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Home » On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11

On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11

The New Neo Posted on by

It doesn’t seem possible that so many years have passed. And yet in a way, 9/11 seems like ancient history, or a bad dream. Or both.

There are college graduates who were not born when 9/11 happened. To an entire generation, 9/11 is part of the background noise of their lives, something that was always there. They cannot imagine the shock of that day for those of us who are older.

We should bow our heads and remember those who were foully murdered on 9/11, many of them young people themselves who would now be middle-aged or old but never got the chance. The NY Times has written many abominable things before and since 9/11, but its “Portraits of Grief” sketches of the victims are wonderfully done and remain heartbreaking.

One of the many terrible legacies of that day is the surveillance state, enabled by the War on Terror’s Patriot Act and now used against us all, particularly on the right. But I believe that would have happened anyway, because the computer age and other advances in technology have made that type of spying on the average citizen all too tempting and all too possible.

But would the left have gained such ascendance without 9/11? I think the answer is “yes.” Recall that on 9/11 the left was fully ready with its “blame America” stance. The Gramscian march was already well advanced, too.

And would Obama have been elected in 2008 without 9/11? I think so; his appeal was about a host of other things, including the (utterly betrayed) promise of racial healing, the financial crisis, and his own carefully-crafted persona.

Without 9/11, however, the Afghanistan War would not have happened, a war whose consequences – thanks in particular to Joe Biden – have been bad and whatever good it accomplished undone. The attacks of 9/11 were not the reason for the Iraq War – unlike the Afghan War. But I submit that without 9/11 the Iraq War would not have happened, either.

On a personal note, 9/11 was the catalyst for a several-years-long process of reading and thinking that led to a political change on my part. The change was only of political affiliation, however. Nothing basic about my point of view changed, and the change wasn’t about terrorism or 9/11 itself. I simply became more interested in learning the facts about history and politics as well as the MSM coverage of those things, and in the course of that activity I discovered to my surprise that I no longer could support the Democratic Party. And so in a very real way 9/11 began a long process that led to my starting this blog in the fall of 2004.

RIP to all the victims and heroes of 9/11. And may their families, and the survivors, be comforted. And may the republic somehow manage to reverse the terrible course it’s been on lately.

[NOTE: Here’s my personal account of 9/11.]

ADDENDUM: There are many many videos available about 9/11. Here are just a few short ones:

Comments

On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 — 23 Comments

  1. Sometimes I think about the fact that the equivalent time had passed between Pearl Harbor and 1963. 1963 was before I was aware of the world. But I know by the time I had heard of Pearl Harbor and kind of understood it, it was around 1975. And I thought of it as ancient history at that point. My dad was old enough in 1941 to volunteer. My mom was still in high school. I know now that it probably saddened my parents for me to think of Pearl Harbor as “ancient history.”

    So I gotta figure that in 2035, people are going to think the same thing about 9/11 that I thought in 1975.

    Which saddens me.

  2. Lee Also:

    I think it’s already ancient history to a lot of people.

    My mother was in her mid-twenties when Pearl Harbor occurred, and in her eighties for 9/11. She said 9/11 was worse.

  3. Roger L. Simon also traces his shift to the right to 9/11.

    I’ve been conservative my whole life, so I can’t say that 9/11 changed my thinking on that. The things that have happened since then have definitely changed my thinking on some stuff, though.

  4. Neo: well said. My own shift in perspective is not unlike your own; and I agree that, absent 9/11, we would almost certainly avoided both the Afghan War and the Iraq War.

  6. Well, Al Qaeda was a festering boil for years before they struck on 9/11. Bill Clinton apparently understood that, and made an ineffectual pass at them.
    There had been previous attacks of lesser magnitude; and I suspect that another attempt of some sort on the homeland was inevitable in due time. No one imagined one as spectacular, or as awful, as the attacks of that day. Still, given Al Qaeda’s history, it is inexcusable that our vaunted intelligence services, and national police force were caught unaware.

    No one old enough to comprehend could ever forget the shock of 9/11; and the sense of angst that it triggered.

    Still, I believe that comparing 9/11 to Pearl Harbor is rather spurious. True, the Pearl Harbor attack itself primarily killed Sailors rather than civilians; and it did not play out on national TV. But it also launched us into WWII. Although the majority of Americans today have no first hand experience with that time, and many don’t even know the history; nothing before or since compares. Well, I might say, other than the Civil War.

    Speaking of Afghanistan, I read this today.
    (paraphrased from memory) On February 15, 1989, after nine years of war, the last Soviet soldier exited Afghanistan, ‘the graveyard of Empires’. Just shy of three years later, on December 25, 1991, the Hammer and Sickle flag of the Soviet Union flew over the Kremlin for the last time.
    (Elections have consequences, so do wars)

  7. 9/11 and its aftermath did make me change from being a Free Marketeer (in Slovakia), Libertarian (ran for Congress 1986 when Ron Paul was Pres. candidate), into a Republican (as Ron Paul had already switched back; and his son Rand Paul is my favorite Senator).

    WW II was a huge break in history. 9/11, not so much; and probably less important still than the Vietnam War, and commie lies about it. Was probably a little more important than the Financial Recession of 2008, but others might argue the other way.

  8. “And would Obama have been elected in 2008 without 9/11?”

    Maybe, but he had a lot of help from Bush and McCain. Alongside his disastrous foreign policy, Bush was also responsible for the housing bubble inflating and then bursting, although to be fair he had enthusiastic support from most of DC. The Democrats could probably not believe their good fortune that a Republican president would debauch lending standards that way.

    Then there was Johnny Mac and his remarks about having nothing to fear from an Obama presidency that signaled he was throwing the election. Maybe McCain really did understand his role as being the graceful loser so America could have its first black president, but if he didn’t want it badly enough then he should have stepped aside for someone who did.

  9. Thanks, Neo. I recently retired as a Deputy Chief in the FDNY after 34 years (refused the covid shot). I started reading you around 9/11. I haven’t stopped since.

  10. There are three dates I will always remember where Iwas and what I was doing. Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, and 9/11.

    Pearl Harbor had the most lasting effect on me. Being a child (8-12 years old) during that war etched many memories that seem quite fresh even today.

    I was no great fan of JFK, but his assassination was a deep shock. Political differences I understood, but murder because of them? It was unthinkable to me.

    On 9/11 I was at the gym riding a stationary bike and watching some TV show when the news broke in about a plane hitting a building in New York. My first thought was it was foggy, and some private plane had flown off course and impacted the building. It soon became clear what had happened. It was no mistake. It was an attack!

    When the story unfolded of how the jihadis had hi-jacked the airplanes, I knew that we were at war. I didn’t know what form it might take, but I felt the same emotion of putting on my “game face” that I felt when I was in Vietnam. I expected the war to be mostly on our soil. I was wrong about that. Al Qaeda didn’t really have much of a follow-on plan.

    I knew flying was going to be a possibly dangerous undertaking until we could figure out a way to take down the jihadis. At the time I was 68 and my wife and I were traveling a lot. We decided to keep on traveling, but I began always wearing a supple leather belt with a big, hard metal buckle and carrying a couple of ball point pens as weapons to use against possible hi-jackers. A belt with a sturdy metal buckle is a good weapon for dealing with someone with a boxcutter or other small, edged weapon. In a pinch, in close, a ball point pen can puncture the throat, be shoved up a nostril, or poked into an eye. I was in good physical shape and capable of using those “allowable” weapons if needed. Thankfully, I never had to use therm.

    We quickly learned that the TSA inspections were mostly theater. Because we traveled with retired airline employee passes, we found we were almost always singled out for the open bag and pat down inspections. Retired airline employees can’t/won’t complain seemed to be the idea.

    I endorsed the idea of going into Afghanistan and Iraq. At the time, I believed in the “Pentagon’s New Map” ideas of the U.S. using diplomacy and military action to reform “rogue or back ward” countries. At the time, I didn’t know much about Islam. I also didn’t have a grasp of how difficult it is to change the religious and/or cultural practices of an entire nation. I kept thinking about how we had reshaped Japan, Germany, and Italy after WWII. And I wanted to believe that most humans were wanting to live free, like Americans. our adventures in the Muslim world have shown how wrong I was. What’s now happening here in the U.S. is another data point against what I believed.

    It’s hard to believe how long it has been and how much I have learned since 2001.

  11. In September of 2001… I wasn’t doing much internet. My main media consumption was MSM & I can’t remember much of what I was told.

    But was there a strain of “We got what we deserved” being spread around?
    I just can’t remember… and I don’t remember the “hate America” crowd being as prevalent or as vocal.
    Thanks

  12. By sheer coincidence my DH and I were witness to a very private meeting just outside of downtown London. In June of 2002 in a hotel closed to the public an emergency meeting was called of the G7 Oil Accountants. They met for 1 1/2 days and then Tony Blair showed up. One gentleman was heard telling someone on the other side of his cell phone “yep, he bought it. They are going in”. Two weeks later the announcement to invade Iraq had been made. Bush being from TX oil and Iraq having an abundance of oil it seemed right to “kill two birds with one stone”!

  13. But was there a strain of “We got what we deserved” being spread around?
    I just can’t remember… and I don’t remember the “hate America” crowd being as prevalent or as vocal.

    John Guilfoyle:

    I remember a key moment to my change: seeing an article “Why Do They Hate Us?” about a week later.

  14. Anne:

    I’ve written a ton of posts over the years on Iraq, and the idea that the war was fought to get oil is simplistic and doesn’t even make sense. We imported more oil from Iraq before the war than after, for starters (see this). And the percentage of our oil that we have ever gotten from Iraq is very small. For example, in 2021 it was a trifle under two percent. The idea that the Iraq war was fought for oil is a very popular leftist propaganda point, however.

    More on why it wasn’t about oil can be found here as well as here,

  15. The big change in my thinking came 2 years later with the Iraq War. I started becoming more skeptical about US foreign policy and about the Republican Party (but as much as I disliked Bush and Cheney, I couldn’t see voting for Kerry and Edwards).

    I also remember the talk after 9/11 about how the attacks marked the End of the Age of Irony. America was getting serious and facing up to reality. How long did that last? The attacks didn’t make the country serious and responsible, or not for very long, and at this point it’s clear that the ironic comedy of the late 20th century wasn’t just a product of irreverent or frivolous minds, but a reflection of how the official version of things differs from reality. In the Biden era, all the cynicism of the 70s has returned, but this time the leftists are the true believers and the rest of us see through the sham.

  16. The worst take I ever ran into about 9/11 was 10 or so years later I was sitting in a camp talking to a left leaning scout dad and he said “9/11 would not have happened if Al Gore had been President.” I asked him why he thought that and he, of course, could not come up with any solid reasons. He said that Mr. Gore had done some work as VP on airport security. I asked him if he believed the “Bush was in on it” and he said no. I asked him if he really thought Gore would have stopped the hijackers from boarding the planes because of the background. He acknowledged that he probably would not have done that but was still sure that 9/11 wouldn’t have happened with Gore.

  17. A story from the past, a reminder that not all opponents have to be enemies, and the current occupants of the White House.
    The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

    https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2023/09/11/september-11-2001-a-world-trade-center-survivors-account-2-n441280

    https://redstate.com/tladuke/2023/09/11/americas-unsung-hero-for-september-11th-survivors-is-comic-jon-stewart-n2163677

    https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/09/11/biden-administration-savaged-for-praising-saudi-arabia-on-the-annivesary-of-911-n2163663

  19. 22 years. Hard to believe.

    I was in a hotel that morning. Back in the pre wifi days, my routine was to turn on cable news as I got ready. But as it happened, I overslept that morning, so I skipped switching on the t.v. and went straight to the shower, lest any news events distract me.

    I first saw any news when I walked downstairs to the lobby. CNN showing the trade center on fire. My immediate thought…’oh it must be the anniversary of that bombing. That must have been old footage’

    Got to my car when I realized ‘No. That bombing was in February and it was on the basement. This must be something else’. Turned on the radio…

  21. “…how could they have allowed such a criminal class as this, to take hold…”

    Allowed?
    Simple: The Democrats hijacked the country.
    They used the Covid scare—they EXACERBATED, MAGNIFIED, EXAGGERATED and EXTENDED the Covid scare, while promoting vaccines and DENYING ABSOLTELY that there was any other simpler, cheaper, more standard way to treat the virus—so they could EXACERBATE the crisi, so that they could “play” the “BUT PEOPLE CAN’T LEAVE HOME TO VOTE AT THE POLLS—WE MUST HAVE ACROSS-THE-BOARD MAIL-IN VOTING” charade…and then “fortified” the elections by flooding the zone with fake mail-in, and other, ballots—which, when that didn’t work as well as it was expected to, forced them to shut down ballot counting for several hours in the early (Wednesday) morning, while getting rid of Republican vote counters and observers (either by faking water main breaks, as in Atlanta—CLEVER, THAT!—or boarding up windows so that no one could see inside the counting areas; so that NO ONE COULD SEE what they were doing on the other side of those boarded-up windows.
    The result: Biden “WON” with how-many-tenths of a percentage point in ALL key battleground states?
    Oh, and—don’t forget!—with a RECORD NUMBER OF THE “POPULAR” VOTE.

    Of course they had to claim that these were the cleanest, most transparent elections in his tory—they’re Democrats, after all—while vociferously insisting that any claim to the contrary was DISINFORMATION, MISINFORMATION and —a TOTALLY new word and category!—MALINFORMATION**…while going after ANYONE who dared mention the truth of the matter, to the full extent that they were able to.

    Hijacked, pure and simple.
    Just like those four planes were hijacked. (So HOW was THAT allowed to happen….)

    ** “…Soon after that, they started going after many other people, including [RFK Jr.], and many of other people who were criticizing the COVID lockdowns and some of the countermeasures that the public health agencies and the White House had implemented.
    ” And it’s disturbing … They had to make up a new word, because so many of us were putting up information that they couldn’t actually call misinformation. In fact, Facebook and Twitter pushed back and said, ‘This is actually true what these guys are saying.’
    ” They couldn’t call it misinformation or disinformation, so they invented a new word called ‘malinformation.’ That word means or denotes statements that are true but nevertheless inconvenient for the White House or the government….”
    [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
    From:
    “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — The Health and Freedom Candidate”—
    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/09/10/rfk-jr-health-and-freedom-candidate.aspx

  22. Thanks huxley…The article you mentioned, now that you refreshed my memory, I DO remember…and I remember being confused more than angry…

    I also remember thinking how abjectly stupid W sounded referring to Islam as the “religion of peace” not long after. Even I knew better than that.

  23. I felt a different kind of ….I have no idea.

    Thinking back on it, born in 1945 when all my friends were children of WW II veterans. Whenever fathers got together with us boys around, they talked to each other about their experiences.
    Thirty years after I got out of the Army, for some reason, I asked my father if they’d been talking to us by talking to each other. Turns out, yes, he said. And, checking with my sister, it didn’t happen when the girls were together with fathers around.

    I guess they figured, looking at history, you graduate, they give a war. Turned out to be right.

    So, back of the brain, emotionally, I guess I felt we were always at war. Always had been. Sometimes it was close, sometimes not. This time it was close.
    So you do things differently, think differently from when it was distant. But it’s not a different world, a different situation. Just where and how you check for threats, locally and at a distance.

    Work out a big more, make sure the things you might need are in reach. Eyes open. Pay attention to what’s going on near and far. When in public, look for additional items. Natural. been doing it since I was, we were, maybe thirteen.

    No major upset except rage. But you expect that, too. Occasion to be determined.

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