Where were you on 9/11?

Well Sunny, Shock and Awe was played out on TV, as was the toppling of Saddam and the Taliban. But they were from a different viewpoint; vengence and a display of Western power. The attack on the towers was an attack on Western power.

We didn't have the perspective of the people being attacked because the Western media is Western. Only Al Jazeera showed the impact of massive Western firepower on ordinary people in the muslim world. Just as they showed the impact of Israeli power in the West Bank.

We should have, and didn't ask a very simple question. Why would people blow themselves up attacking us? What has driven them to these extremes? Could it be they actually have a real grieveance ? A real injustice? No. Instead we labelled everyone a terrorist and an extremist. But we have seen in the Arab spring that muslims want what we want, freedom, justice, peace. They have rejected islamic extremism, just as we have.
 
silverwake said:
I was at my faculty's library studying for an exam the next day. I went to pick some documents to the secretary's office and saw a lot of teachers and students gathered around a small tv set. They were all quiet, until one of the janitor's said we'd rather all go home. I asked him what was going on, and he said that it was World War III ¬_¬

I walked to the bus stop, and saw plenty of cars with the doors open and the radios on. It was surreal.
I caught the bus and for the next hour of journey, no one said a word. We were all listening to the news.

It felt as if it was the end of the world.

I totally failed that exam.

For the record, I shall never do a statistics exam ever again. The day before my Statistics I test, Lady Di died, the day before my Statistics II test was September the 10th 2001. I'm jinxed!
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Reminds me of an old book that you might consider!
http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&sourc...sg=AFQjCNH1p-_gGpBoa1YzFmgBqZ73Ova3XQ&cad=rja
 
In Selden Long island at the time. Could see the plume of smoke 40 miles away. Utter devastation among the locals. They were very impressed with our day of mourning.
Came home on the 9th and the terminal building had to be evacuated because of a bomb alert, scary stuff. Sweaty palms coming home on an American Airlines fight. I have some very dear friends out there but they are still very bitter and angry over those events.
 
I was in work and got word of the first plane by text from my sister. Back then trying to get a web page to load in work required great patience. I think I spent most of the rest of the day trying to access US new websites.

One standout memory of the day was how blithely indifferent my colleagues were to it all. When I heard that the first tower had fallen, I was shocked, but the others barely registered an emotion.

I assume that when the towers fell that they had fallen to the side. When I saw that they had 'pancaked' on themselves, I was doubly shocked.

I still have photos at home taken from the roof of one of the towers in 1995, and others taken from street level in 1999.
 
Watching TV and they were saying the first plane was an accident

And mentioning some similar incident after WWII or so when a bomber hit the towers.

Saw the second plane live

I was about to start college in Galway so I was in a B n'B getting my accomadation sorted


horusd said:
Why would people blow themselves up attacking us? What has driven them to these extremes?
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Over seventy virgins in Heaven maybe or so they believe
 
I was working in a preschool which was attached to a house. The lady who lived in the house came in to tell me what had happened and then kept coming in and giving me updates. I must admit I left the kids unsupervised for a minute and went in to watch a bit of Sky News.
The father of one of my little students was in New York at the time. It took his mum about 8 hours to get in touch with him to make sure he was alright. She wasn't the better for it next day when she dropped her son off.
 
micmclo said:
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Over seventy virgins in Heaven maybe or so they believe
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We who have seen and lived with extremism in our own country (including suicide, remember Bobby Sands?) should know we need to look deeper into the mindset of killers and their motives.

Horizion did an excellent documentary during the week " Are you Good or Evil?" A key point was that normal humans invariably don't kill unless they have very good reasons. The whole 70 virgins thing is a means to trivialise the issue and not ask awkward questions that might point to real grievances in the muslim world. Real greviances that have been caused in large part by Western policies.
 
horusd said:
We who have seen and lived with extremism in our own country (including suicide, remember Bobby Sands?) should know we need to look deeper into the mindset of killers and their motives.

Horizion did an excellent documentary during the week " Are you Good or Evil?" A key point was that normal humans invariably don't kill unless they have very good reasons. The whole 70 virgins thing is a means to trivialise the issue and not ask awkward questions that might point to real grievances in the muslim world. Real greviances that have been caused in large part by Western policies.
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There is a world of a difference between the motives of the people who attacked the world trade centre on September the 9th and the (often legitimate) grievances that many Arabs and Muslims have against the USA.
Bin Laden wanted to build a fundamentalist Islamic Caliphate which would “return” the world to an idyllic state last seen more than a thousand years ago. His aim was to provoke a war between modernity and his form of Islam. Basically he was an absolute nutter.

The people fighting against their oppressive leaders across the Arab world are, for the most part, the silent majority who don’t want to live under any form of extremism (though there’s a lot of truth in the assertion being made by the Syrian leadership that many of those attacking their police and army are extremist Islamic fighters seeking to do what the Ayatollah did in Iran).

Therefore comparisons between the motives of those fighting in the Arab Spring and Al Qaeda are spurious.

Many of the grievances are legitimate but most aren’t. There’s a general anger at the weakness of the Arab/Muslim world relative to the Christian/Western world (which is understandable considering how utterly dominant the Arab/Muslim world used to be). This is misdirected at the West instead of at the true culprits; their own leaders and a culture that disenfranchises half its population (women).
 
The first report I heard was via a friend of a friend who worked in a Treasury Dept and they were working hard to move cash and investments out of the US. Then I saw something on the BBC website. My wife got a phone call from her brother in NY saying 'I'm OK, I'm fine' and hanging up, and she had no idea what he was on about until later.

When the 2nd tower fell, I was standing beside I colleague who had a dinner reservation for the restaurant at the top of the tower for the Thursday evening.
 
Lots of very good points Purple and I wouldn't disagree with your assessments on the impact of muslim social, economic and political failure compared to the advance and dominance of the West.

We probably would be splitting hairs to say which greviances motivated extremism in which case. But undoubtably Western interference in the Muslim world has not shown us as friends to the people there and has fuelled the anger against the West generally.

The wall to wall rememberance of 9/11 as purely a crime against the West and America in particular is a case of our blindness to the true extent of the victims of 9/11 and the impact of American aggression and hubris.

When we talk about the attack on Bagdhad we call it "shock and awe" or "operation Iraqi Freedom", and these labels WE put on them justify the aggression with inspiring names and in the process we decieve ourselves. The misery of shock and awe or Iraqi freedom are all too obvious to the Iraqi's. What's surprising is that there aren't more attacks on the West or more obvious anger against the West.


I haven't seen one programme or article except on Al Jazeera that examined the impact and the casualties of 9/11 from the perspective of the muslim world.
 
Al Jazeera is, generally, an excellent news source with a good balance of opinion.
The attack on Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 since Saddam was an avowed enemy of Islamic extremism.

Despite all of the grand conspiracies by the tinfoil hat brigade I haven’t yet seen a logical explanation as to why the US invaded; there was simply no up-side. It wasn’t about oil since Saddam was more than happy to sell it to anyone who wanted it.
The explanation that comes closest to making sense is simply the hubris and stupidity of George W Bush and the sycophantic blindness of Tony Blair.
 
micmclo said:
Over seventy virgins in Heaven maybe or so they believe
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This one always amuses me, visions of little old nuns lined up dressed innappropriately with Ann Widdecombe leading the way to greet them ....

I was in work, booking a flight of all things when someone came in and said a plane had crashed into one of the towers, so we were all online watching when the news of the second 'crash' came through.

Always remember that no-one in the office had heard of Bin Laden et al or remembered that they had targeted the WTC previously. When we started speculating about who might have done it those were the first possible culprits that came to my mind.
 
Purple said:
Al Jazeera is, generally, an excellent news source with a good balance of opinion.
The attack on Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 since Saddam was an avowed enemy of Islamic extremism.

Despite all of the grand conspiracies by the tinfoil hat brigade I haven’t yet seen a logical explanation as to why the US invaded; there was simply no up-side. It wasn’t about oil since Saddam was more than happy to sell it to anyone who wanted it.
The explanation that comes closest to making sense is simply the hubris and stupidity of George W Bush and the sycophantic blindness of Tony Blair.
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Saddam intended to sell his oil in Euros.

The implications for the dollar as a World Reserve currency were significant.
The economic consequences of a weak dollar for a nett importer could bankrupt America.
We'll see soon enough, because there are current moves to dethrone the dollar by 2020 I think.

This link shows the supposedly short-sighted understanding of the immediate change to the position of players at the time.
By itself, Iraq pricing oil in Euros would have meant little, but as the start of a cascade that would have weakened the dollar it meant a lot.

shows that as far back as 2007, several countries were considering abandoning the dollar as a reserve currency.
Again one currency doing this wouldn't have been much, but if a lot of currencies followed suit, the dollar would suffer.

There is little upside for the Eurozone in either scenario, since we export a lot of America.
You can be sure that these machinations will most benefit those masters of finance who like to trade in "the difference" in volatile markets.

ONQ.
 
so-crates said:
This one always amuses me, visions of little old nuns lined up dressed innappropriately with Ann Widdecombe leading the way to greet them ....
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The implication is that they are demure beautiful *young* virgins...
I wonder did any suicide bombers consider this on their way to their ends.

ONQ.
 
Purple said:
This is misdirected at the West instead of at the true culprits; their own leaders and a culture that disenfranchises half its population (women).
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Leaders who have been installed and supported with the help of the West.
Leaders, in Saudis case, who own 10% of American companies traded on the stock exchange.

ONQ.
 
liaconn said:
I was in work and a friend rang to tell me the news.
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I came home early that afternoon and saw the second one hit the tower on the TV - I'm not sure it was live.

I remember thinking -

"There's no way some !"%@^() in a cave in the middle east did this!"
 
onq said:
The implication is that they are demure beautiful *young* virgins...
I wonder did any suicide bombers consider this on their way to their ends.

ONQ.
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You never know - maybe they were the inspiration behind that Little Britain sketch....
 
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