Today is the day before..........

BillyMitchel

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Anyone have a link to the thread that was running on the actual day?

This. Good call!

It was a horrible chain of events that really shook the world. Everything that happened after is another story. Reality is thousands of ordinary good people went out to do a days work and never came home because some nutcase thought it would be a great idea to fly planes into buildings. Let friends, families, Americans remember it how they want. The bravey of the firemen and police is also sonething that should never be forgotten either.

I remember it clear as day. When George bush was told, was that being broadcasted live or was it released later?

tdv123

The Bin Landen celebrations/reports were pretty amusing

"Osama is dead, Osama is dead, shot in the chest & twice in the head"

TAlderson

I'm an American, and I was 11 years old on 9/11. It's one of those "do you remember where you were?" moments in the US. I was in my sixth-grade class when another teacher came in, whispered something to my teacher, and left. My teacher made an announcement about what happened, turned on the radio, and we all listened to the reports. After school we watched the news until we went home, where we watched more news. I think the reason people make a big deal is that it was so sudden and so vivid. I didn't see the footage of the towers falling live, but I heard the radio reports and watched the news pretty much the entire night. Those images have become somewhat clicheed now, but we were seeing them for the first time. The most disturbing footage to me was the people jumping.

One reason I wanted to post was in part because of this idiotic one-upmanship that people do whereby every event is compared statistically to something with more fatalities, to illustrate "it wasn't that bad." This was someone making a conscious decision to kill thousands of people. It was shocking, and even though you can compare body counts with this and that, 3,000 people dying in a matter of hours because of the actions of a small group of men armed with box cutters is pretty jarring.

The other reason 9/11 is so important, rightly or wrongly, is the impact it's had. It changed American foreign policy, changed airline security policies and the economics of the airline industry, helped accelerate the 24-hour news cycle (the ubiquitous news ticker came into common use in the hours and days after 9/11), and changed domestic American politics dramatically.

I should add that I am in no way endorsing our military response in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the massive wave of jingoism, nationalism, and flat-out xenophobia that followed. I also hate the way politicians, interest groups, and the media exploit it for ratings and votes, although as Wompa pointed out, it doesn't seem as bad this year as in years past (last year's 10th anniversary was awful). I won't be doing much special today to commemorate the event or whatnot, but I'm conscious of how much of an effect it's had on me personally and on the world as a whole, and I think it's important to be able to reflect on that.

-Tyler

Guill

CJC999 wrote: »

Thinly veiled "I hate America " thread.

I think it's actualll an "I hate bandwagoning" thread.