9/11: An open letter

What a piece of luck it is that Tom is too much of a naive megalomaniac to make it in politics.

@Rufus Shinra: If we're going to get technical, we never went into Afghanistan with the intention to rebuild the country; we wanted to capture/kill those responsible for 9/11.

edited 11th Sep '11 7:51:03 AM by Kino

It was a mutual Pyrrhic Victory. I think we lost out more than they did, as well, because they never feared losing in the first place.

Life will go on. And in that way, the terrorists still have not completely won. Because, sadly—and yet, happily—the scars of 9/11 will disappear.

And when the terrorists are dead and buried, we will still being going, heedless of their insignificance.

@Tom,

Except you can make peace by doing that stuff, just not in 10 years.

Amusing, since what is needed today in American politics is a decisive no-nonsense leader. A megalomaniac by your standards.

I can share that sentiment. For all that we have given up, the USA, and the other Western democracies (Canada, Australia, and most of Europe) have not fallen into anarchy, nor have we descended completely into a police state, despite taking steps toward that end. In that regard, the terrorists have not completely won. For all the costs involved, they have been beaten and bruised to a mere shadow of their former capabilities. In that sense, maybe we've not done as badly as I made out our situation.

I would rather have terrorists roaming the planet than someone like you in charge.

edited 11th Sep '11 7:53:43 AM by DarkConfidant

Off-topic: I don't know; the opportunity of being Draka-lite is appealing.

America has a system of checks and balances. Good luck being authoritative in a constitutional republic, also.

I'd rather have neither. I'd rather have terrorism completely discredited as a tactic. I'd rather have it that terrorism makes you so fringe that nobody ever listens to you. 9/11 actually opened the door to this. Then people came and promptly shut it.

I think, in hindsight, that for ten years, the terrorist had, in fact, won. We were forced to sacrifice freedom for security. That's all they ever wanted out of us: hypocrisy born from fear.

But today, ten years later, we can raise a flag and sing the anthem without fear, at the site of one of the greatest atrocities of the decade, and to me, that means that we have won.

It took far too long to realize that, as FDR said, "there is nothing to fear but fear itself." But a long time in coming is better than having never come at all.

Amen to that (and that's coming from an atheist)!

"at the site of one of the greatest atrocities of the decade"

Thousands die every day in conflicts all around the globe. Why is this one comparatively more terrible? Is American blood holier and more precious than that of poor Third World folk?

Other people from different countries died too. 9/11 had more British people die than anything the IRA did or the home grown Jihaists.

I didn't say it was more terrible. I said it was one of the worst. I did not say it was the worst.

The terrorists lost.

Way too raise an enitre generation of Islamaphobes, dumbasses.

Also: Al-Qaeda is almost defunct, the Taliban are weaker then ever, and the majority of Middle Easterners are fed up with secular dictatorships and won't stand for a Muslim theocracy.

edited 11th Sep '11 8:15:06 AM by Erock

The Islamophobia thing was their goal, by the way. To make sure you'd strike back and their own people would hate you for that. The anti-americanism skyrocketed around the world the last ten years, and being a U.S. citizen isn't really a smart thing to say abroad, now. So, they quite won on this part.

So they wanted people to hate them around the world?

Do you really think they would be having the same problems in France and the Netherlands had they been good people?

Also, look at the ruin in Iraq, and the horrible conditions in Afghanistan.

edited 11th Sep '11 8:27:07 AM by Erock

You are confusing good Muslims with the terrorists.

Ten years ago, both of those places were far worse off than today. A lot of Afghanistan didn't have electricity because the Taliban had blown much of the infrastructure up during the civil war and never rebuilt it. Iraq had people starving in the streets because of Saddam's Oil-For-Food Program shenanigans to say nothing of the horridly oppressive state he was running.

Those were better than today? If today's a ruin and horrible conditions, what's good conditions?

edited 11th Sep '11 8:25:52 AM by MajorTom

Which, again, was their goal. Same as the French Résistance, during the war, killed Germans to make sure the German reprisals would put the civilians against the occupant, thus favoring the Allied cause.

edited 11th Sep '11 8:26:48 AM by RufusShinra

Exactly: if the terorists didn't get in the way, those countries could be much better off.

edited 11th Sep '11 8:26:52 AM by Erock

Didn't we just say that?

If the enemy didn't get in the way, the war would be won and the countries wouldn't be destroyed. Yeah, that's pretty insightful.

edited 11th Sep '11 8:33:14 AM by RufusShinra

How? Saddam wasn't leaving Iraq any time soon. Afghanistan was run by the Taliban in a horridly oppressive theocracy that made Iran look benevolent by comparison.

The Arab Spring owes its existence at least in part to the actions of the last 10 years. Qaddafi's WMD stockpiles? Largely destroyed because he didn't want the same thing happening to him as had just happened to Saddam Hussein. The protests themselves were emboldened when a democracy in Iraq emerged in a place that had nothing but strongmen run it for decades. None of that would have happened had we not done those things, we'd still be stuck arguing the no-fly zone in Iraq and Libya would be under Qaddafi rule and penalized out the ass by UN/US sanctions over Lockerbie, WMD's and more.

In Iraq the terrorists weren't even the enemy at first.

Hell, if the US had marketed the invasion better as a recuse of the Shias and the Kurds, then it would hev been more successful.

Tom, I mean that if the terrorists after the two wars had jsut gone home then the two countries would eb better off.

edited 11th Sep '11 8:35:36 AM by Erock