Posted on

It’s 9/11

Scroll down to see more content

911ribbon

Published by

Pied Type

Susan Richards is a retired editor living in Thornton, Colo., near the family and mountains she loves. Her long-standing Pied Type blog contains some 3,800 posts dating back to 2002.

Categories 9/1131 Comments

31 thoughts on “It’s 9/11”

    1. We still hear about Pearl Harbor every year. Afraid this will go on for quite a while. Personally I’m sick of it and don’t care to relive the day, reexamine the pictures, see yet another movie or documentary about it. I marked the day. That’s as far as I’m willing to go, and farther than I originally intended.

      But just out of curiousity, how soon would you forget the day if terrorists had crashed a couple of planes into Buckingham Palace, another into Westminster Abbey, and had a fourth plane headed for, say, the Tower of London? And they killed 3,000 of your countrymen in the process.

      Reply

      1. The Germans actually tried that during the ‘Blitz’ killing over 60000, non-military men women and children, when that didnt stop us they tried rockets galore. We never forgot, but I don’t think we dwelt upon it, there were more important things to distract us seemingly.
        Yet somehow I still like the Germans. we English are a strange lot! XD

        Reply

        1. I certainly didn’t intend to diminish England’s terrible losses during the war, but I was thinking of attacks other than during a declared war. I do agree that the US has more compelling things to worry about than the events of 15 years ago.

        2. I understood that from your very first paragraph PT, I wonder how many of your fellow countrymen feel the same, I suspect many. Methinks that once again the media in the US is at fault.
          After a very short time I think that the senses stop the grieving, and even the rage to a certain extent, for most people; and for those not directly effected the rage diminishes to a personal anger, that something of that magnitude, was allowed to happen in the first place.

        3. I know everyone is different, but I don’t understand public grieving — especially not year after year. It seems more than sufficient to me to just note the day, perhaps fly the flag as on other patriotic holidays, and move on. It’s been 15 years. How much is enough? When do the public memorial services stop?

        4. Nether do I understand it, I suspect that there are those that enjoy wallowing in a form of self pity.The Flag at “Half Mast’ ’til noon I think is sufficient
          The sooner they stop the sooner the grieving stops, if the grieving is sincere!

      2. Lord Beari has pretty much summed up what I think. In essence mark it once, then move on, and learn from it instead of wallowing in martyrdom every flipping year. And I agree with the sentiments expressed by your reader in his letter too. This annual self-pity on 9/11 seems self-indulgent. If my relatives/friends/loved ones had died I would want to grieve privately and quietly. But, I’m British and we aren’t known for public displays of emotion 😉

        Reply

        1. I’m English myself although domiciled in Australia for the last 65 years, but still follow the stiff upper lip bit; my wife tells me that I’m a hard hearted fellow, but then she’s Australian.

  2. This is paraphrased from a letter to the editor I sent yesterday:

    The observance ceremonies of 9/11 could be serving a good purpose, i.e., clarifying a central lesson America ought to have learned from it, i.e., that American exceptionalism failed and failed miserably. But, that isn’t happening. The concept says that America is not only unique among nations, which it is, but also that it is superior to the rest of the world and has an inherent mission to transform it into our own image. The second Iraq war, like the Vietnam war to an extent, was meant to do just that. However, despite an overwhelming military victory the result was over half a million deaths, a religious civil war, and political destabilization.

    Trump says that he will “make America great again.” The nostalgia is appealing but the world has changed radically since WW II. 9/11 was not Pearl Harbor and the enemy was not a country, it was religious extremism. That kind of enemy can not be defeated by conventional arms alone, something we should have learned from Vietnam. The more pridefully we try to force our culture on the unwilling, the more ferocious the resentment.

    The lesson is getting lost in the nostalgia for the past, a common theme in today’s politics, a longing for the cooperation and prosperity following WW II, good industrial jobs and political cooperation that enabled the interstate highway system and other infrastructure. That, however, was before globalization and cheap foreign labor. The choice there is between cheap goods and austerity, and austerity will not sell well. The world has changed and those who refuse to recognize that are doomed to repeat the errors of the past.

    Reply

    1. Well said, and I agree. I’ve said before, as you have here, that ideology cannot be defeated by military might. We could kill every terrorist in the Middle East and still not rid the world of the ideas they promote. In fact, the more we kill, the more we confirm what they espouse — that the US is an evil satan trying to take over their world. We are (not were) a great nation, unique in the world. But exceptional? Better than everyone else? With some divine right, some manifest destiny, to impose our way of life, our type of government, our beliefs, on other nations? No! Such hubris is precisely why we are so hated in so many parts of the world.

      Reply

      1. :Pied… You and Jim seem to be more intelligent than the leaders we’ve elected for over 50 years. You’d think we could have elected someone less interventionist wouldn’t you? Oh yeah… sometimes someone like that runs, but they can’t be elected because parties are more important than those who represent them. Sad.

        Reply

        1. As long as we stand ready (and seemingly eager) to be the world’s policeman, the rest of the free world will be quite content to sit back and let us do it.

        2. I believe it is a roll taken on unwittingly by the action of the United States politicians and presidents after the end of the Great War as it was known; and culminating in the Washington Treaty

    2. Hate to be pedantic but “America is not only unique among nations” not quite correct, after all you’re using the language of another country, England because the United States does not have a unique language like the English do.
      XD

      Reply

        2. I’d like to think so too, but I was told by the editor (who’s a friend of mine) that she prints ALL letters that are fit to print. I assume that means reasonable grammar, spelling and syntax, and of course, making some kind of sense. Hard to get the big head in light of that. ; )

          (Joplin has a resident population of only 50,000 although the weekend swells to 250,000.)

Leave a Reply to PiedTypeCancel reply