The Glade 4.0

I've been seeing all sorts of news posts today about 9/11. At first I wasn't even sure why until I looked at the date today.

I'm probably alone here, but I think the world (well, really just the U.S.) just needs to move on. Yes, it was a tragedy. Yes, it was a terrible thing that happened. Yes, we should remember the people who died. But, I think we've done that as a nation and devoted enough attention to it. History is full of tragedies, and new ones happen every single damn day. But 9/11 gets way too much attention, even today.

When will this date just be a normal day on the calendar again? That is what I would like.

It really, really feels like people are more liking the attention their news stories bring rather than reflecting on what happened that day in 2001. And because of that I definitely say it's time we as a collective whole moved on. It's one of the stages of grief. I'm not saying people should forget, but I am saying that maybe we shouldn't flood the world with as much crap about 9/11 as we still currently do.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

You can move on and honor the anniversary at lezst that's how I feel right now. It doesn't effect my daily life but it's one of those days where you saw history being made and it doesn't ever leave you older people still prolly feel the same way about Kennedy and Pearl Harbor. Those are less tied to their dates perhaps.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

The 200 year anniversary of England and Canada setting fire to Washington D.C. came and went without a peep. The United States has been at war for thirteen years over a bloody nose.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Um, no it didn't. There were boatloads of discussions, specials on TV, etc. That was also part of a larger conflict, so it's being dragged out a bit more. The entire city of Baltimore is shutting down for the 200th anniversary of the assault on Fort McHenry.

Also - worth noting - the estimate I saw was that 2,260 men were killed in action during the entire war (more deaths related to the war), 200 years ago. 2,996 were killed on 9/11/2001, thirteen years ago, and we're still involved in the resulting conflict.

Arathain, that's hardly comparing apples to apples given the population of the US, its armies at the time vs today.

But the effect of all these "Remember 9/11/01" memes and newcasts (and some would argue, the intent) is to focus public anger on the culprit, in the same way "Remember Pearl Harbor" was used during WWII and "Remember the Alamo" was used in the Texas Revolution and "Remember the Maine" for the Spanish-American War

The fact is a significant portion of the US populations still considers itself at war with a religion. (which a significant portion of considers itself at war with the US too, so symmetry at least)

Until that war is over, "Remember 9/11" will be repeated for as long as it continues to stir angry hearts and minds.

Remembering 9/11 keeps people connected to the ongoing conflict. The side effects of this are keeping politicians in office because they are tough on terrorism even when they have no other redeeming qualities. It keeps our troops busy, our arms manufacturers reaping profits, our oil companies able to sell the short supply price gouging, and so on and so forth. It is good for business and so it goes on. It isn't like we are fighting to win the wars.

We are sheep. We have been sheep since Monroe was President, maybe earlier.

Our being sheep, albeit the most mightily armed sheep on the planet, is the basic reason we are hated by so many across the globe. We have very easy lives and keep going and killing people just for being in countries with political differences or whose leaders offend us.

Sigh.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Wow, I'm saddened.

Then again, I guess I should have expected what those specific respondents to the OP would have said, but I guess I'm out of touch with the "Blame America Firsters" since I escaped The People's Republic of Kalifornia, and moved back to the United States of America.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

As a nation we should remember the day and hold it in some reverence, but we really need to stop using 9/11 as an excuse for all of our military overspending/reaching. Our war on terror has been just as much of a failure as our war on drugs.

Absolutely agree, Lenas.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Again, August 24th came and went without any calls to "never forget." Why? Because we didn't live through it, and didn't have to flee the capital while the British put it to the torch. And if you think the Twin Towers are a bigger deal than the nation's capital being occupied by an invading army, you're nuts.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'll just quote Ara, there Corolinth:



Hopefully, 187 years from now there's no need to keep it in mind with the same intensity, because we aren't at war with people desiring to do the same or worse, much like we aren't at war with the British.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

It never ceases to amaze me how a certain mindset sees no contradiction between espousing a passionate love of one's country while simultaneously denigrating and disclaiming fellowship with huge portions of one's countrymen.

You mean the mindset that starts talking about "'Merica, **** YEAH'" as the sole thought process of anyone they disagree with?

People learned this sort of behavior from the left. Just like the right, rather than learning to counter victim politics, has decided to adopt it once the left figured out how powerful perpetual victimhood was.

No one is in any position to complain that other people are "disclaiming fellowship" with them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So recency and the presence of an actual threat is somehow not a legitimate criteria in deciding what to pay more attention to? Yeah, we can't have any of that!

Yes, having people fly airplanes into towers 13 years ago is a bigger deal to us than having the capital burned by a country we're now allied with 187 years ago.

Furthermore, we haven't "been at war for 13 years over a bloody nose". That started the war. In case you hadn't noticed, the world hasn't stood still in that time, and the people that want to attack us didn't miraculously disappear once we passed whatever the arbitrary Coro-limit is for how long a war is ok.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Aside from the fact that it hasn't?

We have not been militarily overspending or overreaching. We were underspending in the Clinton era, and we only just started making up for that because of this war.. except we oriented it too much on the Army and Marine Corps, and now we're going to underspend again so the politicians can avoid confronting our massive social overspending for just a little bit longer.

Granted, we could spend less if we remedied many of the inefficiencies of our present defense procurement and personnel models, but within the constraints of the system we have, we haven't overspent on defense at any time since WWII. New threats are emerging, and we need to be prepared for those. We are coming to the end of the holiday. Post-WWII, we got a reprieve from the "big war" because no one wanted to confront the possibility of global thermonuclear war. Post-1989 we got a breather without any other major power. Those situations are ending. We are not in a golden age. We're in a globalized economy, and we've removed the massive incentive to not fight by making the ultimate confrontation more and more winnable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sorry, RD, but "fellowship" is defined by a "friendly association" and "common interests". I can't disclaim fellowship with huge portions of my countrymen, because, by definition, it doesn't exist to be disclaimed. I got the message right quick when it became known to them that I wasn't going to agree with their aims for the country. Sorry, but here's absolutely no contradiction between loving one's country and distancing oneself from those who wish to do her harm.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

DE:
What you and I consider over/under spending or reaching is obviously going to differ. Seems to me that the war on terror - continually justified by 9/11 and people's fear - is directly responsible for what I consider to be some of the most egregious spending in our nation's history.

And yet the numbers don't support that it's "egregarious" at all.

As for being "justified by people's fear" the people are RIGHT to fear people that want to attack them. 9/11 was a real attack upon us, and real people really want to harm Americans, and not because we were too mean to them - this idea that we "create more terrorists" simply infantilizes much of the world, treating it as a bunch of children without agency or interests of their own that only respond to our behaviors.

The simple fact is that in terms of actual dollars spent, the cost of this war has been entirely reasonable. It's only expensive because of the other **** we've wasted money on - everything from cow fart research to bank bailouts to trying to help people get healthcare and blowing the price of it through the roof in the process.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Remember the deed, the dead, and those forever altered by the event. Do not let the date and the event be waved around by greedy men trying to make more profit by using it as a rallying point for war and their profiteering.

We were not attacked by a nation or a faith. We were attacked by a handful of men who took advantage of the freedoms we used to have in this country. Bush, Cheney and Evil, Inc. used the event in despicable ways.

We are not at war with the people is the Islamic faith, nor should we let them change our culture because their beliefs are not in line with our culture.

When we go to war, we should go in to win. Anything less is the senseless sacrifice of our troops on the altar of appearance.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Such as? Maybe we shouldn't listen to people trying to get us to fear unspecified boogeymen, either.



No Michael, they didn't, and while only a handful of people participated directly in the attacks, an entire region harbors them, feeds them, and provides more recruits for them.

Bush, Cheney and others aren't "Evil incorporated" and didn't "use it in despicable ways". At worst, they were guilty of listening too much to their own preconceptions and those of their advisors. The stock "Bush is teh ebil" is old, tired, and never made any sense All you're doing is making yourself a caricature with this sort of nonsense.



We have been trying to win the entire time. I don't know what you think winning looks like, but I have a feeling it's the sort of neat, clean victory that rarely happens in real life. Even in WWII we may have smashed the axis, but we were stuck with Stalin, who got to make his own land grabs.

Really, the only thing that's gotten old in the last 13 years are the same pointless platitudes.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think "winning" would be converting the Middle East into a typical Westernized sprawl with McDonalds everywhere, and with people too consumed with entertainment or their job to care about being extremists. Ideally, anything more than liberal forms of Islam would be culturally eradicated.

The terrorist problem is when you mix people with medieval attitudes (jihad) and modern technological inventions (bombs, airplanes, machine guns, twitter).

When you have over 1.6 billion people following a book that advocates violence and conquest, you're going to have problems. Even if you leave them alone and act nice to them, a certain percentage will fester in their communities and lash out in acts of violence.

Unfortunately, I don't see any possible short-term or long-term solution that is a really strong "win".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS

The **** will hit the fan soon enough and those five nations stand a real chance of completely destroying the western power corridors, provided they get their heads out of their asses about the UN Security Council. Amusingly, their economic agenda will solve their security council issues -- Russia will end up with the permanent veto.

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I don't think you can really pin this on Islam. It's just the Middle East. Nobody generalizes the violent Christians or Muslims in Africa to the rest of the world, it doesn't really make sense to do it here. Resource curse is a far better explanation for why the Middle East is the way it is.

I must have missed all those news reports of violent christians beheading journalists over the last few months... dang slanted media

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

In Africa? Lord's Resistance Army. Not that you can generalize this to the rest of the world, it's Africa. The point is you can't just blame "Islam" for the violence in the Middle East. If it was actually the religion itself (and I mean the actual religious texts, not what certain leaders might preach) that was the problem, the Jews would be more violent than anyone. The Qu'ran has nothing on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible when it comes to violence and brutality.