September 11: Everlasting be their memory.

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Six years ago, after the attacks, a Humvee rolled up to my apartment building, which was seven blocks from the White House; we were not allowed to leave, for our own safety.

Six years ago, we entered an age of terror which we are also not allowed to leave, ostensibly for our own safety.

Six years ago, 3,000 innocents boarded a plane or went to work, as if it were any ordinary day; they never returned home.

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At 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane struck the North Tower, a bell was sounded, as it has for six years now, and the gathered masses bowed their heads. [NYT]

Let this be a space for remembrance, for respect and for grieving, if you need. Everyone who reads this blog lost something six years ago, even if they didn’t “directly” lose someone in New York, D.C. or Pennsylvania; this space is for your thoughts, on this appositely grim day.

68 thoughts on “September 11: Everlasting be their memory.”

  1. Well, the other thing that has been pointed out countless times is that numerous places in the 3rd world experience mini 9/11s almost daily- Lebanon, the West Bank, various places in Africa… We experienced a terrible shock, learned about blowback, and then went out and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, not to mention all tje domestic crap that has been going on. Yup, does it for me. And to think I was getting nostalgic for Argentina in the time of the Dirty War…

  2. Unlike many other posters here who chose to bash the United States, yet still chose to live there.

    My anger has someone with brown skin tone is toward the 19 gutless cowards who commited that act that day and there actions will forever have made life harder for many brown skined people in western countries the last 6 years.

    But one thing that amazed me was that unlike in India where you had 3000 sikh’s lose there life in Nov of 1984 and other events like the Gurjati riots, that you never saw the anger anywhere near that in the United States other then the loss of the one Sikh man in Arizona a few days later. But for the most part Americans show much more tolerance then in other parts of the world. You could only image if an event like this took place in Muslim country, what the reaction would have been there.

    One thing more that really bothered that day was the seen in the West Bank that day with the way the Palestinans that day were celebrated. To this day that just makes me beyond sick.

  3. I was in tenth grade when 9/11 happened. I remembered rumors were going around my school that Palestinians did it. A totally baseless rumor.

    Teachers and staff were stationed around all the doors to watch out for suspicious activity. I was a bit weired out by that because I didn’t think a town of 9,000 people in Illinois was a prime target for terrorists.

  4. @ 52,

    Unlike many other posters here who chose to bash the United States, yet still chose to live there

    dissent and informed criticism has nothing to do with place of living. You can live anywhere and have the right to criticize anybody i.e freedom of speech and pillar of democracy.

    But for the most part Americans show much more tolerance then in other parts of the world

    by and large you are probably right about America being more tolerant than most other countries/cultures.

  5. walking a mile in another’s Bata chappals

    before insulting someone, i always walk a mile in thier shoes. That way, when they get mad at me, im a mile away and have their shoes.

  6. One thing more that really bothered that day was the seen in the West Bank that day with the way the Palestinans that day were celebrated. To this day that just makes me beyond sick.

    What makes me even more sick is that the Palestinians that want running water, and food for their families. Ridiculous. Also, that they didn’t just sit by idle when their land was wrested away from them by the west.

  7. But one thing that amazed me was that unlike in India where you had 3000 sikh’s lose there life in Nov of 1984 and other events like the Gurjati riots, that you never saw the anger anywhere near that in the United States other then the loss of the one Sikh man in Arizona a few days later.

    as zazou mentions @ 51 the reason is the mini 9/11 quite regularly in many parts of the world. therefore people have become numb. america had never experienced like this before in the civilian arena and therefore the over-reaction post 9/11 ?

  8. E-fucking-nough about the Palestinians:

    Annette Krüger Spitta of ARD’s (German public broadcasting) TV magazine Panorama claimed that while the footage was indeed correctly dated, reporters may have partly staged one of the scenes and that viewers should keep some distance from what is spread by journalists on images of conflict. The German weekly Der Spiegel repeated this news report and noted about the mistaken circulation that the footage was from 1991.[15]
    The Panorama report from September 20, 2001 has Medium Professor Martin Löffelholz explaining that in the images you see jubilant Palestinian children and several adults but it is impossible to know if they are necessarily pleased about the attack reports; and he does not assume this and ignores the way it has been reported.
    Krüger Spitta notes that inspection of the untelecasted complete tape shows the street around the celebration is quiet and a man in a white T-shirt is noticeable for inciting the children and is fetching new people again and again. The woman who is remembered for her cheering (e.g. Nowel Abdel Fatah[11]) stated afterwards that she was offered cake if she celebrates on camera, and that she was frightened when she saw the pictures on television and that she never expected it would be noticed to the USA.
    Krüger Spitta expresses that it is impossible to know if these images — which were wildly sent worldwide under the title: Palestinians celebrate in Jerusalem — are truth or a production and that, as Proffesor Löffelholz says, in crises and war situations a due portion of distance should be kept from what is spread by journalists who sometime make errors.[wiki]

    I said to keep it respectful. And on topic.

  9. Upon my sister bursting into tears, her friend took the guys around the corner and slammed their faces in.

    Not sure that was the most ideal response, particularly given the surrounding events, but I do admire him standing up for your sister.

  11. “don’t think I’d last through the documentary you saw, Rudie”

    It was hard, the Journalist at one point was trying to find out who the man was, a women who MAY have been the sister of the man. She sort of hit home when she said something like, she hopes he is not trying to find who the man was, but we find out who are we as Americans, and Really dealing with the tragic event.

  12. What else do I remember? The sneering comment from a white college kid “hey where have you hidden bin laden?” as I walked down a street with a group of desi friends, two of whom where wearing salwar kameez.

    KB, sorry to hear this. I’ve heard many similar stories from friends and I’m always grateful that I never experienced anything that blatant post 9/11.

  13. Shalu and Puliogre: I agree with you that her friend’s actions weren’t the most appropriate. A few weeks later when my sister had collected herself again she met with the University President about the incident. She wanted to see how she could help to teach the pretty rural campus about diversity etc., so he appointed her to his diversity counsel and they had a very successful year with many well-attended events.

    Being the eternally optimistic person that I am, I always admire when we can take something seemingly negative and turn it into something positive. I guess what continues to trouble me so much about 9/11 is that it was a tragedy but we as a country didn’t turn the tragedy into something positive. For example, I was overwhelmed by the international outcry that we received immediately following the tragedy. Unfortunately we as a country didn’t use that international condemnation of the attacks to work together to fight terrorism. When will we learn that we are not an island and that we cannot tackle these huge problems unilaterally? All of that international goodwill was completely squandered by this administration and it will take many administrations and some kick-ass diplomacy to get that back.

  14. Sorry, Anna- one more comment on the Palestinians- a) teh footage was considered suspect by many news people that I know from the getgo, b) contrary to popular opinion based in part on the official Israeli history over te last 50+ years, Palestinians did not just give up their land. While some legally sold it, there was resistance in many villages to armed appropriateion. The Hagannah were intimately involved in massacres such as Deir Rassin and Tantura and 1,000’s were forcibly expelled. For more on this, consult the New Historians Ilan Pape, Teddy Katz and others whose work is based on previously classified documents and interviews with eyewitnesses.

    On a slightly different note: a poem by Ferlenghetti read on Amy Goodman’s show:

                PITY THE NATION
         Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
         and whose shepherds mislead them.

         Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,

    whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

             Pity the nation that raises not its

    voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.

             Pity the nation that knows no other

    language but its own and no other culture but its own.

             Pity the nation whose breath is money
         and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

         Pity the nation--oh, pity the people who

    allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away.

             My country, tears of thee, sweet land of

    liberty.

  15. My roommate woke me up Tuesday morning with three words: “We’re being attacked.” He had the TV on and the image of the first explosion was being played over and over. The second plane struck, and the newscasters sounded panicked. The first thought I had was that brown people (Middle-Eastern exchange students, my family, anyone vaguely non-white) were in trouble. They would come after us. I pushed this thought to the back of my mind and went to class, tried to continue life as normal in a small, college town in rural Missouri. When I came home, someone had written “Fuck Palestine” on their door. In the months that followed, my brother was attacked twice, my car was pelted with rocks, and an unfortunately named cafe (Osama’s–no relation) ‘mysteriously’ burned down. Day after day the news carries reports of South Asians being attacked by both police and civilians, being viewed with suspicion, being denied entry into our country.

    It is an echo of another infamous event 60+ years ago. While both attacks on American soil were tragic and resulted in casualties in the thousands (2,350 for Pearl Harbor, 3,000 for Sept. 11), it’s also important to remember the equally tragic aftermath. In the first case, the U.S. knee-jerk response resulted in the slaughter of 70,000 civilians, and countless more deaths from cancer and radiation-related illnesses. Japanese-American families who were rounded up for internment, and denied their most fundamental constitutional rights.
    Now in Iraq (not to mention the all-but-forgotten war in Afghanistan) the same slaughter is happening on a similarly disproportionate scale (conservative estimates put the Iraqi death toll at 71,800). Human beings from around the world have been illegally and indefinitely detained in Guantanamo, and nothing has been done. It makes me wonder how many Iraqi (or Afghani, or Indian, or Pakistani, etc.) lives will have to end before we can cancel this ridiculous debt? And for what? For the memory of 9-11.

    I know this is a day late, but I had to post something.

  16. And for what? For the memory of 9-11

    I don’t think it’s fair to link this with the “memory” of 9/11, if we are using “memory” the way I did in the title. I doubt that 3,000 Americans would have wanted us to alienate the world, chip away at our rights here at home and fight this war in their names. Every injustice you listed is worsened by the inexcusable fact that certain people fling “twin towers” and “9/11” about as justification for them. If I were a family member of one of the lost, I’d be livid that my family’s tragedy was being exploited…for this.

    Iraq has nothing to do with the twin towers. The debt we are paying is the interest on Bush Sr.’s grudge, if anything.

  18. A line from the Project for the New American Century, a neocon document written before 9/11:

    Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor

    Signatories included:

    Cheney Wolfowitz Rumsfeld Jeb Bush Scooter Libby Zalmay Khalilzad (Bush envoy to Afghanistan, advisor to unocal)