The world DIDN'T change on 9/11! Enough already!

[EstimatedProphet]

Wake up people! 9/11 was NOT a revolutionary event! The rest of the world has been dealing with terrorism now for a century. We've been lucky in the US to have escaped the worst of it for so long. Flying planes into buildings may be bigger and more damaging than past terrorist attacks, but terrorism wasn't invented on 9/11, and there was NOTHING about 9/11 that couldn't have been predicted!
Is it any wonder we don't have any allies anymore? We have basically ignored the problem of dealing with terrorists until it became personal, then we expect the world to kowtow to us because we were attacked. Hey. Mr. and Mrs. Freeper! The rest of the world has been dealing with this WITHOUT OUR HELP for a long time now, so maybe they don't want to hear what a tragedy it is now that it affects the US, as if they don't matter. Get over yourselves!

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Let me sheare where or why it did change

American perceptions

UNtil 9.11, the 1993 attack not withstanding, most Americans beleived that terror was something that happened OVER THERE

This the cynics at PNAC understood, and have abused it ever since.


Like this modified view of it?

Oh and how it changed, read the PNAC manifesto, in particular page 49 and the New Pearl Harbor

[EstimatedProphet]

2. Oh, I agree

But tell that to Joe Freeper. Tell that to the media too, who continually talk about how this is now a different world, so we are justified in attacking everywhere that is not the US.

[soothsayer]

3. I'm with you. n/t

[checks-n-balances]

4. But...but...if that's true, then we'll have to give up our hubris...

and our fears...and our willingness to be manipulated...and our incumbent pResident...and be forced to look at how 9/11 is being exploited to the hilt by the GOP...

The main thing that changed on 9/11 was that GWB finally had our support - for awhile, that is, until his "Axis of Evil" speech and saber rattling at Iraq and all that followed woke us back into reality.

I agree with you on this, and have had the same thoughts many times. It's nice to have a place to say these things, since your words would just be twisted just about anywhere else.

Maybe next time someone talks about how "everything changed," I'll remember to say something like, "Yeah, it sure seems like, after that, our whole democracy changed and started showing characteristics of fascism. I guess when most people begin to realize that, it'll be too late."

[EstimatedProphet]

5. Good point! That's all that really did change:

Maybe next time someone talks about how "everything changed," I'll remember to say something like, "Yeah, it sure seems like, after that, our whole democracy changed and started showing characteristics of fascism. I guess when most people begin to realize that, it'll be too late."

[AntiCoup2K4]

9. Junior never had my support....

While I went back and forth in my mind for a while on whether or not he was involved (now firmly convinced he was) I never believed he would possibly do anything other than fuck it up.

Sure enough, three years later and what do we have? 2 countries in ruin that had nothing to do with it. Over 1,000 Americans dead, probably 10 times that wounded, and 20,000 or so Iraqi and Afghan civilians who didn't do shit to this country.

I expected another Bush in the Whitehouse to be a disaster, but I was hoping for a minor one.

[EstimatedProphet]

11. 2 countries in ruin?!?

Don't you know we liberated those countries?!
</sarcasm>
I have actually had people argue that to me.

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. The Oklahoma bombing was a terrorist attack too.

However. since in the end we couldn't blame anybody else it just went away.

bush whipped up a frenzy intentionally, to suit his own purpose. And we have been paying the price ever since.

[keepleft]

7. it completely changed the life of Americans;

it made everyone act like an asshole.

[sushi]

8. The world didn't change

Ignorant Americans did. They suddenly discovered that America is not the world. They found out that there is a lot of world otside the USA. What so many of them still don't want to admit is that everybody counts, not only the people of the USA. I find it extremely arrogant and selfish to "take the war to them (invade, attack, drop bombs on them) so that we don't have to fight them here!"

[EstimatedProphet]

10. Yes

And it amazes me how easily people have bought into the "they have no respect for life" meme, that they happily sacrifice themselves for anything or nothing at all. Do people actually think that their own lives mean nothing to them? Do they actually think that Muslims wake up one morning and think "I'll just blow something up and die in the process; there's nothing on TV today"?

[Beam Me Up]

12. I disagree completely.

9/11 was DESIGNED to be a pivotal moment in global history and it has WORKED. Everything that has followed from the events of 9/11 (and I refuse to call it a "terrorist attack" which it most assuredly was NOT) were precisely what were INTENDED to follow. The reality bubble that we all lived in prior to 9/11 is now deflating rapidly. There is still much cognizant dissonance here at DU: "Why won't the media report what is really going on?" "Why are many of the Democrats in Congress just going along..." Everyone wants to continue to believe that the media CAN report what is going on, that Democrats CAN represent a genuine opposition to what is going on. But that is the point, they can not. It no longer matters WHAT we think or HOW MANY OF US oppose the operation of the National Security State run Federal Government and their Lap Dog Media. The looming crises before us have been determined a matter of National Security--that is, a matter of National Survival--and the "War on Terror" has been created as an umbrella to allow our strategic global interests to prevail. It doesn't make a god damned difference what any of us THINK.

[KurtNYC]

13. There was plenty of terrorism in the US prior to Sept 2001

Eric Rudolf
Timothy McVey
Columbine High School
the attack on CIA HQ in 1993
the truck bomb in the WTC in 1993
small plane crashes on White House lawn
man with machine gun shoots at grey haired man on the White House lawn
the aborted (bc Clinton was not asleep at the swtich) attack on Seattle for the 2000 New Years
numerous abortion clinic bombings
doctor assassinations
Flight 800

And since 9/11/2001:
the anthrax mailings
Flight 587 (November 2001)

This meme about "everything changed on 911" seems to be just an excuse for gutting the Constitution, expanding the imperial presidency and fostering on-going hysteria.

[EstimatedProphet]

15. Yes, there was

And IMO our method of dealing with terrorism was to ignore it, not like the rest of the world. The only thing that really changed on 9/11 is that Americans woke up.

[maxsolomon]

14. nothing essential changes

we're still ruled by a bunch of xenophobic ignoramuses & their fear of the 'other'.

[lumpy]

16. Thanks for expressing

what I have been meaning to say all along about those ridiculous buzz words.

[mr blur]

17. Take my hat off to you...

You are absolutely right. Over here in Europe we've been living with terrorist acts for a long time - some (IRA for example) happily funded by some in the US who were far enough away from the bloodshed to pat themselves on the back for helping out "the old country". Many of us here were aware that it was partly the policies of our own government which caused other people to hate us so much that they wanted to blow us up. This seems to me to be the problem - the inability of many in the US to accept that their government could possibly be wrong.

What 9/11 did was cause America to wake up to the real world - unfortunately too many of your compatriots are only half-awake and still blaming anyone else but themselves for their problems. If they can't understand NOW why a substantial portion of the rest of the world views their country with scorn and resentment then just imagine their confusion if Bush gets in again. Last week I saw Bush on the news here telling a cheering crowd that if Kerry had been President then Saddam would still be a major threat to the US and the world. I can't imagine anyone outside the US still believing this. He got a lot of cheers, though.

[greekspeak]

18. The world did not change but America surely did

A lot of people's sense of security were shook up. Certainly. America had no precident for this in its collective consciousness. But more changed in America than this. Overnight, complacent wingnuts plasetered their cars with nonsense jingoistic bumperstickers. Americans bought in to fear. The media has been fully coopted. The patriot act has stripped us of freedoms. "Free speech zones" have mushroomed in number. The napoleanic struttings of an imbicile from Connecticut via Crawford became not a joke but a heroic tableu.

[sr_pacifica]

19. But America has been like that before

We had only been emerging out of that jingoism and fear since the revolutionary sixties. The right-wingers have felt like their world has fallen apart with expanded freedom for women, minority groups, and (gasp!) gays and lesbians along with every other change they have felt threatened by. And now they have their world back.

[flaminbats]

20. no kidding..

Most of the dangers which appeared on 9/11 were practically eliminated by increased airport security. Other related dangers, such as terrorist nuclear attacks, have always existed! Before 9/11 only the Democrats focused on these problems, after 9/11 the Republicans actively began painting Democrats as weak on terrorism.