9/11: Sixteen years
Today is the 16th anniversary of 9/11.
As I type those words, I feel a sense of surprise at the passage of time. And yet not a lot of surprise, because it does feel like a long time ago that we watched those buildings burn and then collapse. There was a sense of outrage and shock; how could this be happening?
The outrage remains. The shock is gone. In the 16 years since 9/11, I think most people have assimilated the event—and other terrorist events, albeit smaller, have driven home the message that these things can happen any time, any place, and even bigger ones may be in the offing although thankfully they have not yet occurred.
Yesterday a friend of mine was saying that after 9/11 the country pulled together for a while. And it did. But my response to the remark was that the pulling-together lasted just a few days. I don’t know if that’s literally true—maybe it lasted a bit longer—but it wasn’t long at all and even at the outset there were many dissenting (mostly leftist) voices blaming America or even rejoicing that America got its comeuppance.
It’s a cliché to say that since then the divisions have only deepened, but I’ll say it: since then the divisions have only deepened. What’s more, a sizable number of people (I’ve read polls that differ on the exact percentage, but it’s probably somewhere between 10 and 20 percent) believe the US government caused 9/11 or was deeply complicit in it. I know a couple of these people myself.
One thing most of us probably have forgotten about 9/11, though, are the details of the lives of those who died. For a while after the event, the Times published small biographies of each of the dead. These were heartbreaking to read, and they still are, because they are archived here. It struck me then, and it strikes me now, how young most of the dead were.
Now that 16 years have passed, their children are not children anymore. Even the babies of those wives who were pregnant at the time (babies who would never be able to meet their own fathers) are not babies anymore but are now fifteen. There are many college students who can’t remember a time before 9/11. For them, it is part of the worldview they always remember having had.
I don’t know about you. But for me, an adult who was no longer young even on the original 9/11, the event also seems to have become part of the worldview I’ve always had. I know that’s not true. I know that for me there was a long time before 9/11, and that 9/11 was a tremendous shock to me at the time it happened. In fact, it was the initial impetus for my renewed interest in politics, which a few years later led me on the path to begin this blog. But my pre-9/11 mindset began to fade a few years ago, and now it’s a stretch to remember what it was like to be so shocked by the attack. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad, but it seems true.
RIP to the victims of 9/11. Comfort to their families. Resolve to our country to fight against those who attacked us and those who support them.
[NOTE: Here is the story of my personal experience on 9/11 and its immediate aftermath.]
[ADDENDUM: Here’s an interesting article from a few years ago about how the placement of names was chosen for the 9/11 memorial.]
And so say we all.
Because I rarely watch TV, even back in 2001, I walked into my office to find a knot of employees gathered around a small, portable TV one had brought in, just in time to see the 2nd plane strike.
I said aloud, more to myself than anyone else, “The world will never be the same”.
In the weeks that followed, I watched our initial unity disintegrate. Discovered the craven dissimulation of the Democrats who began the present trend of weeping and dropping flowers for the dead victims, instead of seeking retribution and the quashing of Evil. With a big E, indeed!
And I began reading about Islam and the Clash of Civilizations, starting with Bernard Lewis’ works.
I concluded Islam is a fiction created by Mohamed to justify himself and his activities, an ideology and not a religion except for its mandate for Obedience, and Death to the Unbeliever.
I believe so to this day. And, Trump aside, I believe Obama at his core is a Muslim sympathizer, de minimis.
Right. A very little while.
Kay S. Hymowitz writing in City Journal Summer 2003 re Michael Moore and 9/11
… and from a couple years earlier, a few hours after the attack
9/13/01
and earlier yet,
09/13/01
http://www.alternativetentacles.com/news.php?page=43&news_section=MAIN&window_size=15
The haters are worried about hurricanes today.
I highly recommend this video at Powerline. I don;t have much patience for videos on line but Rick Rescorla was the hero of that day and this is his story.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/09/a-day-to-be-proud-8.php#comments
I also highly recommend the book,
“Heart of a Soldier”
I remember that day as if it were yesterday, as we all do, even though it was so many years ago.
If we as Americans were aligned and allied after the events of 9/11 then it was most definitely short-lived. Everything changed. The conflict with radical Islam is a cloud over everything. It is part of the wedge that divides us. An undercurrent of despair is everywhere – we’ve been at solving the conflict for sixteen years; longer, really, but focused on it in a very conscious way since 9/11. And, yet, it remains.
For me, I ignore the likes of Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell, and anyone and everyone that wants to paint Americans, especially those that died that day, as anything but victims. Instead, I’ll think about Todd Beamer, who I knew, and the son-in-law of a close friend that was on one of the Boston planes that was run into the towers, and the co-workers of a friend who were in one of the towers when it collapsed. I’ll think about their families and friends who are still here, doing the best they can.
Kinda rambling here, but that always seems to happen on this date.
From the DavidHorowitz Freedom Center
EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT ISLAM I LEARNED ON 9/11
How September 11 made me what I am.
September 11, 2017
Daniel Greenfield
“In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate,” a terrorist declares on the Flight 93 cockpit recording. That’s followed by the sounds of the terrorists assaulting a passenger.
“Please don’t hurt me,” he pleads. “Oh God.”
As the passengers rush the cabin, a Muslim terrorist proclaims, “In the name of Allah.”
As New York firefighters struggle up the South Tower with 100 pounds of equipment on their backs trying to save lives until the very last moment, the Flight 93 passengers push toward the cockpit. The Islamic hijackers call out, “Allahu Akbar.” The Islamic supremacist term originated with Mohammed’s massacre of the Jews of Khaybar and means that Allah is greater than the gods of non-Muslims.
Mohammed Atta had advised his fellow terrorists that when the fighting begins, “Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” He quoted the Koran’s command that Muslim holy warriors terrorize non-believers by beheading them and urged them to follow Mohammed’s approach, “Take prisoners and kill them.”
The 9/11 ringleader quoted the Koran again. “No prophet should have prisoners until he has soaked the land with blood.”
On Flight 93, the fighting goes on. “Oh Allah. Oh the most Gracious,” the Islamic terrorists cry out. “Trust in Allah,” they reassure. And then there are only the chants of, “Allahu Akbar” as the plane goes down in a Pennsylvania field leaving behind another blood-soaked territory in the Islamic invasion of America.
Today that field is marked by the “Crescent of Embrace” memorial.
Thousands of Muslims cheered the attack in those parts of Israel under the control of the Islamic terrorists of the Palestinian Authority. They shouted, “Allahu Akbar” and handed out candy.
But similar ugly outbreaks of Islamic Supremacism were also taking place much closer to home.
On John F. Kennedy Boulevard, in Jersey City, across the river from Manhattan, crowds of Muslim settlers celebrated the slaughter of Americans. “Some men were dancing, some held kids on their shoulders,” a retired Jersey City cop described the scene. “The women were shouting in Arabic.”
Similar Islamic festivities broke out on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a major Islamic settlement area, even as in downtown Manhattan, ash had turned nearby streets into the semblance of a nuclear war. Men and women trudged over Brooklyn Bridge or uptown to get away from this strange new world.
Many just walked. They didn’t know where they were going. I was one of them.
That Tuesday was a long and terrible education. In those hours, millions of Americans were being educated about many things: what happens when jet planes collide with skyscrapers, how brave men can reach the 78th floor with 100 pounds of equipment strapped to their backs and what are the odds are of finding anyone alive underneath the rubble of a falling tower. They were learning about a formerly obscure group named Al Qaeda and its boss. But they were also being educated about Islam.
Islamic terrorism was once something that happened “over there.” You saw it on the covers of Time or Newsweek back when those were staples of checkout counters and medical offices. But even after the World Trade Center bombing, it wasn’t truly “over here.” But now it was. The war was here.
Each generation is born into history out of a moment of crisis. We are defined by our struggles. By the wars we fight and do not fight. On a Tuesday morning in September, my generation was born into history.
Some of us were born into it better than others.
At Union Square, I passed NYU students painting anti-war placards even as the downtown sky behind them was painted the color of bone. They ignored the crowd streaming up past them and focused intently on making all the red letters in NO WAR line up neatly on the white cardboard.
In the years since, I have seen that look on the faces of countless leftists who ignore the stabbers shouting, “Allahu Akbar” in London or the terrorist declaring, “In the name of Allah, the merciful,” among the bloody ruin of a gay nightclub in Orlando. Instead they focus on their mindless slogans.
“NO WAR,” “Stop Islamophobia” and “Refugees Welcome.” The world of the cardboard sign and the simple slogan is an easier and neater one than a sky filled with the ashes of the dead.
On September 11, some of us opened our eyes. Others closed them as hard as they could.
That Tuesday irrevocably divided my generation. Some joined the military, the police or became analysts. Others turned left-wing activists, volunteered as lawyers for terrorists or converted to Islam.
The passengers on Flight 93 who took the lead were in their thirties. But the two firefighters who made it to the 78th floor of the South Tower, Ronald Bucca, who did duty in Vietnam as a Green Beret, and Orio Palmer, a marathon runner, were in their forties. Those men and women had the most meaningful answers to the old question, “Where were you when it happened?”
I was just one of countless people moving upstream away from Ground Zero.
The great lesson of that Tuesday morning was that it wasn’t over. It wasn’t over when we understood that we wouldn’t find anyone alive in that twisted mass of metal and death. It wasn’t over when the air began to clear. It wasn’t over when the President of the United States spoke. It wasn’t over when the planes began to fly again and the TV switched from non-stop coverage of the attacks and back to its regularly scheduled programming. It wasn’t over when we were told to mourn and move on.
It still isn’t over.
After every attack, Boston, Orlando, San Bernardino, New York, Paris, Manchester, London, Barcelona, we are encouraged to mourn and move on. Bury the bodies, shed a tear and forget about it.
Terrible things happen. And we have to learn to accept them.
But Tuesday morning was not a random catastrophe. It did not go away because we went back to shopping. It did not go away with Hope and Change. Appeasing and forgetting only made it stronger.
Everything I needed to know about Islam, I learned on September 11. The details of the theology came later. I couldn’t quote the Koran while the sirens were wailing. But I learned the essential truth.
And so did you.
“Where were you?” is not just a question to be asked about September 11, 2001. It is an everyday question. What are you doing today to fight the Islamic terrorists who did this? And tomorrow?
I found my answer through my writing. Others have made a more direct contribution.
But it’s important that we keep asking ourselves that question.
The 9/11 hijackers, the members of Al Qaeda, of ISIS, of the Muslim Brotherhood and the entire vast global terror network, its supporters and fellow travelers asked themselves that question every day.
They are still asking it.
From the Iranian nuclear program to the swarm of Muslim Brotherhood organizations in America, from the Muslim migrant surge into Germany to the sex grooming gangs of the UK, they have their answers.
Our enemies wake up every day wondering how to destroy us. Their methods, from demographic invasion to WMDs, from political subversion to random stabbings, are many.
A new and terrible era in history began on 9/11. We are no more past it than we were past Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway. Its origins are no mystery. They lie in the last sound that came from Flight 93.
“Allahu Akbar.”
We are in the middle of the longest war in American history. And we still haven’t learned how to fight it.
September 11 has come around again.
Did you all know that Fahrenheit 9/11 sold more copies in Germany than in the US? I remember going into our university town’s largest bookstore and seeing tables piled with his and other anti-American books. Thankfully, I was able to get good books via Amazon and could read a lot on the internet. This is part of the reason I try to avoid talking any kind of politics here. If something comes up, I try to share some personal experiences that contradict the received wisdom and then drop the topic.
I was glued to the TV on 9/11. It was a horrible day.After that I started reading everything I could find to try to understand what was happening. It still amazes me how little so many people understand about Islam and what life is like in the enclaves.
What I feel/think every 9/11 is anger and sadness. Sadness for those lost and anger that so many, perhaps a majority, in the West do not realize Islam is not compatible with life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and free wll. And what I will not say is what my response to 9/11 would have been had I been CINC.
Trite as this dialog from Independence Day is, it nevertheless has obvious parallels to the Clash of Civilizations we face.
PRESIDENT
Can we negotiate a truce? is there room for co-existance?
(no answer)
Can there be peace between us?
OKUN/ALIEN
Peace? No peace.
PRESIDENT
What do you want us to do?
OKUN/ALIEN
Die.
The Alien moves closer to the glass staring at the President.
Suddenly the President clutches his head in pain.
NIMZIKI
Mr. President?
OKUN/ALIEN
We kill you…all.
PRESIDENT
He wanted me to understand. He communicated with me.
(turning to Grey)
They’re like locusts. They travel from planet to planet, their whole civilization. After they’ve
consumed every natural resource they move on. And we’re next.
The President stands with a new resolve. He stares at the dead alien on the floor.
PRESIDENT
(coldly)
Prepare a nuclear strike.
Richard Fernandez’s “The Three Conjectures” makes a persuasive argument that Islam’s totalitarian ideology may have no other destination.
Islamic terrorism was once something that happened “over there.”
It had actually happened in NYC in 1993 but few except Rick Rescorla paid attention.
I will forever think George W Bush a fool for spouting the “religion of peace” lie.
For other reasons too…but that most of all.
I agree with Frog. Mohamed was looking for self justification. There were two perfectly good Abrahamic religions to chose from. But that would have required accepting the thing that sets us apart from all other cultures, the 9th Commandment.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2017/09/11/festering/
“For many of us, the crystalline clarity of that September morning sixteen years ago will live forever as the symbol of something we lost, some innocent glimmer that can never be recovered. On that day, we changed, each of us who lived through it and who didn’t willfully go back to sleep. On that day those of us who had been hopeful, idiotic internationalist libertarians were reminded that the world doesn’t conform to dreams, that other countries and other cultures get a say in who we are and what we do and that some of them hate us, they really, really hate us.”
http://tribunist.com/military/this-f-16-pilot-was-ready-to-give-her-life-on-911-now-shes-telling-her-incredible-story/
“Penney was the second combat pilot in the air that morning. The idea of shooting down a civilian aircraft, even a hijacked one, was troublesome enough—but Penney had no missiles or live ammunition. All she had were her orders and her plane. She was going to take the plane down the hard way.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/275157/#respond
“I’ve said all this before, but it bears repeating today. And if I don’t have anything new to say at this late date, well, it’s been a long time.
One thing I guess I didn’t believe 16 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.
God bless America. We need it.”
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 8:56 am
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/09/11/terrorism-screening-looking-glass/
BY SARAH HOYT SEPTEMBER 11, 2017
“A couple of days ago I was flying back to the U.S. from a (probably once in a lifetime) trip to France. My ticket was stamped SSS which is not, as I’d have expected, Super Secret Squirrel, but Securite Special something or other. My long-vanished French doesn’t allow me to decipher the original French leading to the acronym.
This meant a talk with a jolly, happy-sounding security guy who you’d think was just an airport flunky until you actually saw his badge which was discrete and out of the way. He reminded me of the scene in Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters when the main character is given a security once-over without noticing: he joked about speaking French, said my accent didn’t sound Portuguese (true. The mid-range hearing loss and years of English-speaking come in), and asked about places in Portugal without seeming to.
So far so good, and I was mildly impressed. I’ve long maintained that what we actually need is this sort of understated, low-grade examination of travelers.
…
But then, after the metal detector and all, I was pulled into another line, which was apparently the “real and for truth” enhanced security examination.
This is when I realized I had fallen into a bad science fiction story of an alternate reality where Islam was attacked by everyone else, by acts of terrorism involving airplanes, and was doing its best to defend itself.
The line was long and seemed predominantly people over 60, though the Swedish-looking lady ahead of me might have been my age or thereabouts. And the Buddhist monk in full regalia standing between us was probably in his thirties. Also, he was rather obviously of Asian extraction.
And the line moved incredibly slowly, mostly because the people running the enhanced security spoke broken, accented French, seemed to have no clue what they were actually doing, and also seemed to be marking time more than anything else.
They were also all obviously, clearly, of Middle Eastern origin. The name tags confirmed Muslim names, but the accents and look had already announced it.
Note that going through security with us were several Middle Eastern families, with women attired in everything from chador to full burka. There were also young men clutching Middle Eastern passports.
Right now, I know some of you are writhing in discomfort and thoughts of “racist” are going through your heads. I know it because they went through mine too while writing it. And nonetheless, I wrote it, because it needed to be done.
I don’t remember the number of attempted terror attacks since 9/11, or even the number of successful ones (mostly involving cars or knives and unarmed bystanders), but I do know for an absolute and undeniable fact that of those attacks 99.9% were performed by men of Middle Eastern extraction, subscribing to a fanatical form of Islam. Yes, there are one or two that were just “crazy guy with a knife.”
I guarantee, however, that all of the attempts on airplanes and airline safety — requiring more organization than a mere pulling out of a knife and going insane — are attempted by people of Middle Eastern extraction, following what they deem to be the dictates of Islam.
…
What there hasn’t been, in the history of post-9/11 terror, which has made flying such a trial, is an airline terror attack by a Swedish grandmother, a Buddhist monk, or an excitable Latin novelist who also pens the occasional political column. And yet here we were being treated like suspects — look, this is France. It might be random, but they definitely treated us as suspicious scum — these Muslim immigrants who didn’t actually seem to mind if they made us miss our planes, and who seemed rather uncertain on aspects of modern life. …
Pretend you are a time traveler, arriving at that security line from say the week before 9/11. What would you surmise from that display? Surely, in any rational world, it would mean we had selected the people most likely to pose a risk (even if with some randomization thrown in, since you couldn’t possibly examine everyone) and that the people examining us were the ones who were not in any way likely to commit terrorism, right? Because in a sane world that would be the only thing that could justify what you saw.
We don’t live in a sane world.
I understand the attempts not to profile, to an extent. It would make no sense, at any rate, to limit inspection of potential threats to only people of Middle Eastern origin or only Muslims. The Lockerbie flight was brought down by a bomb put in the luggage of a pregnant European woman, and Islam has converts of all colors and extractions. So, all right, some of the inspections would fall randomly on other people. But surely they should concentrate, of necessity, on the pool of likely suspects. At least one or two men of Middle Eastern extraction, between 18 and 45, would be examined. But despite their abundance in the boarding time/place I was in, there wasn’t a single one of them in enhanced security before or after me.
And surely, in a sane world, no country would entrust their security to recent immigrants from the pool of likely suspects, right? Surely no one had German immigrants hunting for Nazi spies in WWII, right?
This is not race. It is not profiling. It is sanity.
And yet, sixteen years after 9/11, here we were, in a European country where signaling virtue was more important than security, and where you could be excused for thinking Muslims were the only ones who had never attempted terror.
I’d like to say it’s not the same here, but I’ve been required to remove my shoes by TSA employees wearing face veils.
In the end, it comes down to this: as with the attempts to destroy the memory of 9/11, and erase our justified anger at it, our self-proclaimed elites would rather risk being blown to pieces than admit that there are threats to the West that come from people who originate from a different (and in their minds quaint and innocent) culture.
The “elites” across the West persist in this, though the self-abasement of the west is sure to be interpreted as surrender by the Muslim world; even though in the confines of their culture, the only thing they’ll understand, the only thing that will prevent them from attacking, the only thing that will in fact NOT generate more terrorists is forceful counterattack and treating them as responsible for policing their own community.
It’s as though their vision of the world and their oikophobia are more important to them than saving the civilization that has enabled them to exist.
Until we wake from this fretful dream, until we come back through the looking glass, there is no stopping either terrorism or the elites’ self-reflexive virtue-signaling.
They are, like the aristocrats before the French revolution, living in a shell of affluence and unearned superiority, not heeding the lessons of history.
This won’t end well. And everyone knows it but the policy makers.”
(There is a sort of inconsistency in the “who is in line” lists, but I think she means “young men” as being under 18, which is consistent with how I would use the term.)
AesopFan:
That F16 pilot’s story is the sort of thing you’ll see a lot of if you read this highly-recommended book.
I have long feared that the next “9-11” wil be a nuke on U.S. soil.
What then??
We are all inmates of a PC insane asylum.
Germany and France, the heart of Western Europe, are immolating themselves by their self-imposed Islamification. Yet “Angel” Merkel, the head of the Christian Democratic Union and daughter of a pastor, will be re-elected yet again.
What part of the “Joy of Self-Sacrifice ™ “; are you missing?
“Mindlessness”, our greatest strength.
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Hangtown Bob Says:
September 12th, 2017 at 10:14 am
I have long feared that the next “9-11” wil be a nuke on U.S. soil.
What then??
* * *
Judging from our politicians’ responses to date, that may be the only thing that gets their attention.
Because the people won’t allow them to kick the can any further down the road.
Whether it’s NK or some ME group might make a difference in the response.
Which party has President and Congress will be another factor.
Recall that all of our 20th century wars were either entered into or massively escalated by Democrats — the War Against Muslim Terrorists (including Iran) began much earlier than 9/11/01, the Dems just refused to acknowledge it.
Frog Says:
September 11th, 2017 at 4:28 pm
From the DavidHorowitz Freedom Center
EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT ISLAM I LEARNED ON 9/11
* * *
The visual and Leftist response, which may have some bearing on the current alt-right and ctrl-left clashes:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/04/do-you-know-this-racist-driver-virginia-vanity-license-plate-heil-hitler-confederate-flag-south/
I had only one close relative on Manhattan at the time the towers came down, and they were not close.
My wife and I visited the 9/11 museum several months ago and it was sadly impressive. It did cross my mind at the time, that the museum could be seen as a tribute of sorts to the evil genius of KSM and the planning of the attack. I’m sure it would have been wrong to just erase it all. But still…
As a retired scientist, I’ve had at least one argument with a 9/11 truther about how stupid the idea of planted explosives is. Then I have to explain how brilliant is was to exploit the weakness of steel at high temperatures. Sigh.