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9/11 Five Years Later.

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Derek McNelly

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We all know death in and of itself is a tragedy.

Regardless, toothpaste makes a great point.

It's not about the massive wave effect of "Oh God! How could this happen here?" it's the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people who lost someone dear to them, and even more that remember exactly what they were doing, where they were, and what they said as a result of that day.

I know that while I was watching that on TV at home (Yes, my Mom pulled me out of school. For what reason, I don't know, but she did.), the only thing I could think about was the fact that there were going to be thousands of children coming home from school who wouldn't see their parents again.

Regardless, five years later, I've become partially desensitized to the whole affair, mostly due to the plethora of TV "specials" about the whole event that have been invading my cable for the past month or so, but moreso due to the "memorabilia" that has made itself present, and it takes the death of others as a financial benefit for the producers.

I mean, a $30 gold coin with pure "Ground Zero" silver Twin Towers, and $5 of each sale goes to the families of victims.

Frankly, that $5 should cover the coin cost, and the rest should go to the families.

But no. Anything to make a profit.

Even at the expense of our own fellow men and women.

But when you hear stories of people who lost loved ones and friends, it's when you realize just how much was really lost, and how, even five years later, it still stings, even though I wasn't there myself.
 

bootsie

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Thank you so much Toothpaste.

That is what I was looking for I want to know how you feel, not your political stand.

I do not believe that these peoples deaths were more important. All loss of humanity is sickening, but today is the anniversary of a very tragic event, I could not go without recognizing this day.

I did not begin this thread to start a debate, I just believe that those who were affected on this day five years ago deserve some support from the people on this forum.

I was not directly affected as toothpaste was, but my life changed and so did others.

Thank you for the pictures toothpaste.

Thank you to those who have given your support, I would like to echo toothpaste's words "Please let us grieve in peace. My deepest condolences go out to everyone that lost someone from the bottom of my heart. Be strong."
 

mnhnhyouh

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I think the most dissapointing thing was the way the U.S. choose to engage the world afterwards.

The U.S. spends very little, relative to GDP, on foreign aid. Imagine if they had not increased military spending, but gone on a mission to engage the poorer countries in a positive way. Large aid packages to Sudan, worked strongly towards a peace in the middle east, schools and jobs for Palistinians to give their lives in the camps meaning instead of boredom which festers revolt.

Instead the huge amount of goodwil after the tradegy was squandered....

h
 

Kristiano

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LukeA said:
Forty-five thousand people starved today. Shouldn't that be 15x more tragic than 9/11? Or are their lives worth less because most of them aren't white and aren't in the US?

9/11 (and terrorism in general) pales in comparison to tragedies that occur every day. It's a pity that so many Americans don't realize that.

You know not what you are speaking of. You cannot figuratively compare lives lost like that. 911 was so important not simply because of the number of lives lost, but also because of their rammifications on public policymaking. Terrorism, unlike famine, is a direct attack on the principles of your very state and to play it down, is stupid.

The world isn't different? Try telling that to NATO soldiers who are bravely fighting the Taliban in Helmand. Or to American GIs or innocent Iraqi civillians fighting sectarian warfare in Fallujah and elsewhere. The entire climate in the Middle East has changed, either for better (slow reforms by the Al-Saud family in S. Arabia to combat terror) or worse (empowering Pervez Musharaff in Pakistan).

You need to look beyond your own borders. The world has changed. Drastically.
 

Waitingfornews

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bdb said:
Calling it a "war" is a cruel political tool as well. As someone who spent nine years in the military, it irritates me when politicians use the term "war" for something with no defined enemy and no defined end.
Sorry for offending you. After some thought I changed my previous post accordingly.
 
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There are events in our lives that are indelibly etched into our consciousness. September 11, 2001 is one of those events.

However, so for me is the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster. So for our parents and grandparents would be the Cuban Missile Crisis, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the German invasion of Poland. Days when the world held one breath and wondered what was going to happen in the next one...

The hype that surrounds 9/11 disturbs me. The idea that we should somehow mourn the deaths of these people more than the many other tragedies that have come before it in history is distressing.

The use of 9/11 as a political machination and commercial venture is disappointing but not unexpected, and it is perhaps this that causes people to become de-sensitized to what actually happened.

The issue for me is thus... Of course the world changed on 9/11, or at least out perceptions of it did. 9/11 was a significant event for a great number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it was the first time a foreign power had ever launched an overt attack on U.S. soil. It made people feel vulnerable, it woke people up, and most importantly it made people think.

However, it is not for that reason that we need to bother with memorial services of need to remember it. I don't think there's anything to be gained from the ritualistic remembrance of it -- at least not in the way that we remember the sacrifices of the two World Wars.

The reason that 9/11 needs to be remembered is not for any political reasons, nor for any naive notion of preventing it from happening again (since random acts of terrorism are not the sort of thing that can ever be fully prevented from happening), but to me the main reason for remembering is to support and pay our respects to those who lost people in this tragedy, and to pay respects to those who risked their lives and made sacrifices on that day to save others.

Despite all of the other hype that has gone on (I couldn't stomach watching CNN today), I have great respect and appreciation for the Emergency Services folks who were remembering and commemorating the events of 9/11 in their own ways. This alone is enough reason to quietly remember 9/11 and pay our own respects.

toothpaste, thank you for your particular comments, and my most sincere condolences on your loss. It is impossible for anybody who was not physically there or involved in the tragedy to fully appreciate what those who were there went through and what they may have lost. ALL deaths are tragic, and I think the same should be said for the tsunami in Indonesia and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Just because 9/11 is sickeningly over-hyped is no reason to not at least quietly pay our respects.
 

bdb

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toothpaste said:
My life is forever changed, I lost a friend, a wife lost her husband, children lost their father.
My condolences, tp. Its much different for those who were there, or who were directly affected.
 

mjmoonwalker

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LukeA said:
Forty-five thousand people starved today. Shouldn't that be 15x more tragic than 9/11? Or are their lives worth less because most of them aren't white and aren't in the US?

9/11 (and terrorism in general) pales in comparison to tragedies that occur every day. It's a pity that so many Americans don't realize that.
As said before, you can't compare 1 death to 10,000 deaths. 1 death is just as tragic as 10,000 deaths.

On the other hand, I do think that the media does "overhype" 9/11, while by no means do I want to disrespect all the people that die, but everytime I turn on CNN, I always see something along the lines of: 30 people died in a car bomb, 15 people died by the hands of a suicide bomber, etc...but nobody pays attention to that. I do feel that the American public has to start opening their eyes to the world and seeing that stuff like this doesn't only happen once in a blue moon, but everyday around the world. It's a real pity that people don't realize that. The reason why the American public cared so much about 9/11 was because for the first time it was on their soil and it actually affected them. It's a wake up call for them to see what goes on around the world all the time and not just in their little bubble.

As I just said, 1 death is no more tragic than 10,000, but the media seems to play that 9/11 is much more tragic than anything else that goes on. Perhaps it's because it's the only thing that really woke America up...

In any case...
God bless all those who lost a loved one
 
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bootsie

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mjmoonwalker said:
As said before, you can't compare 1 death to 10,000 deaths. 1 death is just as tragic as 10,000 deaths.

but everytime I turn on CNN, I always see something along the lines of: 30 people died in a car bomb, 15 people died by the hands of a suicide bomber, etc...but nobody pays attention to that. I do feel that the American public has to start opening their eyes to the world and seeing that stuff like this doesn't only happen once in a blue moon, but everyday around the world.

In any case...
God bless all those who lost a loved one

I am sorry, but you do not know what we pay attention to.

Every time I hear of another bombing or tragic death I am saddened. We do pay attention to these things, and in many ways, for me, the anniversary of 9/11 is a way for me to grieve and honor all of the people who have died fighting for what they believe is true. Are you saying that we must simply ignore everything because we cannot make one day a big deal. As you said we hear of death and destruction everyday, but we cannot live everyday of our lives mourning the loss of these people, so it is nice when we can take one day that was especially tragic to us and use it to mourn for an extreme loss of humanity throughout the world.

Three US servicemen/women have died in Iraq since this thread began.
I live in Utah, which has the highest per capita deployment rate of any other state.

We sent out another large deployment yesterday, on that anniversary. I see people come and go almost daily. I live very close to a US Air Force base, so the military is very close to my home and heart. And I have many friends and family members who are or where members of the military.

I am constantly aware of the people who are over there fighting, and the ones who die. I see children who have lost fathers and mothers, or are growing up without them everyday.

I will not tell you my opinion on the war because this is neither the time nor the place, and it is not important. I does not matter what I think, because those people are there and in my opinion deserve some support.

But I am aware of the world and what is going on, although most of the time I wish I wern't because it would make my life a little easier.
 

antiditz

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I could quote and comment on so many of the posts in this thread, but that could take me all day, and I'm already worked up just reading some of this stuff, so I'll keep my blood pressure at its current rate and skip that.

9/11 is hard for me to talk, even think, about. For those of you far away, there is no way we can describe what that day was like. I'm getting the shakes just typing this. I really tried to stay away from most of the coverage over the weekend, only tuned in to the tributes yesterday.

I can hardly believe a number of you are trying to belittle the impact that day had on so many. I heard the other day that 1/4 (that's 25%) of this country knew someone or knew someone who know someone who perished that day. That's a huge number. But the issue here is not numbers and statistics! Like many of you pointed out, all death is tragic. Death from natural causes as well as evil deeds. And the fact that many deaths are concentrated by one event certainly shouldn't (though it often seems to) make it any sadder.

That being said, there IS something about the loss of life that day. Maybe I'm being selfish, maybe because I'm a New Yorker, maybe because I lived through it, maybe because my life was personally touched by loss? A big part of it is I still can't fathom that state of desensitization, where one can dehumanize countless innocent people to use them as tools to further an absurd baseless cause bred on hatred and hatred alone.

The things we saw and heard of that day... office workers suddenly surrounded by smoke and flame; people jumping to their deaths from 100+ stories high, because such a death seemed preferable to what awaited them in the fire; horrified, panic-stricken people covered in 'snow' running in all directions; everyone looking at everyone else twice, unsure of where the next attack would come from, - and most of us were certain there would be more; the exodus, an innumerous stream of people just getting the hell off that island; rescue workers, those who by all rights should be invincible, rushing to the aid of others, and they didn't even have a chance; the buildings, those powerful edifices, pancaking down, dissapearing into nothingness, the billow of smoke visible from all parts of the city, that wouldn't go away for days...

One of the hardest things for me to remember is during the aftermath. The firefighters (those that were left, anyway) and other rescue workers assembled at the site, ready to dig through the rubble, hospitals on standby, making available as many beds as they could, for what everyone was CERTAIN would be a mass of survivors that were just waiting for some rubble to be cleared to get out. They HAD to be there, there was no way everyone was just incinerated. Was there? And then it turned out to be just so... There was no one to pull out, no one yelling 'help, we're trapped.' Only disjointed body parts to collect. I remember when we came to that realization, all the air whooshing out of me. It felt like a whole new tragedy all over again.

Focusing on Sept. 11, though, and how it's changed us. There's no doubt that this was a day that affected ALL of us. Terrorism existed way before then, but on that day, it hit home; it wasn't about faraway, obscure places that we could choose to distance ourselves from. It was here, and unfortunately, it looks like it's here to stay, for the duration at least.

I'm sorry if this post has been long and disjointed. Like I said before, 9/11 is something I'm still reeling from. I need to go breathe into a paper bag now.
 

Jackonicko

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A dreadful, horrific, pointless waste of life.

Made doubly tragic because it was the direct result of inept foreign policies that made innocent civilians a target for terrorist scum.

And something that was then made even more tragic by the US reaction. How many Iraqi women and children have died since 9/11, in a war that they said was being fought because of Saddam's links with Al Qaeda (subsequently found to be non existant, as anyone who knows the Middle East said at the time) and because of the threat posed by Iraqi WMDs. (And yes, Iraq was found to have no WMDs deployed or available for use by its forces, and only the residue of badly disposed of weapons from a long dead research programme).

How many good men have the US forces lost in the Middle East since then?

And has any of it made further terrorist attacks more or less likely?

9/11 was a pointless, gut wrenching, heart-rending tragedy and we're all now in more danger than we were before.
 

Bob

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The last seven posts, including the one with the offending image, were removed - please respect the feelings of other members and do not post images of a possible offensive nature.

Thanks.
 

baggss

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This thread has already crossed over the borderline of politics (a no-no here) in a few places, I would request that the staff close it before it gets further out of hand.
 

Bob

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Thanks for the suggestion baggss...

A place for people to post their thoughts about the events of 9/11 is bound to get a little political but in this instance we'll just watch and see how it goes.
 
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