Sunday Discussion Group

September 11, 2005

It’s been four years since the day that, especially at the time, was supposed to have changed everything. As Condoleezza Rice put it in October 2003, “No less than December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001, forever changed the lives of every American.”

Today’s topic: Did it?

Four years after the worst attack in American history, how are our lives different? Did 9/11 bring a lasting sense of unity? Remind us that we’re all in this together? Bring the nation together behind a common goal? Or shared values? Or a sense of shared sacrifice?

Lawrence Kaplan had an article in The New Republic recently that explained, among other things, that 9/11 did not have an effect military recruitment, rates of community service or volunteer work, charitable donations, attendance at houses of worship, or interest in the news (foreign or domestic).

So, noting the four-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, was this the day that changed everything? And if so, what, exactly, has changed?

I lost some friends in the Trade Center and a few friends lost jobs since their companies no longer existed. I remember working in Mid-town and all I could see was smoke. Now I am safe at home in the suburbs listening to the local church bell chime for the memorial as tears are making it hard to type.

Did 9-11 change America? What a stupid question. I often fly to Asia and now I can’t take my nail clippers with me on the flight. The one time I flew first class I even got a plastic knife.

I think the biggest change to this country has been the amount of stupid security restrictions. I just hope that along with the stupid security that we have that we also have some good sercurity that isn’t as visible.

I have talked to a couple of pilots who told me that no major plane will ever crash into a building again. They used to have rules to try and keep the hijackers happy and get the plane on the ground. Now, they have reinforced doors and will never leave the pilot’s seat. They will do things like depressurize the cabin which makes it hard to breathe unless you are in your seat; go into oa nose dive which makes anyone not belted in to hit the ceiling; and as a last resort, will crash the plane themselves rather than give up control. These actions, along with others that I don’t know about are probably sufficient to stop another 9-11. A nail file is not a serious danger.

I think the biggest change to New York is that the financial district was severely hurt and the foolish fighting about how to rebuild has made the damage far worse. Some of the families wouldn’t be happy if we made all 16 acres a memorial to 9-11.

I think the biggest change to the rest of the country is that it allowed Bush to go to war in Iraq with support from the average citizen. I think the long term effect of 9-11 will be determined by how the war in Iraq turns out.

  • It could have had that effect. You can even argue that it should have had that effect. It’s a failure of leadership. Instead of setting our partisan differences aside after 9/11, this admin buttressed them.

    This is the most blatantly partisan admin I’ve seen in my 49 years. And it came along at a time when the country needed the exact opposite.

    BTW, it’s been 4 years. Whatever happened to the criminal who launched the 9/11 attack? What was his name? Osama SomethingOrOther, I think.

  • What JoeW said. 9/11 could have changed America, and 9/11 should have changed America, but our top leader found it easier to divide for partisan gain. It’s a tragedy that made another tragedy worse.

  • On a personal level it’s had very little effect. I lost no friends on 9/11. I have a grand nephew who spent about half a year in Iraq. The only thing I heard from him is that his unit leader ordered him to shoot a camel for no reason. I do a daily update of a chart showing US Military Deaths in Bush’s Iraq Quagmire. I haven’t had occasion to fly since 9/11 but will be making an international flight next weekend. That’s about it.

    On a national level 9/11 really was a disaster, way beyond the lives of those lost that day (the number of which pales against any number of other causes of death which remain unnecessarily high in our selfish country). For starters, it gave Bush soaring support which has only gradually eroded back to pre-9/11 levels. It provided the whole fear-and-loathing thing which all dictators need in order for ordinary citizens to willingly give up whatever rights they think they have. And that insanity seems to have unleashed the doubly weird religious insanity that has sprung up in this once-great nation.

    9/11 is definitely not December 7, 1941. On a symbolic level alone, think of the way FDR rolled that date out before the Congress when he called for a Declaration of War on the Empire of Japan. Contrast that with the two-bit, laughably incoherent slurring of “9/11” and “terrism” by our current miserable excuse for a leader. Then contrast the responses: FDR organized the most massive war machine in the history of the world, with real international leadership; everything, including Lucky Strike green, went to the war effort. ShrubCo and CheneyCorp? well, the comparison doesn’t belong in the same universe. Just this month we’ve had another example of their “leaership”: the Canadian and Mexican armies made it into New Orleans with support five days before the Army of the United States. Someone (Tina Brown?) said that 9/11 was Bush’s Woodstock, Katrina his Altamont. Let’s hope so. No matter how soon we turn the tide, there’ll be an enormous mess to clean up after these fools leave office.

  • nothing has changed. clinton is still to blame for everything going wrong in america, jesus for everything going right.

  • It had a pulverizing effect on our country.
    In the absence of 9/11, George Bush
    would have been a one term
    ignorant hack, seen for what he is and
    voted out of office in a landslide.

    We wouldn’t have the disaster in Iraq,
    we’d be leading the world in efforts
    against global warming and for
    development of alternative energy,
    the right wingers would not be in
    control, we wouldn’t be in partisan
    hatred of each other, the leveees in
    New Orleans would have been
    strengthened to withstand a category
    five hurricane, we might be on our
    way to national health insurance,
    the poor and middleclass wouldn’t
    be getting poorer while the rich
    are getting obscenely richer,
    science and intellectualism wouldn’t
    be under attack, and a million
    other things that all of you can
    spout off at the rate of dozens per
    minute.

    9/11 has changed America catastrophically,
    and maybe permanently. It could be the
    worst, most lasting disaster to have
    ever occurred.

  • It gave enormous political power to an unelected moron, and that has been the ruin of the country.

    Little or nothing has been done about the actual security problems facing the country. New Orleans shows that as, as does the continuing freedom of Osama Bin Laden, as does the confiscation of nail clippers at airports, and last year’s flu vaccine fiasco.

    What has been done, is to lay the foundation for the fascist state, to undermine the Republic, perhaps fatally. In that, Bush has had plenty of help, both from his own party, and also from the scelorotic media and Democratic Party.

  • Osama Bin Laden in his wildest dreams couldn’t destroy America.

    George Bush couldn’t, either.

    Unless we helped.

    And because of 9/11, we helped.

    That’s what changed.

    Theoretically, it could be changed back.

    The clock is ticking, though, and I’m not optimistic.

  • A few weeks after 9/11 I wasn’t thinking much about retribution, since I was in no position to extract it, but our leaders turned outwards and demanded revenge from Afghanistan. That a comparatively medieval kingdom would even think of denying us was ludicrous. More than the salt in our wounds, it was terrible to know that we would inflict grim devastation on a population with so little reason to deny us. The outcome was never in doubt, only the question of “dead or alive?” for Osama.

    It didn’t work out that way. Like Schroedinger’s cat, Osama lingers in overlapping realities, not entirely part of this world, not yet departed from it. The same unresolvable equations afflict the United States. Are we really a super-power, or can we be crippled by a society of dedicated fanatics? We try to solve this equation by force, but it feels like we are boxing with shadows.

    What changed most for me is plain in my mind, I carry a burden of anxiety that was never there before 9/11. Watching the news now is like going to the doctor when you just know something bad is bound to show up on the x-ray, yet I do it every day like some compulsive hypochondriac. I don’t think I’ll ever shake this low-grade fear, and it certainly won’t compell me to be a better person.

    Fear makes demands. Fear makes choices. Fear makes enemies. I can’t hide in a cave all the time, so I hunt for the causes of my fear instead. I have seen enough horror in Washington, D.C. that I have ceased to care about the Middle East. 9/11 has made me political, and partisan, and hyper-sensitive. It has made me deeply question the actions of my government, and the future of my society. I long for the easy resolution, knowing it will never come.

  • It’s given the Bush Administration a kick-start toward totalitarianism. Now anyone can be imprisoned indefinitely on governmental order with no recourse to legal representation or the legal system. Karl Rove has tightened his grip, following exactly the principles that Joseph Goebbels specified (scroll down). Concentration camps are set up for the evacuees (quote: “The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and ‘a sum of money’ and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.”). Efforts are focused more on saving the party in power (and extending their grip) than in helping the nation. I blogged about this–and others are noticing as well.

  • For me personally 9/11 was the catalyst for a wholesale shift in my thinking, and some of that shift was seeing that the sense of invinciblity that I had about the United States was a façade. I consider the changes in my thinking more of an awakening than anything else. The signs were always there, I just choose not to see them.

    Like a lot of people I bought into the fear that we were fed in the aftermath of the disaster, in other words I was a dupe being exploited and I bought whole thing hook line and sinker. The realization that the we were lied to came pretty slowly but with every lie I found, I also started finding out a lot of truths. Over the last couple of years I have read countless pages of material trying to get a handle on the way that the polical structure works in this country. History, economic data, commentary and origins of political thought just to name a few. This is all from someone who never read anything more serious than a Robert Ludlum novel.

    My viewpoints are still evolving but I have come to the conclusion that what was a horrible criminal act was exploited for political and financial gain by a group of people for whom human life has no meaning. How sad that in all the thousands of years of human development that the United States is being dragged down in a race to the lowest common denominator.

    In response to Carpetbagger’s question what has changed is that by extension half the people of this country helped Bin Laden reach one of his goals of bringing the United States to it’s knees by turning over absolute power of our government to the worst elements in our society.

    In a tip of the hat to Analytical Liberal – LFB’s.

  • America has certainly changed. The military went to the wrong war,the jobs went to China,and the leadership of this great country went straight to hell. Shame to the bubble-boy neocon revolution !

  • LeisureGuy,

    The website that you cite regarding the “concentration camps” for Katrina evacuees also contains discussion of the CIA’s coverup of UFO phenomena (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/ciaufo.html), “Global Mind Control Slated for Humanity by 2004” (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/globalmindcontrol.html) and secret military weather control projects (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/haarp.html), to name just a few. I’d really like to see a more reliable source for these alleged camps before we start filing civil rights lawsuits.

  • I am the average citizen. I am the average patriot. I would like to put to Dubya the following questions: 1.) If during the Vietnam War the National Guard had been used as it is now, would you still have jumped to the front of the line? 2.) If you were an average citizen and Katrina(not Corrina) hit Texas with flood destruction, would you have jumped in to save lives? 3.) If you had no money, home and life was gone as you know it, would you like being labeled even though no one knew you personally? 4.) If you had no Karl Rove or rich parents, could you REALLY have made it to where you are on your own? 5.) If you have big ideas, why can’t every little person have them? And last but not least…….6.) Do you FEEL anything for anyone?

    To the blog question……I think the date 9/11/2001 has a hidden meaning for Dubya and Osama(Usama) bin Laden. First (911) is the emergency number, what better day to show we were (and still are not) ready to respond in a national emergency. Second, it was a matter of convenience to name UBL and the hijackers–planned attack, but not by them. How can a giant in need of dialysis hide in mountains or caves? Even though many lost lives or were injured, as I am seeing, citizens are but pawns in their deadly games. I do not believe our president wants to find UBL…….it is all a sham.

    A last note..both catastrophies, 911 and Katriina, came within the first nine months of Dubya’s presidency respectively. The Christian right should be looking at the wrath that is plaguing this presidency. No smooth sailing or flying.

  • James Dillon: good point on wanting to know about the reliability of the report. The comments on the site also raised some good questions. Probably “concentration camp” is hyperbole. But the evacuees, according to reports in other blogs, do have quite a number of restrictions placed on them, given that they are simply US citizens who have lost quite a bit in a catastrophic storm. Maybe the restrictions are just the result of authorities trying to figure out what to do on the fly. But the point above Rove seeming to follow the principles set forth by Goebbels I will still maintain.

  • 9/11/01 was the day/event that allowed the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon and the Bush administration to begin executing their long-held fantasy. They needed a “Pearl Harbor”, and they got it that day. And I continue to believe that specific government elements knew about it in advance, but allowed it to take place. Why? Because the plan for Iraq was already under way, but the American public would not have supported sending 100,000+ troops to the Middle East to oust Saddam without such a horrifically vivid and destructive attack on American soil to incite us. It worked…to perfection.

    Will complicity from within the bowels of the Pentagon ever be proven? Probably not. But I believe it’s there.

  • One thing that has changed dramatically since 4 years ago:

    90% of us believed President Bush meant it when he said he was going to hunt down OBL. Now the fraction is reversed.

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