MOG

I feel we are so far away from what those events sparked in us, that I'm constantly confused by all the hyperbole, politicking, corruption, greed and deceit. How can this go on in my country? How can the path to righting our wrongs take us from a seemingly clear A to B path instead to a completely different direction and agenda. I don't know how to describe this, but it's like going to sticking the number two in between the letter "A" and "B". It doesn't belong. Despite whatever your political affiliation, the evidence of the corruption from within this war has caused, the abuse of the system of checks and balances will take a very long time to fix, if it ever is addressed by weak kneed politicians of both parties. I mourn for the utter devastation we have caused in Iraqi and American lives. I wish there were a simple black and white answer to end it all, but it gets more complicated, more bureaucratic the longer it goes on and seems further and further from ever ending.

Amen, CBW. It infuriates me that this has somehow been named Patriots' Day. Can someone tell me what the fuck anything that happened six years ago today has to do with patriotism? I mean actual patriotism, not the if-you-question-us-you-are-not-a-real-American bullshit that has taken its place.

This is something quite different from the events of that day. Although no one I know died in the attacks, a small hole was blasted inside my heart - probably in all of ours - that's never going to close over entirely. When we lived in Manhattan, we lived two blocks from the WTC. Although we moved more than a decade before the attacks, that was still our neighborhood. Watching the towers go down on TV was like watching a friend die. One of my close friends was teaching at a community college six or seven blocks away; as his class was being evacuated, he was close enough to the towers to see the people jumping out. He still has nightmares about it. September 11 was one of the ugliest, most painful days in our nation's history, and if there is any good news to come from it, it's that we have survived it and gotten most of our hope back. Patriotism had nothing to do with it.

Not to mention that Katrina proved how unprepared we are today for something as large or on a larger scale, that all this talk of security of our homeland feels like me to be double talk while people take our money meant for improvement and run away. As the wise Mr. Benjamin Franklin said "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both".

All I know is this is a hard day for me. Still haven't been to the site. Can't do it - I tried when I was there in June - just wasn't ready - 6 years later & I can't go there.

I may be a Philly girl - but I lived in NYC when I was 17 while attending summer classes in the city - so for me - NYC is my home away from home - I consider myself a New Yorker - learned how to cross streets with conviction that summer ;)

Infuriated is a good word to describe how I feel about the corruption & greed & true evil that we have witnessed before, during & after the attacks.

The idea that I am supposed to call a day that I mourn - Patriots' Day - I find that unfathomable. But that is how I feel about the magnetized ribbons - the bullshit mentality that a magnet or a flag shows your support... I don't think I will ever get it.

I didn't lose anyone on that day - I haven't known anyone personally who has died in the years since the attacks of Sept. 11th. Does that matter - NOPE - I still dread this day each & every year. It's become my generation's "JFK's been shot". I haven't talked with a person since who didn't know exactly where they were when they found out about the attacks on that day.

I can remember walking back from the site cafeteria - my best friend & I commenting on how _PERFECT_ that day was - never had there been a more beautiful day in my memory & Deb agreed. We passed by a friend's cubicle in time to see the next plane hit. & the silence in the air for the next days without any airplanes flying overhead - seemed the end of the world. I also remember having to order _Freedom Fries_ & wanting to scream that once again - IT'S THE WRONG MESSAGE - it's not about throwing our hate elsewhere... it's about learning/trying NOT TO HATE.

Yes, we're healing; yes, we have hope; & hopefully we as a nation aren't as "terror-ified" as we were in the time directly after Sept 11 2001. I would ask the "powers that be" not to tie another ribbon around this in calling it Patriots' Day - but that request would fall on deaf ears.

I still hope for a day when we don't automatically assume terrorism everytime something catastrophic happens.

Rain and the heavy atmosphere we are getting seems woefully appropriate for today.

I am upset by the fact we aren't allowed closure. There is a constant and terribly disingenuous evocation of Sept. 11 from anyone who wants to incite fear or illicit a response in favor of aggressive defence/offence.

Yes - the weather is totally fitting. Pressure on the head & heart indeed.

Torrential right now here in Malvern.

I also hate the "color scale" friggin yellow/orange/red - please - more fear is NOT what we need.

good discussion guys

I think the nation has gone from thinking "It can't happen here" (apologies to Zappa) before 9/11 to "It can't happen again" 6 years later. The shortsightedness of thinking radical Islam will go away if we're nice is foolishness. Hey, Osama told us a couple of days ago how to make him go away - just give up capitalism and convert to Islam. I just don't understand the concern for our "loss of liberties". What, you think the government wants to listen in on your phone calls and review your library history? You're willing to handcuff the people trying to protect us because of chicken littles? We have a real, self-announced enemy who constantly tells us over and over what they intend to do, but instead Bush is the enemy. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and, when it does, I imagine that will get blamed on us as well, not the murderous fanatics who do the deed.

Bush is not the enemy but he is a scum freaking bag and Cheney is one of the worst people to ever grace the national political scene.at least nixon was only a domestic terror and hack who knew he was a freak; these guys geniunely think they are righteous folks doing good for the world. the end is near

Right On, dermahrk! I'm so sick of hearing how our civil rights are being trampled! That is a bogus and baseless charge. Unlike some, I WANT someone monitering phone calls and money trails and activities of known or suspected terrorists. I want us to dump politicaly correct dogma. You're right contrabandwidth, the trampling of our rights, the series of checks and balances so carefully crafted are being shredded at every turn. From thought control (hate crimes legislation) to curbs on free speech (McCain-Fiengold) to the menacing growth of theNANNY STATE, we are all Gullivers being tied down by the morally bankrupt and intellectually supine. None of the above was foisted on us by the present admin. Ask an activist why they don't want any state to have a popular vote on the issue of ...(pick one)...Gay Marraige, abortion, and a whole list of other issues which they push. They want to end-run the process and get through adjudication what they cannot attain through legislation.

I feel its like my generations "Do you know where you were when Kennedy got shot." I was teaching and someone came in and asked if I had seen what had happened. I turned on the tv and 10 seconds later the second plane hit. I was awestruck, and the television stayed on the rest of the day. I got some complaints from parents, but I stood my decision and in time they knew it was a good thing. I wanted to express to the students that their life from that point on would never be the same, and as it stands it looks like that will be true

Damn, dharmachris . . . that was perfect. Thank you for summing up what I didn't know how to say.

I was still at my old job, teaching English to non-native speakers. I had two Japanese students in my truck and we were driving to school, listening to Bob and Tom when Tom made the announcement. I got to the school as fast as I was so I could watch the news, and shortly after the second plane hit realized there was no way I could teach anything that day, so I took everyone home.

I can't pretend to say what is the right course of action in the wake of such events, but I know that for the most part we have strayed from whatever the "right" course may be. What seemed to me to be a justifiable response quickly escalated into one man's agenda being pushed, getting us involved in places where we didn't need to be. I think in the end we were lied to, manipulated, and made to feel like any objection we had to what was happening made us Bad Americans, under that most insidious of arguments: "Well, if you don't have anything to hide you shouldn't mind ous snooping around."

Well, sir, I have nothing to hide, and yet I mind it very damn much.

Osama is still alive. Saddam is dead. Proof for both brought to us by the internet. I forget, which one planned the attacks? (And why throw red meat/red herrings of gay rights and abortion on this day?)

I don't mind someone listening to phone conversations of suspected terrorists inside or outside the US. I mind that the Bush/Cheney Axis felt it was OK to bypass a court proceeding that never denied a warrant anyhow. America can do better. We stand for something higher than that.

I don't mind terrorists being imprisoned at Gitmo. I do mind the lack of due process that would truly show the world we are a nation of laws, and when the guy is found guilty, execute them or imprison them for life. We can do better to honor the people killed on 9/11.

Again, I ask, why is Osama still alive, making videos, and we have a wrecked country, wrecked at our instigation, with no safe path out of the morass. And that country HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11??!! No safety for the Iraqis, none for our country. Are we safer today? I don't feel safer.

And I still recall those impossible blue skies, the perfect weather of the day, and how, as I went around to the schools, I couldn't help but think of my mom's passing a year before, on Sep 17, on an equally cloudless impossibly blue sky day, and now, unfortunately, how the events seem wrapped together. And then I recall sitting in an elementary school classroom about a week later, and hearing fighter jets fly at low altitude above us, and everyone in the room paused, looking out the window, seeing the three fighter jets overhead, wondering. But no new announcement was made, no mass email sent, no TV turned on. And then that weekend, driving to my Army Reserve unit for drill, and arriving to see the usually open gate now closed and locked, manned by two other soldiers, pistols on their hips. Pistols, I thought, we don't even have our own rifles and field gear, where did they get 9mms? (I served in a medical training unit.) The world was turned upside down. And unlike in the 18th century when the band played that song and George Washington walked by, we only had Dubya and Cheney, who are at best incompetent, and at worst liars, imperialists, and demagogues with their hands on the most awesome military in the history of the planet, but like small children, have wasted their opportunity and turned the sandbox into destruction.

America can do better. May God have mercy on the lost and fallen, and on us for being so blind.

Okay, that's weird . . . my response to you dharmachris is showing up BEFORE your comment. Look above for kudos.

Got it Groon, and I agree-- I do mind too. Course now I will be paranoid. !

RK-- what grades were the kids? Not sure I agree with replaying the tv all day, but I'm in a different place. I was in a couple schools that day, and all did it differently. The worst was the principal making a mass announcement, the best was the principal emailing all teachers, then going to each class to tell them to read the email. No good way to convey that info, especially to the younger kids.

6th grade, and I felt with the kids a lot had seen worse. I wanted to be there for them to answer the questions of why, and what now. I knew a lot of their parents would not care to answer such questions, one of the "good" things about teaching in an inner city school. I was careful and made sure not to scare the children when discussing the events. I saw it as a teaching moment, one that I knew may never come along again. As it turned out we learned a lot on that day, and a lot of the kids still remember everything that was said years later.

Sounds like it worked out. Our older kids watched more of it at the high school and in some middle school classes. We had a lot of parents picking kids up, with a decent number of those being those with spouses working in NYC or north Jersey, which is only a 90 min train ride away.

Wow, I mean WOW! Very real political discourse on MOG. If you all don't mind I like to offer my 2 cents.

It seems that one thing 9/11 has done for us is divided us (as a nation) more and solidified our beliefs in one value set or another. On the home front the "Culture Wars" have more and more taken on the pallor of the "Crusades" from the Middle Ages and instead of liberating Jerusalem from the Saracens, we are doing God's work by liberating oil fields in the Middle East. We have released the djinni by removing the buffer of Sunni controlled Iraq in favor of Shia controlled Iran. What gives?

My politics is a matter of public record on Mog. I vote Libertarian when I can and Rep/Dem in about a 60/40 split respectively.

While I agree with many of the things you good folks laid down here I would like to highlight a few points.

I mean actual patriotism, not the if-you-question-us-you-are-not-a-real-American bullshit that has taken its place.

Bill, I couldn't agree more. Patriots Day is a flag to rally behind. Something to whip up the fervor of American labor and military to jumpstart the old war machine. To me Patriotism means offering life and limb in defence of your country. Being a vet this definition has seen me through standing long mine watches. It's true I joined for the college money but I left a better and more concerned citizen. Time in the service puts many of these abstract ideals in to better focus.

I feel we are so far away from what those events sparked in us, that I’m constantly confused by all the hyperbole, politicking, corruption, greed and deceit. How can this go on in my country? How can the path to righting our wrongs take us from a seemingly clear A to B path instead to a completely different direction and agenda.

Tyler, this is why your are one of my favorite Moggers. I share your frustration. I would like to add "Why doesn't anyone else see what I see?"

I also remember having to order Freedom Fries & wanting to scream that once again – IT’S THE WRONG MESSAGE – it’s not about throwing our hate elsewhere… it’s about learning/trying NOT TO HATE .

Liz, Thank you for your honest clarity. Isn't THAT the Christian message? I will save this for another post about conservative thinking and hypocrisy. This brings me back to what I said about the Crusades. Pope Urban (from the 1st sortie) effectively change the Commandment from "Thou shall not murder" to "Thou shall not murder other Christians" giving the whole enterprise God's seal of approval.

I just don’t understand the concern for our “loss of liberties”.

Mark, I cannot believe you said that. Our liberties as outlined in the Constitution protect us from a very real threat, and that is a tyrannical government. Right now the greatest foe to "our Freedoms" is not Islam, it is American more specifically the government.

From thought control (hate crimes legislation) to curbs on free speech (McCain-Fiengold) to the menacing growth of theNANNY STATE , we are all Gullivers being tied down by the morally bankrupt and intellectually supine. None of the above was foisted on us by the present admin.

deadman - I disagree with a passion. Thought control (isn't using gay marriage as draw to the polls thought control?), Bush was the one to institute "Free Speech" zones. I thought the whole damn country was a free speech zone. As for "morally bankrupt and intellectually supine" I thought that was the platform of the Republican ticket for 2000 and 2004. They want to end-run the process and get through adjudication what they cannot attain through legislation. What a great fucking way to describe the legal bullshit surrounding the prisoners at Gitmo.

deadman, your peeing on your own feet.

I can’t pretend to say what is the right course of action in the wake of such events, but I know that for the most part we have strayed from whatever the “right” course may be. What seemed to me to be a justifiable response quickly escalated into one man’s agenda being pushed, getting us involved in places where we didn’t need to be. I think in the end we were lied to, manipulated, and made to feel like any objection we had to what was happening made us Bad Americans, under that most insidious of arguments: “Well, if you don’t have anything to hide you shouldn’t mind us snooping around.”

Well, sir, I have nothing to hide, and yet I mind it very damn much.

Groon - You are not alone.

Chris - I can't tell you why your comment made me lose it. Probably because I feel in large part the same. I am also with Groon when he said Thank you.

I wanted to express to the students that their life from that point on would never be the same, and as it stands it looks like that will be true

Coop, I understand your thoughts. Sadly you were right.

That's all I got right now. I will see you on the flip side of 9/11.

My only question is:What the hell does Iraq have to do with 9/11?

I'm glad it rained today. I hate when it is sunny on 9/11. I still shudder when I look at a digital clock and it is 9:11. Why couldn't it be 9:12?

My wife and I we're driving into Manhattan that morning after voting in a primary election. She was going to the ob/gyn about pregnancy (later a miscarraige), I was going in to visit the Borders and Sam Goody stores at the World Trade Center to do some field marketing (as was my wont in 2001). Needless to say I never made it in to the city. The tunnels and bridges we're closed when I was on the BQE and I could see the fire from there. For whatever reason I forgot my pull out radio, so I didn't know why there was a fire at the WTC. When my wife and I turned back for home and stopped for a bagel, I heard the news. I proceeded to go home and check out the mess on TV for 48 hours straight. As soon as I knew it was Osama, I knew Afghanistan was toast, but that operation isn't even done yet, and what did we gain from that attack? Not closure, not for me anyway.. I've heard the reasons why we attacked Iraq and I still don't get it or, at best, it is an incredible risk for a president to take, on a radical theory for bringing democracy to the Middle East (even though that wasn't how the war was sold).

I hate 9/11..

Here's what I wrote on 9/11/2002

On 9/11 I was in my office talking to John Hartman about the reasons we couldn't win a war against an ideology when Mike Ackerman came by and said, "Did you guys hear? A plane just flew into the World Trade Center." After that we were glued to the TV watching as reports came in about the Pentagon and Shanksville and the 2nd Tower. In tears I went home and talked to my wife. All I could think about was something that happened in boot camp. At the end of our time in Orlando our company commander got us to gather around the flag of the US and was yelling "touch the flag, touch the flag." I said to my wife that evening "Time to touch the Flag". It used to be a corny joke, but at that time it seemed to be the right thing to do.

9/11 happened while I was in the midst of a serious relationship with a young Muslim man. After the initial shock faded, my thoughts turned to what might happen to my beloved. I thought of many horrible things, including violence against anyone or anything deemed too foreign. While that didn't exactly happen here, some of my thoughts did come to pass - some people refused to work with him, and he encountered prejudice in seemingly insignificant places like a grocery store. He had such an idealistic view of America, and I watched that view disintegrate. That was hard.

When my mother's family, immigrant Jews, came to this country, they thought they were escaping not only Hitler, but anti-semitism, in general. I wonder how many people come to this country with dreams, only to find out differently.

I don't think we've come very far at all.

I thought of many horrible things, including violence against anyone or anything deemed too foreign. While that didn’t exactly happen here, some of my thoughts did come to pass – some people refused to work with him, and he encountered prejudice in seemingly insignificant places like a grocery store. He had such an idealistic view of America, and I watched that view disintegrate. That was hard.

carmen, this is a perspective I didn't think I would see when I posted this topic.

Thank you. Thank you for shedding some light on the other side of the coin.

Excellent thread and posts. It is Sep 12.

Your right Chris. It's a new day.

This must be the most thoughtful MOG post ever.

I just don’t understand the concern for our “loss of liberties”.

Mark, I cannot believe you said that. Our liberties as outlined in the Constitution protect us from a very real threat, and that is a tyrannical government. Right now the greatest foe to “our Freedoms” is not Islam, it is American more specifically the government.

Spoken in vague generalities. Never addressed the concerns mentioned, dermahrk, so I gues you're wrong because I am asserts it.

deadman – I disagree with a passion. Thought control (isn’t using gay marriage as draw to the polls thought control?), Bush was the one to institute “Free Speech” zones. I thought the whole damn country was a free speech zone. As for “morally bankrupt and intellectually supine” I thought that was the platform of the Republican ticket for 2000 and 2004. Again, no substance, you disagree, that much is apparent, but your statement isn't coherent enough to respond to. A direct question to you sir, "what civil liberties have you lost to the Patriot Act.?" And try to remain civil, I don't piss on my feet.

Deadman, I am glad you came back to comment.

I was fairly emotional and really ... I was toiling over the fact I felt I had to apologize to you for the harsh language. Is it just the Patriot act you want to discuss? Or the fact that our government ( and not just this admin mind you.) is chipping away at the articles we as Americans buy into when we pay our taxes.

As for Mark being wrong ….. Well I have to agree with him when he said.

The shortsightedness of thinking radical Islam will go away if we’re nice is foolishness.

I just don’t have a solution for the bigger problem. I feel we dropped the ball when we stopped short in Afganistan.

You opinions are valid as are mine. I wasn’t going for specifics. But if you want a discussion I invite you to comment on any post I make regarding the Constitution.

I will be putting something up soon (probably within hours now.) I will add you to my favorites so I don’t miss your posts on these seriously important topics.

I_AM, Yes I think we may have overheated a bit in this thread, but I for one feel we perform a small service to our fellow MOGs when we engage them in thought provoking discussions. I know there are some who want no part of such things on the MOG, and generally I try to respect that. But when these things pop up I like to think we jog a few folks into considering other view points.

On that Jeff, I couldn't agree with you more. Excellent sentiment.

It's a trifucktup!

9/10 is my Anti-versary (marriage to 1st wife) 9/11 worst attack on American soil evarrr 9/12 my sister was struck and killed by a car

These all happened on different year-dates. But that is just the way I organize it in my head.

What a shitty 72 hours. How do you deal Eric.