Terrorist Action 11/9/2001 - Thread 9

I've just read that Coulter piece and Jesus Christ is it fucked up. I particularly liked her comparison of Arab Americans to the Wehrmacht 'except the Wehrmacht weren't so bloodthirsty'. Is she renowned for this sort of lunatic babbling?

There's also a "fly your flag on Friday" e-mail making the rounds. Am I the only one who is offended by this - I think it's really insensitive to the people who lost friends and family. There's nothing somber or reflective about the flag or the act of flag-waving. What ever happened to mourning? Even though we've had a massive terrorist attack, it's still not real enough for some people.

We're having three minutes silence at my office, btw. I'd best go home and face my parents. After last nights' outbursts I'm dreading it.

We should hang up the UN flag instead I guess. Its more hopeful.

Most enraging public sentiment: the whole "we didn't think this could happen" genre. How deliberately ignorant can one get? -- it already did happen here, in the same damn building. It may not have really worked last time, but the principle is pretty well established, yes? Has everyone really forgotten this?

bad taste is flying the us flag in the middle of the rubble, as i saw on news today...

The same people who are telling everyone to fly flags and wear red, white and blue are the same people who cannot understand that the number of Palestinian revelers most likely increased due to the very same pressure.

g.w. was crying earlier this morning; does that make it alright for the rest of us to cry? there seems to be a strong contingent of people out there, like a particularly stern stepfather, who are telling us that it isn't alright to mourn, that we should all be CELEBRATING. celebrating our country and the fact that, shortly, we're going to BOMB THE HELL OUT OF THOSE ARABS. show team pride by wearing the red, white and blue!

when i saw the clips of the people dancing in the streets in the middle east, the nearest parallel i could draw was to people celebrating a victory by their local sports teams. neither of these events are going to make your life any better (especially in the case of the former, if things proceed as they seem they will), except when, say, the lakers vanquished their foe, no one died.

CNN also showed pictures last night of Palestinians holding placards that said things like "USA, we feel your pain" and "we share your grief". Wish they'd show those pictures more often.

It s easy t blame a nation , but really this was probably done by a small group of extremists.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/f/42/31/7m/dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010913/ wl/attack_afghan_binladen_dc_6.html

taliban claims reports that bin laden is under house arrest have been fabricated.

What pisses me off about the "rah rah" patriotism is the way people in places like Bumfuck, USA - far from NYC, are taking this personally and are reacting defensively. The message is that "an attack on one is an attack on us all" - I don't think that's appropriate given that some are suffering far more and much more directly than others. They're appropriating other people's pain. I'm too saddened and depleted to work up the energy to wear or wave the red, white and blue : what is really foremost in the minds of people who can do this??

Where is this Bumfuck, USA place I keep hearing about? Is there a bus?

Today I started making enquiries about people who I was sure only had a miniscule chance of being at the WTC subway at 9 AM on a Tuesday but whom nonetheless I was - irrationally - worried about. So anyway I just now got an email back from Bob Xgau saying that he's fine, that Chuck Eddy's fine, and that he'd probably have heard if anyone else we knew in common was missing.

NY is a huge city where people's sons and daughters and friends from all over the country live, and unless one is in the midst of it all oneself, it's presumptious and superior to think that simple geographic proximity makes anyone's suffering greater than anyone else's. Let's accept that some people can grieve and suffer at the same time as they feel angered and vulnerable that their way of life has been threatened (as everyone's has to at least some extent).

The jingo rah-rah jerks have to remember that this wasn't merely an attack on America, but an attack on the countries we deal with as well. It was an attack on the Pentagon, and perhaps the White House, but also a World Trade Center. (It wasn't even the only World Trade Center.)

Countless citizens from other countries were also killed. Many international companies (Deutsche Bank, for instance) had their American headquarters in the WTC or close-by.

According to CNN, the American Express building might be the next to go.

Peter Jennings have bought in four people (reporters and think- tankers) on to explain to the audience why America might be so hated. Let's see if this is anything of substance...a spokesperson for the Arab League has cut right to the chase, talking about specific foreign policy choices the country has made.

And I just got an email from Rob Sheffield that he's OK. He's the friend who lives down in lower Manhattan that I was so worried about. He has no access to his apartment and so he's been staying with friends.

Mike D as ever raises an important point. Judging by the number of UK casualties this is the worst terror attack on British citizens since Lockerbie. A point that we should probably remember when assessing Blair's response, as well as bearing in mind if and when US unilateralists criticise NATO's right to be involved in the response.

Latest:

One senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the military options under consideration by Bush would go beyond the low-risk unmanned cruise missile strikes that have been deployed in past anti-terrorist operations. Among them: bombings from manned aircraft and the deployment of special troops on the ground.

At a briefing, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the administration would mount a "broad and sustained campaign; in retaliation for the attacks. "It's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism," he said.

It's all sounding a bit terrifying.

Nah, it'll be another feeble air or cruise missile strike, I'd bet.

Thing is - there's not much to bomb in Afghanistan. The country's in fucking ruins as it is. How do they propose 'ending' a state that is already almost destroyed? Do they mean invading it?

What would all out nuclear devastation of these entire countries cause? Not a war, just a complete nuclear attack? You think people would think of striking back? If so, who? These are questions. I'm not advocating anything.

Pakistan has nukes so I guess they might fire back. I can't belive there aren't any AMerican terrorists stealing that magic stone in Mecca or something. ANYways nuke attack would be both widely cndemmed and probably our own country would get fallout anyways

What could bombings do? The lack of infrastructure and dependence on such seems to be a source of pride and strength to ObL and others with the same sympathies, as well as a good defense. To ObL and others this is, in part, a struggle of technology and greed v. theology and discipline. They understand the West's motivations, weakensses, mentality and our leaders seem unable to comprehend theirs.

Although it's not simply a GWB problem, partisan politics meant the expulsion of many Clinton appointees from top U.S. security and defense positions, replacing them with many leaders who had been civilians since the Cold War days. That's eerily reminsicent of the post-McCarthy purge of the State Department prior to Vietnam, leaving a staff with virtually no knowledge of SE Asian culture. I would hope it doesn't turn out to be an accurate analogy, but where was our defense's mentality a week ago? Fucking Star Wars missile shields.

Introducing nuclear weapons into the mix would be the fastest way to get NATO to abandon the US and to encourage Pakistan and possibly China to start lobbing missiles back. At least with WWII, there was the excuse that they didn't know how much of an impact an atomic bomb would have. Now we know. Using one would fully cement the US as The Great Satan and send the entire globe chugging merrily off into Armageddon.

A friend sent me this this morning. It's in regard to the worldness of the World Trade Center.

"an American friend at B of A's W-wa office told me that this is getting BIG BIG media play in Poland, where all magazines, newspapers, and TV stations are trying to outdo each other in coverage. Now here's the surprise: the media there have been extremely frank as to how MOST of the Poles working in the WTC were probably working in cleaning & maintenance, and therefore a lot of them were probably illegal. The degree of full disclosure surprises me, since I would have thought they would simply omit that part of the story."

Perhaps already mentioned, but Powell has publicly identified Bin Laden as the suspect. I suspect the Taleban will take the hint.

NY is a huge city where people's sons and daughters and friends from all over the country live, and unless one is in the midst of it all oneself, it's presumptious and superior to think that simple geographic proximity makes anyone's suffering greater than anyone else's. Let's accept that some people can grieve and suffer at the same time as they feel angered and vulnerable that their way of life has been threatened (as everyone's has to at least some extent).

Judging from the people I know who are advocating this flag-waving, like my brother, that is not the case. It's easy for people to be hawkish and patriotic when they're not staring tragedy in the face. I can tell you right now that people in Chicago would not be acting this way if they were not so distant from it. Sorry, I don't buy this BS that this is the way they're showing their "grief". That would require a level of naivete that I outgrew a long time ago. I'm not sure what "way of life" has been "threatened", either. Presumptuous and superior, eh? I don't agree with the flag-waving. I don't like being told I have to wave the flag. You're young, so I'll cut you some slack, but I'm old enough to know that the flag is really used as a blanket with which to smother dissent. You're associating a "way of life" with the flag. I won't stoop to insults as you have, so I'll just shut up now. Your point of view is naive, however.

Simon Reynolds emailed to say that he's all right. "east village surreally normal looking except for hardly any cars on the street and undercurrent of tension on people's faces."

Spock: the problem with using nuclear weapons is the consequences for neighbouring states who are currently supporting the US in their actions, i.e. fallout and environmental devastation. The international coalition, despite what hawkish commentators seem to believe, is vital for effective action because without support from the Pakistans and Chinas of this world, terrorist groups and cells can take refuge there. NB my personal opinion is that any military attack is useless against terrorist cells *anyway*.

Just wanted to make the point: Citizens of countries do tend to start to become fairly nationalistic if they are at threat - and America could conceivably face more terrorist attacks. I am sure every country that has ever been attacked the situation has been exactly the same - look at the end of the second world war, would anyone have disagreed with flag-waving then. The US has just witnessed a devastating attack, the biggest ever in peace time, people do need to find a way to get a certain solidarity and confidence back. (NB. I would not extend falg-waving to persecution of arab minorities etc which I would find abhorrent.)

Apparently there's going to be a story on Mancini-Duffy's get- together on ABC tonight -- whether this means the local or nightly news is unclear to me.

My co-worker described the event as "painful," which could many things.

You say this as if "solidarity and confidence" are necessary, and as if these are things people possess normally. These words are meaningless abstractions to me, as is the flag. My entire family came to this country in the twentieth century. My grandparents are immigrants - I never got a sense from them that "America" (which is actually two continents, not a country) was some sort of unique refuge for them for which I should be grateful. Rather, after a couple of decades of hard work, they seemed to regret the monotonous industrial labor that immigrants were expected to do, and they moved to the country to live more like they did in Ireland. There aren't too many leftist radicals in my family, yet this sort of patriotism is noticeably absent, with the exception of my assimilationist brother, who joined the Methodist church, got a business degree, who likes to pretend that he isn't as dark as an Arab or Mexican, as if he has never been taunted with ethnic slurs - people calling him "Taco" or "Ayatollah".

This sort of nationalism, the empty symbols and rhetoric seem to me to be part of a coercive assimilationist process. I didn't grow up with it, and I resent the insinuation made by the flag-wavers that I should intuitively understand the meaning of these symbols, and that I have more solidarity with them than I do people in other countries. Honestly, some people in the US are every bit as foreign to me as actual foreigners if not more so, growing up, as I did, surrounded by immigrants.

OK, you personally may not have solidarity with these symbols, but some people do, and these people have been hit. Hard. And this is the way it has always been in times like these, for better or for worse. That is all I was trying to say.

Cnn.com is running a poll on their front page: "what is your reaction?" Three choices: shock, sorrow, and anger. Thus are we all expected to have cartoonish, two-dimensional opinions about things: either (a) "I can't believe it," (b) "How awful," or (c) "Let's kick some ass."

And guess which answer has a near-majority?

I wanted to select all three, because that's how I feel.

Did you guys all get that forwarded email from some Canadian guy about how great America is and how generous we are compared to other countries and he's sick of people bashing us? It made me feel good.

Also: anyone seem the story about a vague threat to a cameraman filming a small Palestinian celebration in the West Bank? Apparently he was told by an Authority official that if the footage aired, his life "could not be guaranteed." The footage did not run.

On the other hand, I'm almost glad to see this story, because it draws a clear line between the behaviour of a relatively small group of people and the official, considered response. I.e., evidence of the Authority trying to keep its belligerent elements hidden, even for their own obvious face-saving interests.

...how generous we are compared to other countries and he's sick of people bashing us?

I suppose that's nice ... then again, our foreign aid levels are downright stingy compared to the rest of the developed world, and no one really bashes us. Culturally, maybe, but we pay that back tenfold.

Did you guys all get that forwarded email from some Canadian guy about how great America is and how generous we are compared to other countries and he's sick of people bashing us? It made me feel good.

Yes, and that "message" dates to the immediate post-Vietnam era, I believe. Context, context...

Here's a thought I had back on Tuesday which the pressure of events beat down - along the Jihad vs McWorld lines...is the monoculture America/The West's best long-term weapon against anti-Western extremism gaining political ground? Or so simplify: it's going to be more difficult to persuade somebody that America is the Great Satan if that somebody is hooked already on burgers'n'Britney.

I should say that I found this a pretty depressing thought too.

Yeah, Tom - that's the freewater argument: This where the ideologues start in with the 'end of ideology' arguments because corporate interests will take over, historical nightmares will end, and it will all be about business...

Hmm. For the first time I think I'm truly worried about the overall future. Still, though, it's not for a while and a lot can happen in the meantime...

downtown is erie, went as far as canal, after taking time out of the city on coney island, foolish idea I'd be able to go and get my stuff ( was not thinking straight at all)

lots of nervous loking non whites ( mainly arabs and south asians) going round with starts and stripes pinned to them. south of houston is strage as anyuthng as we were walking back we turned round and saw the smoke turn from white to balck, later we found out more buildings had colapsed.

i won't be wearing red white and blue I have only just changed out of the pair of trousers I was wearing on tuesday and the 99c t shirt I bought yesterday but more than that jingo and nationalism is not what we need now or ever. Grahame Gree said, 'My Nationality is Mankind' This applies now more than ever

did kate get out?

Ally and others if you still want to meet up mail me.

i won't be wearing red white and blue

You got that damn right. Black, like Dan suggested, I'm up for. I refuse to distinguish between the dead by national colors.

But how horribly ironic that you mention some have felt it needed to wear those freakin' colors now. Feh.

Thank you, Bill, for your comments. I strongly agree with them. It is important for people to realize the context of the attack. It is also extremely important for the country to prepare to defend itself.

I am all for discussion of what happened and why. But when push comes to shove, I know what side I'm on.

Jesus Christ, someone linked to that skank Ann Coulter's sickening article. Sorry to inject more politics into this, but I'm sure that I'm not the only Yank who remembers that that CUNT was one of the blond Nazi bimbos screaming for Clinton's head during Monicagate. She billed herself as a "Constitutional scholar," though she has authored no scholarly work on Constitutional law (no law review articles, no books [save some piece of shit Clinton-bashing tome] on the topic) and Alan Dershowitz has (at least once) tore her a new asshole on the TV blabathons. So Ann the Skank Coulter calling to bomb the shit out of Afghanistan is being true to form.

No-one, not even the sleaziest ambulance-chasing slip-and-fall shyster, makes me more ashamed of my fellow lawyer (well, maybe Ken Starr, but that's another rant). Ann Coulter is a disgrace to our profession. (And no, as obnoxious as she was, I am not happy that Barbara Olson is dead.)

No-one weeps for the Palestinians, the Iraqi civilians killed by the US (and the UK, let's not forget that),

This is bullshit. With the amount of Arabs and Israelis in NYC? This is bullshit. Perhaps true in Europe (might I add the only people in the entire world I've seen online bring up this argument - WE REBUILT YOUR FUCKING UNIVERSE, SIT YOUR ASS DOWN, not to sound patriotic as A.M.Aers can very much vouch for my anti-US policy sentiments), but not in the US. I personally have spent the last three to four months hearing shitloads about Israel - I am MARRYING someone who wants to join the Israeli army. I am GREAT TIGHT FRIENDS with an Israel immigrant formerly a sniper in thier army - this is what I hear about all the time. I feel horrible for those people. THey shouldn't have to live like that. And neither sbould the US- this is my point, none of these motherfucking countries we lay money into to hel pTHEIR causes are doing ANYTYING right now. My people - my fucking people, i only found out today that all my people are accounted for and I'm still convinced I forgot SOMEONE in my Citibank depart ent, moved to the WTC about a month after I quit - they are dead. MY PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DEAD. We lay money into other couuntries when their people are dead - where is our support? I am grateful that most of this board has been very supportive and kind. But it's not everyone and it's certainly not representative of the snetiment I got on the internet.

There' sno fucking need. No one should be pleased or happy by this.

And I think that if GWB, whatever his faults, was going tob e hasty, Afghanistan would not exist by now. So we can take some comfort in the whoel war scenario by that. It'd be gone by now if we were going to be complety hasty.

I am so drunk. I am so shattered. It has all hit me tonight, it has all just fucking hit me today on e I founce my last person i thig me . I am totally out of it, I just dont' know what i'd do if I didn't find everyone.

i ma four miles from this and I cannot help. i cannot help, i need to hep. i need to do something. please someone tell me what i can do. i need to get out of nyc.

Folks, having read Ally's post, I think I'm going to stop talking about all that's happened. You will see me in other ILE threads, but I have ceased pretending I've been removed from this all. Further discussion will erode me.

let's not discuss the hotels.

I am glad to say that altercations here in my part of the city are almost nonexistant - there are armed police guarding mosques and synagogs but that's it.

Out of curiosity I checked out a Website giving the names of World Trade Center survivors, and someone had hacked it, frequently inserting the words "All Arabs must die" into the space where a survivor's name should have been listed.

This all really sucks. I would hope most Americans would be smarter than this. I know one mosque in the area has been attacked but I have seen nothing first hand.

My fave corner store is run by a family of middle easteren descent. I stopped by there today and chalked their eager gabbiness to my being in a rush. Only afterwards did I think maybe they were looking for friendly faces.

I doubt this though. Since my neighborhood is primarily illegal Mexicans I don't think there is a strong feeling in the air other than sadness. No patroitism or jingoism

A news story I read had a passing reference to Bush today making a "plea to stop the mistreatment Arab Americans." Can anyone provide further info?

"French intelligence agents warned America a month ago that an Arab at a flying school in Boston had travelled to Afghanistan and was suspected of connections with bin Laden. Although the man was detained for having false papers, it appears that France’s warning was lost by the American police. " This from The Times I guess our boys were a bit slow on this one.

I made a new thread as we have passed 100 posts and I don;t know how to link it. Some one help me :(

I probably shouldn't be arguing with Ally here, but I'm in a fit of pique now.
"No-one weeps for the Palestinians, the Iraqi civilians killed by the US (and the UK, let's not forget that)', This is bullshit. With the amount of Arabs and Israelis in NYC? This is bullshit. Perhaps true in Europe..." Oh yes, that's why no-one can get anything done in the US, what with those enormous protests every day of the week clogging up the streets of every major city demanding a halt to the US's support of Israel, sanctions against Iraq etc. I'm not 'pleased' or 'happy' about Tuesday's events, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression and am totally sorry for any loss you may have had. But IT HAS TO BE SAID, people die every day out in the east as a result of US action, the horror and distress felt by many a NYC, and indeed world citizen is something that the citizens of Iraq (for example) have had to go through for the PAST 10 YEARS as a result of sanctions, bombing raids etc. Do we have official days of mourning for them? The children denied proper healthcare, all those classified as 'collateral damage'? No. The sooner people get away from this absurd attitude of "What did we do to deserve this?" the better.
"WE REBUILT YOUR FUCKING UNIVERSE"
Perhaps if you were talking to a German, this would be true. But you're not, and it's not. This kind of attitude is the thin end of the wedge, as the cliche goes.

Terrorist Action 11/9/2001 -- Thread 10.

Y'all gonna stop spamming these threads without comment or do you actually have something to say?