs or religion. We are the product of the "Great Satan" which is what they call the United States of America and which they intend to destroy. They believe that theirs is the one and only true religion and that all other religions must be subverted and destroyed.
They hide behind (and call upon), their corrupted religion, in their crusade (Holy War) to destroy us and our way of life. To do this, they have distorted and defiled their religion, which in the more moderate form, teaches compassion. They prey upon the poor, uneducated and dissatisfied of their lands and others and use their needs and despair to foster their misguided and evil hatred of anyone or anything different than themselves or their beliefs. They even teach their children to hate us and want our destruction.
Unfortunately, sometimes in the past, the United States foreign policy has done many things to reinforce this bad image of us. We have helped the wrong people, we have not helped those we should have, when we should have, and generally did not try and understand or help resolve problems soon enough. We appeared to have no love or compassion to many people and we seemed to take sides without reason.
They were right a lot of the time. But most of their problems are caused by their culture, by their inability to adapt to changing times and by their religion, Islam, which in of itself is a religion of conquest and subversion.
How can we as a family handle this? How can we protect our children and ourselves?
We must stand together of course, helping and advising and nurturing our sense of family and talking to our children (as I am now to you). We must try to reassure them that we can and will protect and defend ourselves and them. That we will not be hurt or overcome by these misguided and destructive people that have vowed to destroy us and our way of life.
We must also be sure that they do not feel that they or you are in any kind of immediate danger. Our children must still feel that we are all still safe. The truth and sometimes mis-stated facts on TV and what they hear at school must be discussed and any rumors or over-reactions must be dealt with. The truth will be bad enough, so be sure to reassure them often by talking to them and showing them you have faith and confidence by the way you act.
This war will be unlike the others in the history books because some of it will be fought and won (or lost) without press or public knowledge. Additional terrorist attacks and the deaths of our soldiers and more civilians will sometimes be the only visible actions. Our military will out of necessity have to operate mostly in secret, or at least in secret until after operations are completed.
It is going to be a war that will last and last and not seem ever to be won. It will become a way of life. But we must not allow it to rule our lives with fear and uncertainty.
You must be sure that you do not believe all you see or read in the media, because, as we were years ago, in the conflict in Viet Nam, the media shades and shapes events.
Our lives (but, not all Americans) and our homeland have been left out of the struggles of this religious conflict up to now. But now we have been defiled and attacked here in our county. I was not surprised. I knew it was coming, I just didn't know when, where or what form of terrorism it would be. This attack has shown all of us that they are deadly serious and want to destroy us as a culture.
What else can we do? We can continue to work very hard, enjoy life as much as we can and to help our country by not giving into these people and letting them destroy our confidence and our faith in our country, our way of life and our family's pursuit of happiness.
We can also give of our time and our energies. Kindness, compassion and cooperation in our community and patience with the coming restrictive security measures are ways we can help. We must show support for our Government and for our Military.
Sadly, we don't have the money or the influence to make great gifts to help our county. We are not in the position now to give military service or government service. But your children may be in a few years. Is that something we would want? No maybe not, but it may be necessary and it certainly is something that previous generations have done to insure our happiness and our survival. So is it too much to expect that our children will do the same? Texans have always been at the front of the line when it came time to protect and serve their country. We and our children should be no different.
I wish I were forty years younger, I wish I were rich, I wish I could do more to insure that my children and grandchildren would not have to face the bad and evil in this world. But I can do no more than tell you both to be honest and truthful to each other and your children and instill in them a sense of confidence in themselves and their country and in our American way of life.
We have seen examples in the last week of the courage and resolve of the people in New York and in Washington. Be assured that they are not exceptions, but just great examples of all Americans. We (Americans) can work harder, produce more, and fight harder and better than any other nation in this world.
We will continue to prosper and to protect our freedoms. We will not fear, we may suffer and mourn our dead, but we will persevere and continue to be the greatest nation on this earth. You must pass these ideals on to your children. They must grow up with confidence, but knowing the dangers of this world.
We also as a family need to encourage our representatives to pay more attention to the plight of other peoples in other lands. To help them more, and to help change their governments so that poverty, despair and dis-satisfaction will not foster terrorism and hate. These governments may not want to change, but we must foster or force change upon them.
We as a family, can and will, even in these dark times, by our attitude and hard work, provide support and love for our children, ourselves, our community and our country.
All my Love,
Dad
Posted by: Marena at September 11, 2009 05:29 PM (JpVJn)
gharz's pathetic bleatings are impotent and incoherent. He's not addressing what Ace has said in his post, nor the comments here. Its typical of left wing comment on the subject, either in blogs or, in longer form, in MSM outlets or democrat party leader/activist statements.
His juvenile remarks here are why I don't consciously engage leftists on this subject.
They also reinforce Ace's point: we're divided as a nation and even 9/11 style attacks won't change that fact. Not when there are people like gharz around.
Posted by: Fred at September 11, 2009 05:30 PM (gVdZN)
Posted by: unknown jane at September 11, 2009 06:21 PM (+F54B)
I work as a high school teacher in a public school, so I am surrounded by liberals of all kinds everyday and I am constantly shocked and dismayed at the way they've skewed events and I honestly couldn't understand why they acted like they hated America yet were insulted if you called them on it. I see now I cannot reason with them, I cannot convince them otherwise. If 9-11 didn't change their minds, my arguements never will.
Posted by: Oil Field Trash at September 11, 2009 06:49 PM (RUfEs)
This is why I have been predicting a second Civil War in this country. And we will be fighting against the same Copperhead bastards as in the first one. From the plantation to the collective to the madrassa, Democrats are the best friends slavery ever had.
Posted by: SDN at September 11, 2009 07:02 PM (F3wAI)
Posted by: koopy at September 11, 2009 02:45 PM (HuXZG)
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Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry
NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom
Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?"
Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind
All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd
Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran
Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore
Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery
Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile
Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance
Collective Names for Groups of People
John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets
Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle
Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy
Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive"
Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments
John Edwards Campaign Excuses
John Kerry Pick-Up Lines
Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney
Torments in Dog-Hell
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)