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Home » 9/11 and the NY Times: the airplanes were the guilty parties

9/11 and the NY Times: the airplanes were the guilty parties

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a tweet posted today by The New York Times that has since been taken down, probably because they got too much criticism for it:

Eighteen years have passed since airplanes took aim and brought down the World Trade Center. Today, families will once again gather and grieve at the site where more than 2000 people died.

During the days and months following 9/11, the Times was a good source for news about it. At least, that’s what I recall. The destruction of the WTC was many things, depending on the perspective of the observer, but one of the things it was was a story that took place in New York, a local story in addition to its enormous national and international dimensions.

Originally, the Times knew who perpetrated the terrorist crime and was not shy about using their names or ascribing agency to them. (I’m doing this from memory at the moment, but I think that’s correct.) The Times may have used a certain amount of dodging and hedging, and I’m not sure it talked a whole lot about fanatical Islamic fundamentalists and all the background. But I believe it’s a mark of how far the Times has come towards leftist gobbledygook that a tweet ascribing the agency to airplanes could get by whatever passes for an editor there these days.

Note that the tweet didn’t just say “since airplanes brought down the World Trade Center.” That phrasing would have been bad enough, but the Times couldn’t rest with that. These airplanes were sentient beings or programmed guided missiles, and they took aim. No terrorists—much less terrorists with a coherent philosophy that dictates the mass killing of innocent Americans in a way intended to strike fear into our hearts—were involved.

That tweet is emblematic of the changes that have occurred in the MSM—not just the Times—during the last eighteen years. It’s not a total transformation, because the MSM was already at least halfway there before 9/11. But now the problem is worse.

Comments

9/11 and the <i>NY Times</i>: the airplanes were the guilty parties — 63 Comments

  3. The hide your head in the sand, no real conflicts here, just some sort of “misunderstanding,” moral equivalence, all cultures are equal, “Islam is the Religion of Peace” crowd—the MSM, editorialists, and commentators, government officials, academics—practically everyone, have done their very best to help us to forget and distance ourselves from that Day * from what actually happened, and from who was responsible, and why; heaven forbid that we should be involved in a “Clash of Civilizations,” or a Islamic Jihad against all “unbelievers” that has been going on—vigorously prosecuted when Islam has been strong, less so when it has been weak—for almost 1,400 years now.

    * Funny how the images of the Towers exploding, burning, and collapsing from that Day are not something you see very often in this country—on TV, or in the form of posters (images which, if this had been around the time of WWI or WWII, would have been shown—over and over again—in every movie theater, and plastered on every wall), but that such images, DVDs, and posters are reportedly a big seller in the bazaars of Middle East.

    Gee, I wonder why?

  5. It’s like they wanna be the fake news. Of course, there is always the possibility that airplanes are secretly sentient beings and the science just hasn’t got woke yet.

  6. Outstanding Mark. Yes, sentient beings Neo.

    This garbage is so pernicious, as I actually missed the point with my first rapid reading of the tweet. But the media uses this tactic all the time with shootings, though some of that is criminals dodging their agency. “The gun just went off.” Better sue the gun manufacturers then.

  9. Hsving trained in F14s, and only losing to fiightr squadr 2 bect us in the 1992 Tomcat follies because they rented a tank and they crushed our Sedan De Ville, After we went to all the trouble of installing the shark tooth grill. And the horn that said eat me. I want you to know. I loved since forerever

  10. A year ago April we were in Tel Aviv , having arrived on Holocaust Remembrance Day, (Yom HaShoah). A few days later we were in Jerusalem for the Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism (Yom HaZikaron) which leads directly into Independence Day (last year the 70th anniversary). I have never experienced such solemn memorializing, ever. At 8 the evening prior, a siren is sounded and everything stops–all traffic lights red throughout the country. Restaurants were closed, no alcohol served. If you turned on T.V. all programming related to the memorial being observed; movies and current events. It was beautiful. And likewise, the celebration (granted it was 70 years!) was astounding. Lights, music, dancing throughout the city. Several fireworks displays and though it was a weeknight, the celebrating went on into the early morning hours. The next day, families and friends are in the parks throughout the city for BBQ and picnics. I always say that the only subject God requires of His people is history. Our present rewriting of history (Zinn, NYT, etc etc) violate memory and purpose.

  11. I could fill you in my pedigree in naval aviation. But why bother? It is definitel the airplanee that are the problem.

  12. NYT, like most Dems most of the time, seem to think that it’s the social system which causes bad people to be bad, rather than the individual badness. That’s why they support changing the system. Since they’re wrong about the problem, they ignore the individual responsibility, their solutions won’t solve the problems, won’t stop the individuals from being bad.

    So sad!

  13. I dont want anyone to feel sorry for me. If you need help and you are a veteran you can call the National Suicide Preventure Center and they will direct you to. A veterans help line. You dont need to be suicidal to call.

  14. I am in intense pain. I need both hips replaced and my legs feel like they are on fire. The karmic joke is i have to use a walker. And both my shoulders need to be replaced. In fact playing rugby until i turned nearly 50 did none of my joints any good.

    Dont be afraid to ask for help.

  17. Airplanes, guns, motor vehicles, rocks, knives, and so many other objects lusting for human blood. Is it any wonder that the left lives in a constant state of fear?

  20. parker
    Airplanes, guns, motor vehicles, rocks, knives, and so many other objects lusting for human blood.

    gun control…airplane control. Ban guns. Ban airplanes. After all, an airplane delivered 150,000+ deaths to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Twin Towers is just the tip of the iceberg of the death that airplanes have dealt us. Ban airplanes. Result: contraband planes. I’m Leaving on a Bootleg Jet Plane.

    The NYT will claim that it was just not writing carefully. But when you write off the top of your head,your most unfiltered thoughts come to the fore. I am reminded of Mike Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” Ditto when the NYT inadvertently reveals its opinion about 9/11.

  21. Personal memory I took PATH to the Trade Center on 9/11, PATH train is several hundred feet below street level, escalators to ground floor, daily routine, 8:45, got to office two blocks south and 5 minutes later earthquake like explosion, building shook, evacuated, Jack the building lobby attendant was out for a smoke on West Street and saw an airplane wheel, body parts, – big “accident”. Some minutes later second explosion and building share, second crash, permanent evacuation, thousands of people milling about on streets, watching towers burn, I was thinking how crazy to stand a block from these top floor fires and assume we are safe. What if they fell? Crazy idea.

    Every subway and bus line closed, to leave Manhattan many started walking, North, or across Brooklyn Bridge, no way to get to NJ. Ferries just roaming nn Jersey side. I was walking near water on esplanade and thinking what if I really have to jump in the Hudson? I could swim if I had to like if bombing started. A young woman with a baby carriage walked by and a businessman took off his suit jacket and draped it over the carriage to protect the baby from ash fallout.

    Another explosion and I thought that the Holocaust Museum near the river was targeted but it was the Trade Center collapsing. When I got to South Ferry and used a rest room, I looked in the mirror and saw white ash covering my hair, my face, my clothes, looking like a coated ghost. Is this how the end comes, in ashes and alone.

  22. y81:

    True. A lot more than 2000 people died there. The WTC death toll was 2606, and that doesn’t even include the deaths on the airplanes.

  23. .g. ruqtna:

    That’s quite a story.

    One of the most intense things about that day was the not knowing what would be happening next. It seems as though it could be just about anything.

  24. I recall that the NYT did individual and detailed stories on each murdered victim. That was good.

  25. Adding to Cornhead’s comments.

    The NY Times, for 15 weeks, published small profiles of the then known victims. It was under the heading “Portraits of Grief” and later published it as a book. It was a long string of sadness to look at the paper each day and get a glimpse of the lives that were cut short. They did do that very well.

  26. I two people that were murded that day. I also leamed
    How to hate. Really how to hate. Then ilearned to give upthe hate. If i was,going to best these @%$(/\56. Couldnt do it if i was consumed by hate.

  28. About three years after 9/11 the NYT got wind of a government program that was successfully tracking the jihadis through international money transfers. It enabled the Bush administration to find and kill them. Despite pleas by Bush and Cheney to hush up the story, the
    Times in its self righteousness and hatred for Bush went ahead and splattered the story all over its front page, wrecking the program. There was nothing Bush could do because of the First Amendment and it didn’t fit the definition of treason so they couldn’t imprison or execute the editors of the NYT, but it was objectively treason. If I were Trump I’d call them the treasonous Times. Some planes did something alright.

  29. .g. ruqtna, thank you, what a vivid and immediate reflection. You bring back the gut twisting tension, the waiting to see what hell would happen next — which, as I recall, faded only slowly, over weeks.

    Cornhead, I was remembering the same thing — the NYT took weeks or months to write thoughtfully about every single victim. One of the victims was my cousin, and I can’t tell you how much it meant when the story about him appeared, and how precious it still is to our family. As hopeless as the NYT has become, it did do that.

  30. Mrs Whatsit:

    Condolences on your loss.

    I also remember those short biographies in the Times. They were heartbreaking.

  31. “Airplanes took aim”.
    Yeah, right.
    And guns kill people.
    John Lukacs, in his book, “Last Rites”, emphasizes the point previously made by a few (unnoticed) others that we are becoming a more and more mechanical society, where few understand how their machines work, far fewer can fix them, and yet we increasingly rely, nay, utterly depend on them. That is why a single electro-magnetic burst from a high-altitude nuclear explosion would kill us: no computers, no chips, nothing would work!

    And algorithms drive stock markets, not people, not traders.

  32. I was working in mid-town that day. I remember catching one of the first trains out of the city to NJ that afternoon and I’ll never forget that conductor’s voice as he said that the train would be crowded more than usual and to make every seat available; and, then his voice cracked as he said “we all know what happen today and everyone on this train is lucky to be alive.”

    The next morning I arrived at my NJ suburban station’s parking lot – I was usually the first or second to arrive to an empty lot. But, on Sept 12 there were, I just had to count them, 57 cars scattered around the parking lot. 57 of my fellow commuters did not come home that previous night.

  33. There are a lot of things i dont want to happen that keep happening. You dont need to know me. You probably know someone similar to me. I am no one special. Just an average man. But i am a man. When my country calls i answer the call.

    9 11 was obviously one of those occurances i would never wish on my worst enemy. Because and maybe it is not so obvious but if. I am going to kill someone i ….

  35. I wont run through my entire pedigree. I qualified on every weapon the Navy and Marines had to offer. If i am not preoared that is my bad

  38. One of the victims was my cousin, and I can’t tell you how much it meant when the story about him appeared, and how precious it still is to our family. As hopeless as the NYT has become, it did do that.

    Mrs Whatsit: In 2002 a New Yorker told me New Yorkers would never forget 9-11. But beyond the “airplanes took aim” version, it appears they have.

  39. It was Theodore Dalrymple, a pseudonym for a British doctor, who hipped me to the passive voice in such situations with his 1994 article, “The Knife Went In,” based on his experiences working in a prison.

    Synchronistically with respect to Brexit, the subtitle was:

    It is a mistake to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free.
    _____________________________________________________________

    My murderer was by no means alone in explaining his deed as due to circumstances beyond his control. As it happens, there are three stabbers (two of them unto death) at present in the prison who used precisely the same expression when describing to me what happened. “The knife went in,” they said when pressed to recover their allegedly lost memories of the deed.

    The knife went in—unguided by human hand, apparently. That the long-hated victims were sought out, and the knives carried to the scene of the crimes, was as nothing compared with the willpower possessed by the inanimate knives themselves, which determined the unfortunate outcome.

    https://www.city-journal.org/html/“-knife-went-in”-12530.html

  40. Cicero — I think you have it backwards: since “assault weapons” cause mass shootings, airplanes must have caused 9/11. QED.

  42. Thank for your prayers. Kate. I missed that comment. I am sure the only reason i still live is becaeuse i have i have angels like you praying me

  43. Thank for your prayers. Kate. I missed that comment. I am sure the only reason i still live is becaeuse i have i have angels like you praying for me

  45. One supposes that in the near future the guilty party will be “Greedy Capitalists” that drove those poor men to suicide.

  50. The Wall St. Journal ran an in-depth story several weeks after 9/11, following the experiences of several who lived and several who died. I remember most poignantly the detailed phone conversations between a man trapped up high in the first tower and his family gathered at home, watching on TV. His last words were “Oh God” as the collapse began. The detailed story, and the phone conversations, allowed his Jewish widow to have him declared dead without a body being recovered. Visiting her as she sat shiva was another widow who couldn’t do this for her own husband, lacking the detailed evidence.

  51. “Funny how the images of the Towers exploding, burning, and collapsing from that Day are not something you see very often in this country—on TV, or in the form of posters …”

    I ran across a sideshow of this story yesterday. On FB, numerous real-life friends and acquiantances had some sort of “Never Forget” post, typically with iconic photos from that day. A conservative person I know had referenced a Daily Mail (UK) story from 2011, “The 9/11 victims America wants to forget: The 200 jumpers who flung themselves from the Twin Towers who have been ‘airbrushed from history’.” It was the headline that this friend was posting about, but when I went to read the actual story, I was annoyed by its fundamental misrepresentation of the subject.

    This article, which can be readily found online, has as its main point that “in this country of intense religious fervour, many believe that to be a ‘jumper’ was to choose suicide rather than accept the fate of God — and suicide in whatever circumstances is considered shameful or, indeed, a sin that will send you to Hell.” The article then went on to discuss the idea in detail.

    That’s ridiculous. The article spins this idea like 9/11 happened in 1501, or at least a country still living in 1501. That was not a widespread response to the “jumpers” nor is it the reason that those photos tended to disappear. I was a young adult that day and I cannot name a single person that I knew in real life around me saying anything to that effect. More obviously, even 18 years ago, the mainstream media was not full of people with judaeo-christian “fervour”.

    This happened because what we’ll refer to as responsible mainstream media had a longstanding policy of avoiding the publication of photos that reasonable people would find shocking, graphic or in poor taste, and right at the top of that list are photos of dead or dying people. One looks at those photos knowing that these are people who are seconds from oblivion, from horrific deaths, and they are disturbing photos, no matter what religious beliefs you have (or don’t have). Editors know that there will be firestorms of protest from readers/viewers about photos that cross the line, and they will get called in and have to answer for choosing to run them. If you’ve seen certain publications in the UK, you’d realize that they must have different standards over there.

    It’s also true that mainstream media in the US would like to erase the politically incorrect aspects of 9/11, like ordinary people jumping to their death off of a skyscraper because some planes did something, but the driving reason for avoiding these photos was because mainstream media did not want to show a picture of what was probably Jonathan Briley a few seconds from grotesque death, or other equally graphic photos from those moments. It has nothing to do with religious belief, and it seems like an agenda on the part of the UK media to pretend that the United States is crawling with religious zealots.

  52. Those 31 words quoted above from the New York Times, which led off this thread, in which the Times totally covered for the Islamic terrorists and for Islam and, moreover, tried to minimize the casualty count from that Day by saying it was more than 2,000 instead of the couple shy of 3,000 that it actually was, is incontrovertible evidence that serves to permanently write the Times off as a credible news source, and indelibly marks the Times as just a Leftist propaganda rag.

    In my opinion this dereliction of duty ranks right up there with their “reporter” Walter Duranty and the Times deliberate coverup of Stalin and the Communist Party directed famine in the Ukraine.

    P.S.–It they really wanted to tell the truth about the ultimate casualty count that came about as a result of that Day, they would have added in the deaths of all those who were injured on that Day and who subsequently died of their injuries, plus the deaths of all the Policemen, Firemen, and other First Responders, their search and rescue dogs and perhaps, as well, some civilians living/working in the area, who may subsequently have died due to the effects of the toxic material they were exposed to, and breathed in.

  53. A synthesis of observations about Times coverage then and now:
    Memorializing the victims was the right thing to do, but it was also political (everyone was a gung-ho anti-terrorist in the beginning, so they had to fit in, as with “We are all Charlie Hebdo” NOT); and financial (how many extra copies did relatives and friends buy)?
    Not faulting them for either motive, but just acknowledging they were (and are) there.

    When the national (not personal) grief subsided, and the War on Terror looked like it was either (a) futile, at least according to the media; or (b) maybe getting to be a bit too successful, the Treasonous Times (h/t Paul) reverted to their usual anti-US position.

  55. Good point, Snow on Pine. With cancer deaths of first responders, the number of fatalities is probably considerably above 3,000 by now.

  56. huxley on September 12, 2019 at 12:11 am said:
    It was Theodore Dalrymple, a pseudonym for a British doctor, who hipped me to the passive voice in such situations with his 1994 article, “The Knife Went In,” based on his experiences working in a prison.
    * * *
    This observation pretty well sums up the entirety of the Democratic Party’s platform, and a good chunk of the GOP’s.

    “The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.” – Dalrymple

  57. More from Dalrymple, which I think can be extended from criminals to terrorists: “It’s all your fault some people did something.”

    (after a plethora of examples)

    Quite often they put me on warning that unless I find the cure for their behavior, or at least prescribe the drugs they demand, they are going to kill or maim someone. The responsibility when they do so will be mine, not theirs, for I knew what they were going to do, yet failed to prevent it. So their putative illness has not only explained and, therefore, absolved them from past misconduct, but it has exonerated them in advance from all future misconduct.

    Moreover, by warning me of their intention to carry out further assaults, they have set themselves up to be victims rather than perpetrators. They told the authorities (me) what they were going to do, and yet the authorities (I, again) did nothing; and so when they return to prison after committing a further horrible crime, they will feel aggrieved that “the system,” represented by me, has once again let them down.

    But were I to take the opposite tack and suggest preventive detention until such time as they could control their temper, they would be outraged at the injustice of it. What about habeas corpus? What about innocence until guilt is proven? And they deduce nothing from the fact that they can usually control their tempers in the presence of a sufficiently opposing force.

  59. Dalrymple is brilliant.

    AesopFan: Indeed. He’s written a lot and he’s never let me down. Always worth a read.

  60. I’m not sure this update to the NYT story is an improvement; they still want to keep things in the passive tense, as if there wasn’t even somebody who did something.

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/09/12/nyt-deletes-9-11-tweet-airplanes-took-aim-and-brought-down-the-world-trade-center/

    The updated tweet to promote the story said, “18 years after nearly 3,000 people were lost, families of those killed in the terror attacks will gather at the 9/11 memorial.”

  62. At the last Episcopalian church I attended, there would always be some vague commemoration of 9-11 in which we would feel collective sorrow for unspecified terrorism. Even the term “9-11” couldn’t be mentioned, much less who “aimed” the airplanes.

    In my emails to the politicized church mailing list I started referring to it as “The-Date-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named” after Voldemort in the Harry Potter books.

    There was actually a guy on that mailing list who insisted Pope Benedict should have responded to Islamic terrorism according to the Dumbledore Principle: “What would Dumbledore do?” (Dumbledore was the chief wizard in the HP books.) The guy was rather disgruntled that I refused to take instruction from a children’s book of fantasy seriously.

  63. neo on September 13, 2019 at 12:03 am said:
    AesopFan:

    Something happened here, what it is ain’t exactly clear….
    * * *

    LOL – haven’t heard that one in a long time!

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