Anniversary

I’ve said it before; I knew isomething terrible happened the moment I turned in NPR, and heard public radio personalities trying to ad-lib. Even before I heard the words “airplane”, “terrorist” or “World Trade Center”, I knew something awful was going on; Public Radio people don’t go to the bathroom without a script.

Hard to believe – nobody under the age of 18, officially, was born on 9/11. Some of the soldiers and Marines who’ll be fighting the war that started 18 years ago will have born after the war began. For an entire generation, the war is all of reality.

In case you’ve forgotten:

And say what you will, but Dubya never had a better moment:

After eighteen years, the takeaways are all pretty bad.

Quoting Glenn Reynolds:

One thing I guess I didn’t believe 17 years ago is that America would elect such a feckless President in 2008, and stand idly by while he flushed our global position, and security, down a left-wing toilet. But we did, and we’ll be paying the price for a long time. That said, for the first time I feel like our diplomacy is on a good track, and that — thanks also to fracking — the problems that led to 9/11 are being addressed.

God bless America. We need it.

We were given a moment – against our will – when we, a nation, had to react to what is, in the great, historical scheme of things the norm; barbarity, terror, the imposing of ones will onto others via violence. And for a brief moment, we did react. Positively, effectively, and up to the best of this nation’s traditions. But now, 18 years later, we’re even more tribal than we were after the 2000 elections. Perhaps terminally. I’ll add “both sides are responsible”, but you know that’s largely punching a ticket.

And the great lesson of 9/11 was that, when government lets us down – and it did, and always does – the individual stepped up and dealt with what they needed to. The people below the points of impact in the World Trade Center, far from being the mindless cattle that law enforcement expected people to act like, largely organized their own evacuations from the doomed buildings; there were relatively few dead from among those below the floors with the impacts. And passengers on Flight 93 did what would have been unthinkable years before – utterly contrary to the “conventional wisdom” of the day. And yet 9/11’s greatest institutional legacies are a government that treats people even more like cattle (seen those TSA lines lately?), is more intrusive and hamfisted (wiretap laws and militarized police with greater purview to use force for routine interactions), and just plain bigger and dumber.

And in that? The terrorists did win.

Sorry to say.

30 thoughts on “Anniversary

  1. as a 15 year old 2 weeks into my freshman year of high school nothing in my life has been more earth shattering than the events of that day and the days and weeks following it. In fact its so far ahead I struggle to come up with a #2 or what it would even be.

  2. “We will never forget 911”~ Donald Trump

    Except when we invite the Taliban over for a photo op.

  3. “Except when we invite the Taliban over for a photo op.”

    Republican acts like a hawk: “Where’s the diplomacy?”

    Republican acts like a diplomat: “What a wuss!”.

    It’s how they’re programmed.

  4. We will never forget when we lied about, “helping… a little”…

    “Everyone who helped clear the rubble — and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit — but I want to tell you: Those people were amazing, Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didn’t know what was going to come down on all of us —and they handled it. ~ Donald Trump

  5. Except when we invite the Taliban over for a photo op.

    Emery: Are “the Taliban” and “al Qaeda” synonymous in your opinion?

  6. How on Earth is a picture of him standing in front of a 9/11 memorial making it all about him? Get your TDS checked out dude, you need help.

  7. Do me a favor EI, read this speech and tell me how many times he said I vs. we in it. Then take a Obama 9/11 speech or any speech really and see how many times he says I vs. we and you’ll know who the real narcissist in cheif is.

  8. MBerg wrote : Republican acts like a hawk: “Where’s the diplomacy?”
    Republican acts like a diplomat: “What a wuss.”

    With Iran as with North Korea and the Taliban, Trump trades real-world concessions for fantasy-world photo opportunities. “Art of the photo-op”

  9. Look a subject change, classic Emery move. More of a signature than Penigma’s rambling, incoherent, posts.

  10. For me, this is a day of bitter remembrance, but one that I want never to forget. Let the trolls howl. They have no power over free people.
    Thank you, Mitch, for linking the speech W made at Ground Zero. I wish my generation had produced another Lincoln to make a few remarks in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, PA.
    We’ll have to do with a quote from the Gettysburg address:

    “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

  11. After 9/11, the US came together like I’d never seen before.

    Bush’s approval topped 90%.

    Every US ally supported the war against the Taliban.

    Even Russia helped by supporting US use of bases in Central Asia.

    Response to such a crisis today would be very different.

  12. Response to such a crisis today would be very different.

    Antifa and most progressives across this country would be dancing in the streets much like the Muslims were after the attack

  13. Greg wrote: Are “the Taliban” and “al Qaeda” synonymous in your opinion?

    No. Al Qaeda would get the Mar-a-Lago Club treatment.

  14. I just watched the Bush speech. I’d never seen it (had heard bits of it) – I left for Ft Banning about 1pm that day, and was locked down for about 2 months. Anyhow, that was amazing. No teleprompter. No notes. Speaking from the heart.

  15. Got to this party a little late, but hey, Dunning_Kruger;

    On Monday Trump went to North Carolina to support Dan Bishop in a special election for US House of Rep’s; Bishop smacked his reprobate challenger to the pavement. And in another special election in NC, Greg Murphy crushed his reprobate challenger; crushed him.

    I want leftist sh*theels, such as yourself, to remember that during his second term, while Trump is back crushing your dreams into a smelly paste, the key is to cut long ways, not across.

  16. GregIan wrote: Are “the Taliban” and “al Qaeda” synonymous in your opinion?

    No. Al Qaeda would get the Mar-a-Lago Club treatment.

    Well, Emery since your attention to detail is somewhat stunted (names are just arbitrary labels given to us by loved ones, but then they do help identify who you’re talking to), let me help you out here:

    The Taliban seized control of much Afghanistan and were the de facto government for years before 9/11.

    al Qaeda was a global terror network headed by Osama bin Laden. They carried out the attacks on 9/11.

    Elements of al Qaeda, including bin Laden, remained within Afghanistan, effectively being hosted by the Taliban.

    After 9/11, the US demanded the Taliban hand over al Qaeda leadership. They didn’t do this, and it didn’t go well for them. Had they complied, they might have averted a direct conflict with Coalition forces.

    You may disagree with talks with the Taliban, but the date does not have the same significance as if the talks were with the leadership of al Qaeda, which would prove difficult since so many of them have been arrested or killed.

  17. I’m glad that Obama killed bin Laden before Trump had a chance to become friends with him.

    Re: Dan Bishop
    The GOP spent $8 million to save an R+8 and an R+12 district.
    Now scale that. 🙄

    Trump has sunk the GOP so low, they win a House seat in the South they’ve had for 6 decades and you’re partying like it’s V-E Day. 😂

    Re: SCOTUS
    They didn’t throw out the lower court injunctions. It’s a temporary stay of the injunction pending appeal. Anyone celebrating this on the right or freaking out about this on the left has no idea what’s going on.

  18. Blah blah blah.

    “Trump takes victory lap after Republicans win in North Carolina”

    While Trump was strutting and smirking D_K, the NC GOP treated the state House reprobates like their bitches. Voting to overturn the reprobate Governor’s budget, and sh*tcanning his plan to expand Obmamacare.

    The reprobates squealed like pigs…I saw the footage; it was hilarious.

    “This is a tragedy. This is a travesty of the process and you know it,” State Representative Deb Butler, a New Hanover County Democrat, yelled at Moore just before the vote began. “Mr. Speaker, how dare you, Mr. Speaker!”

    But nobody listened to the whiny, leftist twaat. (#sad) And all of this after Planned Infanticide got cut off!

    Remember hump. Lengthwise, not across.

  19. The Senate confirmed 13 [more] of President Trump’s judicial picks this week, helping clear the deck ahead of the five-week August recess.

    Oh, my. They cleared the deck. Well, maybe he picked a couple of leftist reprobates, to be fair…(snicker)

  20. I believe you’d be a wonderful a candidate for a reeducation program of the kind meted out by the Communist Chinese to capitalist running dogs during the Great Leap Forward.

  21. 😴
    Say Swiftee: When can Americans expect the Trump administration to actually break ground on construction projects on new linear miles of wall?

    Here’s The Latest Update On Construction Of Trump’s Border Wall (09/09/19)
    https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/09/trump-border-wall-construction-65-miles-dhs/

    “The Trump administration is replacing old, ineffective barriers at the US southern border, but they cannot say when they will begin constructing wall in areas with no existing border barrier”

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