{"id":72135,"date":"2019-09-11T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=72135"},"modified":"2019-09-11T10:16:34","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T15:16:34","slug":"anniversary-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=72135","title":{"rendered":"Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;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 &#8220;airplane&#8221;, &#8220;terrorist&#8221; or &#8220;World Trade Center&#8221;, I knew something awful was going on; Public Radio people don&#8217;t go to the bathroom without a script.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hard to believe &#8211; nobody under the age of 18, officially, was born on 9\/11.   Some of the soldiers and Marines who&#8217;ll be fighting the war that started 18 years ago will have born after the war began.   For an entire generation, the war <em>is<\/em> all of reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In case you&#8217;ve forgotten:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VfQI1ohBS8A\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>And say what you will, but Dubya never had a better moment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/x7OCgMPX2mE\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>After eighteen years, the takeaways are all pretty bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pjmedia.com\/instapundit\/341638\/\">Quoting<\/a> Glenn Reynolds:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>One thing I guess I didn\u2019t 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\u2019ll 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 \u2014 thanks also to fracking \u2014 the problems that led to 9\/11 are being addressed.<\/p><p>God bless America. We need it.<br><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>We were given a moment &#8211; against our will &#8211; 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&#8217;s traditions.   But now, 18 years later, we&#8217;re even more tribal than we were after the 2000 elections.   Perhaps terminally.  I&#8217;ll add &#8220;both sides are responsible&#8221;, but you know that&#8217;s largely punching a ticket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the great lesson of 9\/11 was that, when government lets us down &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/pjmedia.com\/instapundit\/341704\/\">and it did<\/a>, and always does &#8211; 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 &#8211; utterly contrary to the &#8220;conventional wisdom&#8221; of the day.  And yet 9\/11&#8217;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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in that?  The terrorists did win.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sorry to say. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;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 &#8220;airplane&#8221;, &#8220;terrorist&#8221; or &#8220;World Trade Center&#8221;, I knew something awful was going on; Public Radio people don&#8217;t go to the bathroom without a script. Hard to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72135"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72144,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72135\/revisions\/72144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}