12 comments

  1. Instead of commemorating this dark day with endless media directed soul searching and navel gazing amid constant “There I was when I saw it on the TV in the newsroom” narratives, couldn’t we just pick an appropriately significant Muslim point of interest or population center on this day each year and make it “famous” for 9-11 too? Obviously our efforts to fight on terms that we consider both appropriate and civil, did not have the desired effect, so maybe we should borrow from the other side’s TTPs.

    We wouldn’t have to take “credit” for it – less said, best said – but if it was a place where 9-11 was once celebrated, why not make them understand why this day will be forever dreaded? What? Wouldn’t that lead to an endless war with indiscriminate killing? No, it would lead to a continuation of a war where the other side is finally fighting back on terms that might actually put a stop to the endless war that has been waged against the modern world for more than 40 years running.

    But I guess instead we’ll continue as we have for decades until they finally light off the nukes with which they’ve promised to bring a final “Death to America”. For the life of me, when people threaten you with destruction, why is it so hard to take them at their word? Instead, we commemorate our losses, ignore the warnings, while throwing away the sacrifices of others and then pretend to get on with our lives.

    2. I think we all know #1 on the list; turn the entire site radioactive for 1000 years.
      We can argue about the rest, afterwards!

      1. Don’t have to use nukes. A B-52 carries 51 500 lb bombs. Coincidently, something else weighs about 500 lbs. Might have to modify the bomb racks.

  2. I just remember following it on CNN. At the time I had been traveling and it still was the best site for raw news. Now 20 years later it has all but disappeared.

    It was a dark time for our country.

  3. Over @Insty, posted at 6:30pm (EDT) are the thoughts Insty labeled as “From A Friend” –
    They are to be read.
    PLUS: The preceding post:
    GERARD VAN DER LEUN: What I Saw: Notes Made on September 11, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights.
    @6:14pm
    which includes a 9-1-1 call from a gentleman on the 105th floor of the first tower to fall, superimposed over a video of the event.

    For “tfr” above, we have quite a few MIRV’d missiles sitting in silos awaiting decommission under SALT. Now would be a good time to put them to use, and then we can mount “monoliths” at each pass into Afghanistan waning people to forever stay away.

    1. Askeptic,
      That article on Insty titled “From a Friend” was spot on.

      Considering the past 70 years or so, I ask the question “will America fight another war with the goal to win?” MacArthur actually got too agressive in Korea that pushed the North Korea Communists too close to the Chinese border which provoked the Chinese Communists to join in. The politicians put far too many limitations on military strategy in the Vietnam war. Gulf I freed Kuwait from Iraqi aggression but didn’t remove the aggressor from power. I’ve never heard of that being done before throughout history. Usually the defeated power’s government is removed from power through executions etc. No doubt the MidEast is a tinder box of animosity among themselves and others. We should have planted permanent military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan just as we have had in Japan, Germany and Italy after WW2. In order to build a nation you have to change parts of its culture. Demolish the madrasas and rebuild with Western based schools. But that takes goal setting and determination to reach those goals, two things that have fallen aside in America. The communists and the terrorists play the long game while America and Western Civilization solely focuses on the short game.

      JQ

  4. Of the two famous pavanes in classical music, I much prefer Ravel’s, since it involves pleasant memories of my childhood in Florida. Way back then WJXT-TV opened its broadcast day with a rendition of Ravel’s Pavane, with footage of water flowing under a bridge. I forgot it for years – – decades, actually – – until I heard it again and remembered from where.

  6. I have always associated Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings with 9/11.

    Played as background while the names of the victims were read aloud at Ground Zero.

    Incredibly sad day.

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