Where Were You?

[DragonHeart]

I find it more disheartening that you are either failing or outright refusing to recognize how deeply personal and traumatizing the attacks were to a great many of us. What you seem to have forgotten is how on that day, the world changed for millions of people. Those of us who were younger but still able to understand probably had the worst of it, because at a very young age we're suddenly realizing whoa, our country isn't the safe, invincible nation we thought it was. Yes, it's very different for many other parts of the world, but remember that for most of us posting on this forum, we weren't yet aware of that. It's hard not to be lulled into a sense of security when you're a citizen of a first world country, one that has not been attacked on its own soil in some sixty years.

Then you witness a major terrorist attack on your own country as it happens and feel the world you thought you knew crumbling all around you. For a great many people, true innocence now lies in the rubble, long since gone to dust, from that day. We all saw the face of evil and whether we choose to recognize it or not, it's changed all of us.

Yes, 9/11 is still in the media all the time, referenced as often as internet memes. Many of us have become disillusioned about the whole thing, having become much more cynical and jaded than we were nine years ago. But for one day every year, those haunting memories come back as vivid and real as the day it happened and we all gather to honor it in our own way. That you choose to disrespect that is your decision, but keep in mind the world did not stop for us all those years ago, despite your assumptions. We've all moved on and grown up, we're all aware of other attacks and disasters, and don't think for a minute that any of us here are ignorant of that. Indeed, it's all too real now. We choose to honor the defining moment of our generation, the moment when the horrors we learned about in those history classes became firsthand reality. In a way, paying our respects to 9/11 is also a tribute to all of the other 'displays of death' to which you so flippantly referred, because we are able to understand the horror, pain and loss in a way we would never have been able to before.

I recall an incident as a high school senior that brought this realization home to me in a very sobering way. One of my teachers related how she'd been discussing the war in a freshman class and two girls in that class didn't even know we were at war. This was five years ago. Kids who were not old enough to understand what happened, who see the footage of the burning, collapsing towers like we see black and white WWII footage today. There's that disconnect between what they see and what they personally experienced. That is exactly why it's so important for those of us who were old enough to understand. None of us who have these memories can be ignorant because of 9/11. That is why we remember.

~DragonHeart~

[Furore]

It wasn't just the US neither, it was her allies as well.
These days we're all connected by fighting together, sharing our culture and being in tune with eachother through constantly improved means of communication.

A lot of people here shared the sentiments and I distinctly remember many of us getting much delight from the cartoons and games debasing Bin Laden. Some of the guys here were damned proud to work alongside the US on that War on Terror even if it much of it may have been a misplaced effort. That whole event was seen as an attack on our freedom, on the way people of the Western world live and wasn't the kind of thing any of us could ignore. There was a lot of hatred for those who shook us up, but it also showed how strong our ties were.

And any who trivialise any event resulting in that much death are scum in my eyes. I couldn't agree with Pete and DragonHeart's sentiments more if I tried.

[Tiffany]

There is definitely worse things that have happened, but that doesn't mean that people can't feel what they feel.

It didn't happen in my country, but it affected ME. I have friends who I love dearly who live in the States. IMO, 9/11 set a precedent. No one ever viewed Airplanes as possible weapons before this eh? Sure people would hijack a plane but never use it to smash into something. It sure as hell isn't a death fetish either! Its called having empathy for people who have lost family, friends, loved ones in a horrific attack. There have been lesser things that happen that still affect me. The Tsunami that hit Thailand, for instance. Less people died in that than in the great flooding of China back in like 1912. Does that mean I shouldn't feel bad for the people who died in the Tsunami?

Anyhoo....

I was just waking up from working an Afternoon shift at the factory. I think I was watching Jenny Jones on TV when my friend called me in a panic to tell me that it was the start of WW3. We flipped to CNN and both towers had been hit at that point. I watched the first tower fall, then the other. It was awful.

I went into work but got sent home early as my company supplied factories in the States and the borders were shut down and we ran out of bins to pack our parts into. Just awful, I still can't wrap my head around it.

[Alpha]

I think it's so amazing how we all remember so many details about what we were doing, where we were, and so on.

For me, the date September 12 rings just as many bells, because that was the date for me when it occurred. I remember my dad saying that this date would stay in history, and I thought, '12 September'. So that's probably bringing something new to our discussion.

I woke up, and my two older brothers were watching the TV in the lounge, which was very unusual. Mum had the radio up really loud, which wasn't unusual, but she was taking more interest in it than she usually did, as she was getting my youngest brother ready for the day.

The TV is never used in the morning in my house, so I immediately knew something was up. I stepped round the corner and saw a building on fire. I was eleven, I had no idea what happened, but saw the words 'Plane crashes into World Trade Centre'. I didn't know what that was, and at that stage, I assume, everyone thought it was an accident. This was still early, and we watched the TV as we ate breakfast and got dressed for school. I remember the first time they played the footage of the second plane, and we all knew that it was now an attack.

I got to school, with the teachers huddled around a radio. Not many students took much interest, but it was primary school. They knew that a plane or two crashed into a building somewhere. Aside from that, the evening paper was full of images, but still confusion. It went on for weeks. The rest of September 12 was uneventful, and I don't remember anything more. I don't think I understood the circumstance.

The next image I have in my mind is the exact moment the Coalition entered Afghanistan. I have a similar memory of the exact moment the Iraq invasion began.

Also, to add to Walter's comments. These events were significant, and very, very sad. But it is sobering and important to realise that many, many, many more things have occurred before, and importantly, subsequently, to this.

Even more importantly, what has gone on in the background while we have been thinking about this event, and its important consequences? How about this: every 30 seconds, a child dies of malaria.

We couldn't stop 9/11 ('12/9', in my crazy land). We can stop a lot of other problems, but choose not to. It's worth thinking about that, at the very least.

EDIT: I don't even know if that's what Walter was getting at, but hey.

EDIT2: In no way am I trying to diminish the significance of the event. While the personal loss is, admittedly, not something I can identify with, living in a different country, and being eleven at the time of the event. But it is something I can understand, and empathise with. But it is one among a number of things we should be encouraged to empathise with.

[Aerif]

I managed to miss this thread on the 11th due to time zone differences (and the fact that at the time I was watching 'Flight 93', or it might have been 'United 93', I can't remember - they were both on.)

As far as I'm aware, the attack didn't happen until the afternoon (13:45), and me being nine years old at the time meant that I was in my fifth year of primary school, I can't remember exactly.

What I do remember is that it took fifteen minutes before the BBC was able to cover the plane crashing into the north tower, we may or may not have been informed at this at school, although I don't think that anyone would've realised the significance at that point.

Sometime in the afternoon, my teacher allows the class to join an older class that are currently watching the television kept in Room 13 (they may have kept it in there to be ironic, but it was the only classroom that was never used as a fulltime class). I think we must have started watching it during Bush's address, regardless we didn't know that a second plane had crashed.

Aside from not being told anything about the south tower, we are also not told about the Pentagon. In fact, BBC news doesn't even cover the Pentagon, if I remember correctly. I didn't find out about the Pentagon until a few years ago, when I did some research on the attacks.

The school did not tell us when the south tower collapsed, either. Which confuses me a little, but then it didn't happen until (14:50), basically Home-Time in school, so I'm guessing the teachers wanted our parents to explain it for them. Although I have a feeling that we were largely unsupervised in school that afternoon.

When I got home, being 9, I didn't put on the news, but most likely Cartoon Network or something like that (normally I would've watched CBBC or CITV, but BBC1 and ITV had news instead of the usual). It wasn't until my parents got home that I found out what had really happened that day.

At some point, every channel just ceased to exist, with the statement that the channel would cease to show out of respect for the victims. BBC1 and BBC2 were showing the same content (a live feed from New York, occasionally interrupted by a repeating video of the towers collapsing).

A few years later I felt really guilty for beeing largely ignorant the events.

[Tiffany]

Also, to add to Walter's comments. These events were significant, and very, very sad. But it is sobering and important to realise that many, many, many more things have occurred before, and importantly, subsequently, to this.

Even more importantly, what has gone on in the background while we have been thinking about this event, and its important consequences? How about this: every 30 seconds, a child dies of malaria.

We couldn't stop 9/11 ('12/9', in my crazy land). We can stop a lot of other problems, but choose not to. It's worth thinking about that, at the very least.

Same with starvation. But that isn't really the point is it? I think its pretty crappy that it would even be said, tbh. I mean really, because people are taking the time to remember a huge terrorist attack on their own country that means that they don't care about other things that happen in the world? Give me a break.

I was horrified with the 7/7 bombings. Did as many people die in that as the WTC? No, but still it was awful. We do Remembrance Day, is that somehow fetishizing death? I don't think so either. Remembrance Day has different meanings for people in different countries as they relate to the losses with their own country AND worldwide.

I get what you are saying about Malaria but someone didn't bio-engineer Malaria and released it saying "Ha ha ha, Suckahs!!!". I don't even get why it was brought up. Maybe because its first thing in the morning and I'm tired and feeling a bit bitchy but yeesh. If Malaria is that important... where's the thread on that? Oh, and don't worry... if it got posted then there'd be someone else in the peanut gallery posting wanting to know why you are caring about Malaria when there's still AIDS running rampant.

Anyhoo. Yeah this probably came out a lot more bitchy than it was intended, but its irritating to me to have people try and state the obvious about how there's worse things out there. Yeah, we know.

/bitchycattyshould'vehadacoffeefirst rant.

[Alpha]

No, that's not what I was suggesting at all. Although I was completely aware that at some stage it would be interpreted as such.

Suffice to say, a lot of sad things happen. Let's stop ranking them.

[Tiffany]

I totally agree. For me, any loss of life (due to anything... human/nature) is very sad.

[DragonHeart]

I personally would love to see more threads about broader world issues.

~DragonHeart~

[Walter Sobchak]

And who cares about all the vapid bitches you bang, or the quasi-intellectual persona you desperately try to muster by talking about foreign films and obscure music that nobody gives a shit about?

Different things have significance to different people. But way to try and troll by trivializing the feelings and thoughts of others in regards to the biggest and most heinous attack on American soil in recent years. It's significant because it happened recently, in our formative years, on our soil. It completely shattered the idea of being the invincible nation that we always had the idea of.

Yes there are more deadly attacks of far greater magnitude, but it never affects you until it affects someone you know or your own land.

Was the Holocaust worse? Absolutely, but it doesn't affect us as much because we weren't there. We didn't see it firsthand. We didn't see people looking desperately for their loved ones, posting images of them wherever they could.

We didn't see the death camps that Milosevic ran. We heard about them, but unless we were Serbian, it doesn't affect us.

And it's not fetishizing death, it's a simple question of what you were doing during one of the most unforgettable groundbreaking historical events of our time.

But yeah where were you when your boy Obama was inaugurated?

I know not of what obscure music or foreign films you are referring to. I am regularly ridiculed for having a square taste in music, and I would imagine that about sixty percent of the films I watch are in English. However, I cannot in good faith stand by as you attempt to connect by vapid bitches to terrorist activity.

Citing the Holocaust or Milošević tell me you completely missed the point I attempted to convey. How else can I comprehend a response to a post about people living in the past than going back even further?

The 2004 tsunami and the Haitian earthquakes of this year each claimed over two hundred thousand lives, but nary a peep from you or other popinjays. You can prattle on about how it affected us more, but it really does not hold much water. Maybe you were dodging debris in Brooklyn, but it did not affect me, or the kid in Wisconsin, or the girl in Arkansas. The resources allocated toward the Haitian earthquake have been far more pressing than a terrorist event that occurred almost a decade ago. The geopolitical effects will continue to be felt in our hemisphere for some time, but the television has not told us what to think about it, nor have we received the proper self-aggrandizement, so we sweep it under the rug. And besides, the presence of posters from halfway around the world joining in such behavior destroys your idea that it happened to "us". In the inflated ego that is America, people throughout the world are supposed to remember where they were when 4000 people were killed in another senseless act of violence in a conflict that has been waging for sixty years.

Obama, as far as I know, was a State Senator at the time of the attacks. Any attempt to tie him to it is tangential, at best.

I assume such a response will serve as an appropriate rejoinder to DragonHeart, chad, and Silver, although I will address two particular aspects of their posts.

Chad: Maybe the country stands for such things to you, but it really does not in most of the rest of the world. Also, I would bet a kidney that no poster here could recall, without the aid of a computer, either the month that the tsunami hit or the day in which the earthquake hit. Of course, such experimentation is moot with Google.

Silver: The fact that you think September 11th was an attack on anyone's "freedom" is more trivial and disrespectful to those that were killed than anything I could say or would say. The conflict is an adult one, and we do not need such Star Wars archetypal definitions, especially when they make no sense.

[Pete]

I wanna say the tsunami was the day after Christmas 2004, and the earthquake in Haiti was in mid January 2010. No Google for me. Those events are also in the past, but hey, they'll also come to play major roles in the geopolitical world... just like the Holocaust, 9/11 and Milosevic.

And are you really telling me that you care more about the earthquake in Haiti than the September 11th attacks? Yes, on the grand scale of bad shit that's happened, the earthquakes are far more devastating, in terms of human loss, however, and here I'll sound like the typical me-first American asshole, but that's just poor people getting poorer. Yes they need aid, and it sure as hell won't come in the amounts they need in the time they need, but what can you expect? People here are suffering from joblessness, and not everyone can make donations to help those people out.

You know what? It's unfortunate, and I felt for those people, so I donated some money to charities set up for the survivors and the rebuilding. However, I'm far more concerned with people trying to **** with my own personal liberties and my way of life. I shouldn't have to be stopped and searched to get onto a subway car. I shouldn't have to have my tax dollar going to support National Guard troops chilling in Grand Central Station.

9/11 changed the entire world. Sure it didn't affect you personally, but it exposed a LOT about America, it's allies and enemies. The earthquake and tsunami are both tragic and unfortunate events, but they were not man made acts of terror. I don't think Al Qaeda has a massive wave pool or an earthquake machine.


What it really boils down to is that we choose what we'd like to affect us, and we choose our crosses to bear. Maybe I am living in the past with 9/11, but that's my decision to remember the most horrific day in my city's history. Maybe it's something that the country remembers for the good that came out of it. On that day, for even just a few hours, we were all Americans; we weren't Democrat, Republican, gay, straight, black, white, or any other demographic. We were all just Americans coming together to help our own.

Hurricane Katrina evokes very similar feelings, though Katrina was another natural event... even though it was handled supremely poorly.

The tsunami and earthquake really don't affect us as Americans though. In reality, all it does is show the disparity of how great we have it, compared to the people of Indonesia and Haiti. You feel badly for the people who lost the very little that they had, and you wind up feeling like a douche if you don't donate. But that's really the bare bones of it. I won't lie, I felt better about myself for donating, not only because it was the right thing to do, but because I no longer felt so guilty for not doing anything. And THAT's what it boils down to.

[che]

I know not of what obscure music or foreign films you are referring to. I am regularly ridiculed for having a square taste in music, and I would imagine that about sixty percent of the films I watch are in English. However, I cannot in good faith stand by as you attempt to connect by vapid bitches to terrorist activity.

Citing the Holocaust or Milošević tell me you completely missed the point I attempted to convey. How else can I comprehend a response to a post about people living in the past than going back even further?

The 2004 tsunami and the Haitian earthquakes of this year each claimed over two hundred thousand lives, but nary a peep from you or other popinjays. You can prattle on about how it affected us more, but it really does not hold much water. Maybe you were dodging debris in Brooklyn, but it did not affect me, or the kid in Wisconsin, or the girl in Arkansas. The resources allocated toward the Haitian earthquake have been far more pressing than a terrorist event that occurred almost a decade ago. The geopolitical effects will continue to be felt in our hemisphere for some time, but the television has not told us what to think about it, nor have we received the proper self-aggrandizement, so we sweep it under the rug. And besides, the presence of posters from halfway around the world joining in such behavior destroys your idea that it happened to "us". In the inflated ego that is America, people throughout the world are supposed to remember where they were when 4000 people were killed in another senseless act of violence in a conflict that has been waging for sixty years.

Obama, as far as I know, was a State Senator at the time of the attacks. Any attempt to tie him to it is tangential, at best.

I assume such a response will serve as an appropriate rejoinder to DragonHeart, chad, and Silver, although I will address two particular aspects of their posts.

Chad: Maybe the country stands for such things to you, but it really does not in most of the rest of the world. Also, I would bet a kidney that no poster here could recall, without the aid of a computer, either the month that the tsunami hit or the day in which the earthquake hit. Of course, such experimentation is moot with Google.

Silver: The fact that you think September 11th was an attack on anyone's "freedom" is more trivial and disrespectful to those that were killed than anything I could say or would say. The conflict is an adult one, and we do not need such Star Wars archetypal definitions, especially when they make no sense.

This post may be your opinion, but it doesn't deny the fact that your first post here was ignorant as ****.

[Furore]

Silver: The fact that you think September 11th was an attack on anyone's "freedom" is more trivial and disrespectful to those that were killed than anything I could say or would say. The conflict is an adult one, and we do not need such Star Wars archetypal definitions, especially when they make no sense.

It makes perfect sense to me.
Little group of shitheads doesn't like country who doesn't conform to their oppressive beliefs, they attack it in a way that claims a lot of lives rather than just spreading their message peacefully for those who'd drink their kool-aid. Any who will use force like that to further their cause are attacking the freedoms of those they target.

I'm not really that big on Star Wars so I can't really comment on that last part, but I likely would have you beaten on the adult front (well at least in terms of full time job, stable lifestyle etc).

[Walter Sobchak]

It makes perfect sense to me.
Little group of shitheads doesn't like country who doesn't conform to their oppressive beliefs, they attack it in a way that claims a lot of lives rather than just spreading their message peacefully for those who'd drink their kool-aid. Any who will use force like that to further their cause are attacking the freedoms of those they target.

I'm not really that big on Star Wars so I can't really comment on that last part, but I likely would have you beaten on the adult front (well at least in terms of full time job, stable lifestyle etc).

I can only advise you to actually read a little bit about what has been going on in the world for the last half century. There is no reason you should believe such things with the technological access to information that we now have. American support of the regime in Saudi Arabia, the continued financial backing of Israel, and a myriad of other American campaigns in the Middle East have far more to do with it than the stupid slogan that Dubya came up with. I know you can never stop talking about this full time job of yours, and maybe in Australia the entire village celebrates when someone gets a full time job, but find time to read some scholarly work on Qutbism or similar ideologies. If you can remember where you were at the day of an attack, at least understand why the attack happened.

[GeLeHa]

Some small town in Texas. Either Kemah or Dayton.