RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events 9/11: Five Years On

September 11, 2001, it is often said, was a day that "changed everything." Five years later, it remains to be seen whether that's really as true as it deserves to be.

The significance of events is not always captured at the moment in which they happen: Some, like the American Revolution, grow with time; others, like the French Revolution, diminish. But the meaning of events can be instantly and enduringly obvious, or nearly so. On a cloudless September morning, 19 young Muslim men from four Arab countries combined simple means and fanatical determination to murder nearly 3,000 men and women, most of them civilians who rose that morning never imagining themselves to be at any risk. The killers aimed at famous targets in two great cities, a spectacle for the world to behold. We watched from our offices across the street from the World Trade Center, and every day we gaze at the pit they left behind.

Part of the tragedy is that this wasn't their first strike. Similar deeds by people of similar beliefs had been committed before against American targets, albeit not on U.S. soil. The attacks of 9/11 exposed not just the flaws in airline security but, far more important, our failure to comprehend the nature and scale of the threat we were facing.

Osama bin Laden had declared war on us years earlier, but we insisted on seeing him as a small menace, not unlike Abu Nidal and the terrorists who had hijacked planes or killed Israelis over the previous decades. However, bin Laden is above all a man of ambition, not grievance, and his ambition is to re-establish an Islamic Caliphate after his own fashion, one that can destroy every trace of what the West represents within its own sphere and, someday, in ours, too.


it's worth taking stock of what has--and hasn't--been achieved in five years. We presume that bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, are alive, probably in the Pakistani hinterland.

But we know that Mohammed Atef, the mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa, was killed in Afghanistan in an American air strike. We know that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, one of the masterminds of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, is in U.S. custody, as is Abu Zubaydah, who allegedly planned the failed millennium attacks. We know the U.S. captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda operations chief and mastermind of September 11, as well as his successor, Abu Farraj al-Libbi. We know the U.S. killed al-Libbi's senior deputies, Haithem al Yemeni and Abu Hamza Rabia. We know that Midhat Mursi, author of al Qaeda's explosives manual, is dead.

This is not an exhaustive list. And while we do not know what proportion of al Qaeda's senior ranks are dead or in jail, Zawahiri must write letters to associates to find out whether his messages have aired on al-Jazeera. Al Qaeda has spawned imitators and affiliates, which trade on its radical infamy.

the ability of bin Laden and Zawahiri to plan and execute terrorism seems to have been massively degraded, and it shows in the fact that five years later there has been no major terrorist attack in the U.S., nor any, anywhere, comparable in scale to the attacks of that day.

Nobody likes to tempt fate, so it's only natural that our political leaders would not advertise this fact too loudly. But at least it should temper the criticism of those who claim that the U.S. policy of aggressively interrogating suspects has yielded no credible information, a point President Bush finally got round to making this week.

the great challenge for this presidency is to remind Americans that the threat they face is undimmed even as the events of September 11 recede in memory. The costs of responding to 9/11 have been many, and the temptation is strong to think we can withdraw from Iraq, or from the larger Middle East without consequence to our own security. The abiding lesson of that day five years ago is that this is a dangerous illusion.

On September 12, 2001, we wrote with some optimism about the "resilience" of modern industrial democracies. That resilience has been proved time and again the past five years, and the challenge is to prove it again for the next five, or 50, if that's what victory requires.

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the G-man said:

The significance of events is not always captured at the moment in which they happen: Some, like the American Revolution, grow with time; others, like the French Revolution, diminish. ]

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Not sure if the French would agree.

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the G-man said:
The signficance of the French revolution diminished because, unlike the American revolution, the French government reverted back to, essentially, a dictatorship thereafter, taking many years to permanently return to a democracy.

But its good to see you're still emminently capable of focusing on minutiae, rather than the issue at hand, to avoid having to agree with anything that doesn't blame American imperialism, racism, etc., for 9/11.

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Captain Sammitch said:
Are you going to attempt an actual rebuttal here? It's okay if you don't; it's Sunday afternoon and quite frankly I wouldn't expect it out of you.

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Ray said:
You give up any chance to reasonable debate by putting everything into neat little catchphrase categories.

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But Ray also said:
People like you form Klans and lynch the bad element.
People like you see enemies in foreign faces.
People like you are bad for America and bad for this world.
and the real shame is that its the people like you in the middle east who are blowing up the innocents and the people like you in the US that are fostering fear.
Quite frankly, we need less people like you if the world is to survive.

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Killconey said:
It's good to see that 9/11 will never be forgotten as we can always solemnly remember the tragedy by bitching like five-year-olds on the Internet.

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the G-man said:

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Ray said:
You give up any chance to reasonable debate by putting everything into neat little catchphrase categories.

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But Ray also said:
People like you form Klans and lynch the bad element.
People like you see enemies in foreign faces.
People like you are bad for America and bad for this world.
and the real shame is that its the people like you in the middle east who are blowing up the innocents and the people like you in the US that are fostering fear.
Quite frankly, we need less people like you if the world is to survive.

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the G-man said:
What context is missing? Is hypocrisy "context" now?

You came on to this thread being belligerent and attacking a minor point in the editorial I posted. Pretty much every post thereafter has been rife with name calling, venom and "Rayfacts_TM."

You don't want to discuss the fifth year anniversay of 9/11, fine. But don't get put out when people notice, and comment upon, the fact you're trolling.

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Five years - an eternity, of sorts. Yet, the horror visited upon America 1,826 days ago this morning seems as if it arrived only yesterday.

On that sun-dappled September morn half a decade ago, the world could not have seemed more glorious. The illusion was shattered at 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower - igniting America's War on Terror.

In the next hour and 16 minutes, three more planes crashed: United Flight 175, hitting the South Tower; American Flight 77, striking the Pentagon, and United Flight 93, forced down in a Pennsylvania field by everyday passengers - the first American soldiers in the new war.

So much was lost that day.

And yet, Americans instantly drew from a well of courage and fortitude they barely knew they had.

That was seen in the selfless efforts of firefighters and cops - 403 of whom gave their lives in the process.

In the heroics aboard Flight 93.

In the bravery of young Americans in uniform, who presently would take the fight to the enemy overseas.

And in the millions of Americans who picked themselves up and just went back to work.

Before 9/11, the nation had been lulled by the end of the Cold War - the end of history, it was called - unaware of the menace brewing in faraway places.

But while America might not have been interested in terrorism, to paraphrase Trotsky, terrorism clearly was interested in America.

And so it came roaring in on a bright September morning. America hadn't asked for war, but rose swiftly to the challenge when war came - all around the world.

Is America winning that war?

Mistakes have been made - indeed, the history of warfare is littered with mistakes. But there has been no second strike on America's shores since that dreadful day five years ago.

Does America have the staying power to win a protracted war on terror? That is a compelling question - but perhaps not a proper topic for today.

Surely it is enough that America is safer today.

Not safe.

Safer.

That counts for a lot.

On this anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, let's remember these:

Credit: Richard Drew, AP; see also Tom Junod's must-read and re-read, "The Falling Man"

And these.

And these.

And these:

And these little angels, too.

Don't forget the man who knew.

Don't forget the heroes who fought back.

Don't forget those who sacrificed.

Don't forget those who warned.

Don't forget those who celebrated.

Don't forget how the killers came and how their successors follow.

Don't forget those who died before we woke up.

Please don't forget how to remember.

(And how not to...)

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A moment of silence.

They still are plotting to kill us. (Background: All about Adam Gadahn.)



The al Qaeda training manual.

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the G-man said:
Technically, he paraphrased a communist.

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There is a reason thousands of rescue personnel rushed into enormous danger to save men and women who were strangers to them. The reason was respect for the value of human life. It can also be described as love -- the kind of love expressed in a biblical phrase, "Man has no greater love than to lay down his life for his friend." This respect for human life and love for others, including strangers, form the core of Western civilization. It is the driving force that helped us create freedom.

 What I learned from Sept. 11, 2001, is that free people have much greater strength than they realize. Ultimately, free people prevail over oppression.

As they say, read the whole thing.