Question about 9/11...

[Snow Flake]

I know it's still a sore topic, but did anyone loose anyone that day?
If so how did you cope with it?

[Brett's Honey]

I did not lose anyone that day. I have lost several family members (including my 2 yr old daughter), and several friends, though. I have never lost anybody close to me through a violent act like that, and I'm sure it's a little different feeling when you have "someone" to blame. I'm sure that losing a loved one creates different feelings when they die due to illnesses, accidents, or brutal murders.
But regardless of how a loved one dies, everybody copes with it it different ways. Some people accept it as "death is a fact of life", it affects some people to the extreme of having a devastating effect on their life.
If I remember right, you're 16...? Have you ever lost anyone close to you?

[Snow Flake]

17. At the time 9/11 happend, I was best friends with Dee who died.
And back in October my friend Dan, who I was pretty close to died.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Why is always the big question. Why him/her? What did they do to deserve that? Or in the extreme, why them and not me?
It's easier to answer if the deceased is old or been sick a long time. Especially tough to answer when it's one of those "shit happens" things like a tree falling or getting hit by lightning.
Quite often it ends up the only explanation is, shit happens or God's will. You have to figure out what works for you.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by Snow Flake

I know it's still a sore topic, but did anyone loose anyone that day?
If so how did you cope with it?

I lost a big someone: that part of me that thought "It could never happen in America". I lost that blissful ignorance of what was going on in the world around me. Politics? History? I didn't need to know about that stuff.

Wrong.

And I still know next to nothing about the whole thing, and it's overwhelming sometimes to realize how much I DON'T know. And to think about how I feel disgust and shame and outright horror about the teensy bit of stuff I DO know about makes me not want to know any more than I do.

But see, before, when I didn't know, I could have been excused for inaction, for complacency. Now I *do* know that there is stuff going on out there, and that excuse to bury my head back in the sand and that's ok won't fly anymore.

I'm broken.

So yeah, you can say I was lost in 9/11 too. I'm still alive, and I'm thankful for that, but it changed me fundamentally, even though I was across the country, just the same.

[Undertoad]

OC I really identify with what you said. Before, I was extremely political, but it forced me to admit that much of what I thought was wrong. Before, I did not understand enough history, and felt like the middle east was just too complicated. And it was not of any interest to me because it was all religious. I was wrong.

[Badgerino]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Why is always the big question. Why him/her? What did they do to deserve that? Or in the extreme, why them and not me?
It's easier to answer if the deceased is old or been sick a long time. Especially tough to answer when it's one of those "shit happens" things like a tree falling or getting hit by lightning.
Quite often it ends up the only explanation is, shit happens or God's will. You have to figure out what works for you.

I knew a man my age about 10 years ago who was a very devout Christian and was dying of cancer. He said that people asked him if he ever asked, "Why me?" and his reply was, "Why not me?" The Bible says that the rain falls and the sun shines upon the just and the unjust. Just a nice religious way of saying that "shit happens". Sometimes what goes around comes around and sometimes it doesn't. The most absurd saying is that everything happens for a reason: Duh! Of course it does, but not everything happens for a purpose.
Or even better is the "if it's my time, it's going to happen". To which I answer,
"then why look both ways or even at all when you cross a street because after all if it's your time to die, it's your time."

9/11 taught this country that we are not living in Neverland anymore. People had been dying all over the world from terrorism, but we remained relatively unscathed. But then we hold American lives more dear than people in the rest of the world hold their lives. Also, we would not give an all-American looking boy such as Timothy McVeigh a second look if he sat down next to us on a bus.
But those towel wearing A-rabs are a different story. Amazingly, not all the peoples in the Mideast are Arabs, but they get tarred with the same brush.

9/11 was our "welcome to the club", welcome to what many nations of the world had been enduring for many years. After 9/11 the world had an empathy and good feeling for us that could have lasted for a generation, but good old George has thrown that away.
Don't care what the rest of the world thinks of us? Might want to think about that again if countries start deciding to use the Euro as the currency for world debt rather than the US dollar. Money talks.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Badgerino

9/11 taught this country that we are not living in Neverland anymore.

9/11 taught this country that this adminstration stifled good Americans from uncovering and stopping 11 September. 9/11 taught us that this president was so in denial as to blame someone who was a threat to no one - Saddam. Badgerino knows this but somehow forgot to remember those facts. 9/11 taught us that the president does not even read his own memos - as even his own Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill reports.

America is attacked only when we decide to become a colonial power. We said we would leave the Middle East after Kuwait was rescued. We lied. We did not leave. The world changed starting 1 Aug 1990. America that could have demonstrated why America was a good and honest nation, instead, began to impose American principles on others. To discover why America is threatened, start with those damning numbers. American popularity dropped from 70% approval rating to 15%. Therein lies why is it now dangerous to adverstise an American citizenship. This problem created when extremists decided to fix those other nations rather than let those other nations fix themselves.

Previously, the French were more often attacked and threatened. Who now has an international approval rating worse than the French? Thank you George Jr for making Americans a target.

Those living in hate assume that other people always hate or are jealous of Americans. Same liars that also created and now deny this 15% approval rating.

[Badgerino]

Originally Posted by tw

9/11 taught this country that this adminstration stifled good Americans from uncovering and stopping 11 September. 9/11 taught us that this president was so in denial as to blame someone who was a threat to no one - Saddam. Badgerino knows this but somehow forgot to remember those facts. 9/11 taught us that the president does not even read his own memos - as even his own Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill reports.

America is attacked only when we decide to become a colonial power. We said we would leave the Middle East after Kuwait was rescued. We lied. We did not leave. The world changed starting 1 Aug 1990. America that could have demonstrated why America was a good and honest nation, instead, began to impose American principles on others. To discover why America is threatened, start with those damning numbers. American popularity dropped from 70% approval rating to 15%. Therein lies why is it now dangerous to adverstise an American citizenship. This problem created when extremists decided to fix those other nations rather than let those other nations fix themselves.

Previously, the French were more often attacked and threatened. Who now has an international approval rating worse than the French? Thank you George Jr for making Americans a target.

Those living in hate assume that other people always hate or are jealous of Americans. Same liars that also created and now deny this 15% approval rating.

I think that we are very closely politically aligned and I agree with what you write. My sarcasm may have been too subtle, but my opinion is that before 9/11 the American people tended to think that terrorism is what happened in other countries such as Israel or Northern Ireland which lived with terrorism for years. 9/11 brought it home that it can happen here (hence, "Neverland", but we lost our innocence). Terrorism can be like the difference between a sniper and a sharp shooter--it depends which side you are on. This does not make it right, but often terrorism is not created in a vacuum. Terrorists do hate and are jealous of Americans, but there are undoubtedly other ingredients that go into their making. Foreign policy decisions made my this country over the years by this country have not helped. If these same type of things had happened in the United States would there be some Americans with right-wing religious fanaticism who would become "snipers" or "sharp shooters"?

Badgerino, a blue-state, bit "L" Liberal Democrat who is proud of it and justifiably so considering who is in charge now.

[tw]

The problem with extremists militants is that they assume we must stop all terrorism. Nonsense. That is the same rigid stance that Europe got into so that an entire continent was at war simply over the assasination of an Arch Duke by criminals.

Get an Atlantic chart outside NYC. The bottom is literlly littered with wrecks sunk by German U-boats. And still that was insufficient to justify war. Great nations suffer many blows without retaliation. It is the 'smoking gun' blow that brings great nations to war - that they win (militarily) handily because great nations are patient. Great nations do not use a penis and testosterone as a replacement for a brain.

In a previous post, I quoted directly from Sze Tzu (there are many spellings) in his book (Art of War). Described is why even a lesser nation wins the war. They first waited for a 'smoking gun' insult. Great nations never fight wars over, for exmaple, a silly spy plane - when they elect intelligent leaders. Citizens of great nations are therefore so empowered that things such as terrorism are exposed and prevented by those little people before terrorist can strike.

Great nations also have leaders who empower their greatest assets - the little people. Inferior nations, instead, have leaders who demand loyalty above all else. Therefore succum to dictatorship - complete with unjusitifed wiretapping, torture, loss of world prestige, perversion of laws, and a need to waste resources on hyped military campaigns 'for the greater glory of a king (dictator)'.

This demand for loyalty above all else is fundamental to two administrations - Nixon and George Jr.

[Badgerino]

Originally Posted by tw

This demand for loyalty above all else is fundamental to two administrations - Nixon and George Jr.

I think that a lot of King George's people cut their teeth in the Nixon administration and are even more secretive and prize absolute loyalty even above what occurred with Tricky Dick.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by tw

9/11 taught this country that this adminstration stifled good Americans from uncovering and stopping 11 September.

Okay, so 9 months of Bush is responsible for what 8 years of Clinton isn't.

I think I'm starting to get it.

That was sarcasm.

[tw]

From the 9/11 Commisson Report:

Two CIA analysts involved in preparing this briefing article believed it represented an opportunity to communicate their view that the threat of a Bin Ladin attack in the United States remained both current and serious. The result was an article in the August 6 Presidential Daily Brief titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." It was the 36th PDB item briefed so far that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States. The President told us the August 6 report was historical in nature. President Bush said the article told him that al Qaeda was dangerous, which he said he had known since he had become President.

So George Jr sat on his ass and did what? Or was he on a prayer rug awaiting guidance?

When Clinton received a same warning, Clinton empowered federal employees to find and stop an impending attack. Diana Deans therefore stopped an LAX bombing, bombing the Raddission Hotel in Amann Jordan, and attacks on Egyptian tourists. She may have also stopped other simultaneous attacks in Montreal and Times Square also during that Millenium celebration. All this accomplished without a Patriot Act, without torture, without bogus Orange alerts, and without illegal wiretapping.

As George Jr sat on his ass, his administration quashed FBI investigations into 9/11 in AZ, MN, IL and Yemen. All investigations that were closing in on 9/11 terrorists were halted months before 11 September. George Jr could not bother to read a memo warning of a specific attack involving buildings and airplanes. (But then read his autobiography to appreciate why.) Instead George Jr removed the nation's #1 anti-terrorism investigator from government. He removed Richard Clark's anti-terrorism unit from the White House and demoted it from a Cabinet level position. Removed it from where Clinton had put it because Clinton read his memos and did his job.

But then nothing here is new. Just repeating a fact - that George Jr is so mentally deficient as to even say, "No one expected the levees to be breached." A statement that should be repeated as often as George Jr conspired to kill Americans in LA. Should be repeated when someone shows respect for a president who does not deserve it. Where was the USS Bataan for five days while Americans were dying? Where was the USS Lincoln for five days as Tsunami victims were dying? Oh. George first had to make a decision. It took five days to make a decision about saving lives.

Originally Posted by Snow Flake

17. At the time 9/11 happend, I was best friends with Dee who died.
And back in October my friend Dan, wh30+. .

0.o I was pretty close to died.

? And you a3