9/11 4 years ago

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Hmmm... another non-political thread in AoDA with the usual political commentary. How boring. And here I thought this was going to actually be an interesting thread.

On topic: I was attending a conference in Baltimore. The entire day was quite an experience. Security was absolutely nuts in the DC area. All restaurants closed down (so much for dinner). Rental cars were going for $750 per day -- my company wouldn't fork over that kind of money so I waited. The hotel initially raised it's rates for the first night, but then lowered them again when nobody showed for the next day at all. The street were entirely empty in downtown Baltimore.

On the evening of the 12th, I waited for four hours at a Greyhound bus station. Then spent thirty-six hours on buses and in bus stations -- Greyhound really needs to work on their stations. My last leg from Cleveland to Chicago I sat next to family that had been vacationing in New York. They had been running late that morning -- I believe the husband said 'thank God my wife was taking so long getting ready, I'll never complain to her again.' They were going to go up the towers that morning. Instead they left the city with the cloths on their backs and one small case -- the family had come to New York with five large suitcases and left with one carry-on. They were finally able to change their clothes after three days in Cleveland.

 

I was at home discussing things with my friend when he recieved a text message about it and we immidiately turned on the tv to find out what was going on. To be honest I did not react too strongly about it. I don't know anyone from the USA and have no real emotional attachments there, so it was pretty much "just another disaster" to me. I was surprised by the attack and followed how the situation developed intensly though.

 

I thought I heard something and woke up, and tho I could see part of one of the towers from my bedroom window, the top of the tower was obscured by the Manhattan Bridge. So I puttered around awhile, noticed my cell had no signal, and looked out the window, where I saw a crowd gathering. So I took the elevator down (I think the 2nd plane hit while I was in the elevator) and walked outside. Watched the whole thing from across the river. Seriously thought, before the towers when down, of riding my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge just to see what I could do. Kindof a lemming-like response (a friend of mine ended up doing that, and then riding straight back covered with dust when the first tower fell). Thankfully another friend of mine who came up to the river to watch talked my out of that idea...

 

probably going to hate me for this;

it was just god trying to top bin laden

 

You're right. Hardly a joking matter.

 

First off, Shoshino, you really need to learn what's not funny. My explanation for the Hurricane? **** happens, Live with it.

As for the Bush Critics, I believe that has been flogged to death in other threads, and the consensus was that King George shouldn't be the only one blamed. We now return to the topic at hand.

Four years ago, My father had just brought home a pick-up truck load of corn to preserve for the winter. My uncle and I were husking it when Dad came out to tell us what happened. He found on the radio a news station from Cleaveland to keep us posted on what was happenning. When the corn was done, I came in the house to watch the CNN coverage of the traumatic event. I honestly thought that WWIII was starting...

 

I remember waking up and hearing the news - it was one of my rare mornings where I could sleep in during my Honours year, between working at the service station and studying. I thought it was a joke, or a radio serial, until I got up and turned on the TV. Nothing but rubble to see in real-time, but endless replays of the planes striking the towers.

I don't think it really sank in until I could talk about it with someone else at about 10am that morning (time difference - would have been about 6pm in New York, IIRC). It was one of those things, though, when you knew that it marked a definitive moment when something changed. I remember feeling the same way on October 12, 2002, when the Sari Club was obliterated in Bali by a terrorist bomb.

It was something I won't forget. The greater tragedy would be if we did not even learn from it, that it did nothing but continue to incite more and more violence, hatred and suffering, and that we as Westerners gave up the principles of democracy because of it.

 

I was in 7th grade in physical education class, I heard people murmoring that something serious had happened in NYC, then the teachers tooks us to the locker rooms and some were watching the news, but not much was still known by the students, I remember seeing a girl crying on my way to the next class. In the next class the teacher tunred on the TV and we spent the rest of the time watching TV until we went to lunch, then I got picked up by my mother and I will never forget this: my mother said "at least you got out of school early today" (since I hated school) and I said "I would have rather stayed in school all day then have this happen". I can't remember seeing (live) the planes hit the towers, I think that happened on my way home, a confusing and thoughtful day indeed.

I was at awe by the quickness of the firefighters and police, the images of people jumping off the towers, and the videos of celebrating Arabs.

I remember hearing and seeing many positive reactions due to that disaster on my part, such as my brothers interest into becoming a firefighter, and hearing my religion opening it's doors to people in need to cover from the smoke and other harms in a center located there. Sad how the Horricane disaster had very little positives at all, you'd think people would learn from one disaster on how to deal with the chaos.

 

[defense of "joke" removed - this is the AoDA, not Whatnots, and this is a serious topic, not a joke thread - constrain yourself - dmc]

[ September 13, 2005, 19:47: Message edited by: dmc ]

 

I was at work in a building just below the BT Tower (Also known as Telecom Tower or Post Office Tower) in London when I had a phonecall from my partner to look at the BBC website. About two minutes later we were ordered out of the building. We watched the news coverage on a large screen in the window of the nearby Saatchi & Saatchi office before being told to go home.

 

I was driving past the Pentagon -- no joke -- just before the plane hit. I heard on the television before I left home that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, but I was more interested in the news that Michael Jordan had announced he was coming back to basketball (again).

Then when I got to work they told me about the second plane.

Other than the photos of people jumping from the towers, the images I remember most are the shots of Palestinians cheering and dancing in the streets.

I bought a Palestinian flag the next day and desecrated it.

 

St. James,
Just out of curiosity: Even though Palestinians had nothing to do with 9/11? Or just to be safe?

For my part, on 9/11 I was learning for an exam and I was going through the living roomm, iirc on my way to get myself some coffee, when I saw the pics of the WTC buildings, one of them burning, on the telly.

I called my mom and my sis and we all agreed that something serious would happen in response. Who could have imagined all the nutty mess that followed.

 

St James,

Why, may I ask? Sure, I can understand being angry about people celebrating the destruction, about wanting to lash out. However, what motivated you to do that? What did you hope to achieve by it?

 

You desecrated a flag based on the undesirable actions of a few people you saw on TV? That sounds a little extreme. If everyone did that to the flags representing the country of origin of every person who did something bad, there would be no flags left. There have been some murderers and rapists from New Zealand so even my own flag wouldn't be safe.

 

Hey, lay off guys. People do strange things when they're hurting. The price of true understanding is the lives of thousands of your countrymen, and I can't imagine any of you are willing to pay it.

 

Felinoid,

Respectfully, the Sari Club bombing was comparable, if you consider the populations of Australia and the US and the international reaction to a Jemaah Islamiah cell targeting Westerners and a symbol of Western decadence (the nightclub). I'm not saying people don't do things they regret in the aftermath of that; I just think that people tend to focus on striking back however they can, rather than trying to assimilate that information and look at how the hell this happened. That was my first instinct, in all these instances.

St James can correct me if I'm misreading his statement, but he seems proud of having bought and desecrated a Palestinian flag. Which, I guess, is at the heart of my questions for him, and my concerns that the graver, human lessons of the WTC and Pentagon attacks have not been learned.

If someone flew a plane into the Rialto Tower in Melbourne, yeah, I'd be angry. I'd also have to run like hell, since I work in its shadow. If someone bombed Spencer St Station, again, I'd be pissed off and probably need to be evacuated. But as soon as the shock wore off, I'd want to know how and why it was done.

Of course, I'd probably be labelled an apologist for not wanting blood.

 

So St. James lashed out in the only way he knew how at the time. People do odd things when they're upset...I don't think it's nice to nail him to the wall over it. The guy was upset.

NonSequitur -- We can never know how we'll react in times like that. And in that case, it really defied anything we had ever experienced to that point, in this country. So who's to say?

 

Point taken. I guess putting a flag down the waste disposal (or whatever he did) is not really the end of the world. My only point was that it was a bit unfair to lash out at a particular wide group of people on the basis of the actions of a smaller sample of their members. But he didn't actually go and beat up any Palestinians so maybe there was no real harm done.

 

Fair cop, Spellbound - it's hard to say that you know how you'd react in that situation. Despite the reaction I had to the twin towers falling, my reaction was more contemplative than aggressive - probably because it wasn't my country under attack.

In the (slightly different) example I've given, my reaction was "Holy ****!", followed by "Who did this, and how?", which was closely followed by "Why?". Of couse, I had the benefit of this occurring 13 months after the WTC was destroyed, so my perspective was a little different, I'll grant that. I was happy to see Amrozi sentenced, even more pleased to see Bashir jailed, but it was almost more of a relief that those responsible had been brought to justice than a sense of retribution.

We all react in our own ways, I guess. It was largely unprecedented, and it's hard to say how you can react to the utterly unexpected, much less losing friends and family to it. Still, I don't see why my questions are so objectionable. I'll shut up now until/unless St James replies; maybe the benefit of isolation limits my comprehension, and I'll leave it at that.

 

If my country had just been attacked, I would probably view a crowd of celebrating people who claimed association with the attackers as enemies of the state, potentially a threat to my family and friends. If they considered this to be war, I would likely do my best to include them in the casualties of that war.