Nine Eleven Decade
 

Well, we already have the twin towers thread, but this one’s about something more.

:eek: What ten years have wrought on this nation and this earth as a result of the events of September 11, 2001, direct or indirect, real or imagined.



I remember being pretty horrified that day, but I don’t recall thinking all too much about the repercussions - except perhaps that someone or other had just unleashed an unfortunate barrelful of WhoopA$$ on the world.

That part has come true in ways so much more deplorable than the events of 9/11 themselves, imo. Ten long years and counting of horrific war. Pfft, we call it “war,” but that demeans the word and makes it worthless. Perhaps not so much do as the “War on Drugs” or even Nine-Eleven’s offspring the “War on Terror.” But to call what America is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan “war” is laughable. War had traditionally meant a series of battles between armed forces, and relatively equally-matched armed forces at that (lest there be but one or two such battles). There are no armed forces fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan against the United States or NATO. What we are doing there is killing brown people. By the hundreds of thousands. Dwarfing anything done by the nefarious plotters of 9/11. And it’s no small comfort to the millions of loved ones to those hundreds of thousands that the ragtag bunch of insurgents and terrorists who can’t possibly form an armed force to rival the U.S. military machine have nonetheless kept it at bay and at battle for 10 years while the effort inexorably bankrupts the United States.

I’m not sure many members of al Queda or even bin Laden considered the primary purpose of the 9/11 attacks to be a nation-crushing economic depletion - but certainly some of the ex-Mujahideen of Afghanistan who formed the core of al Queda understood all too well how the U.S. crushed the Soviet Union through military brinksmanship bankruptcy, and how Russia’s unfortunate occupation of their Afghanistan hastened that bankruptcy in great measure.


But even if this result was inadvertent, it’s happened. 10 years of blood and treasure in amounts unparalleled and unfathomable.

Perhaps 9/11 did not cause any elements that led to this country’s and the world’s current financial crises, but certainly America would be in a better position to deal with the economy of the early 21st Century had it not spent and borrowed for wars in the amount of $3.7 trillion (and counting).




Let’s see, what else? Oh, surely America was doing nasty business all over the world well before 9/11 - but now it’s all in the open, and done with recklessness and presumably-licensed abandon.

Kidnapping and “renditioning” of suspects who would never qualify for a night in a U.S. jail to foreign security forces for state-sanctioned torture. Waterboarding performed by our own people, in contravention of Geneva Convention agreements and all heretofore definitions of torture. Guantanamo. Abu-Graib.

The Patriot Act just recently renewed. Practically all limits on privacy abuse and illegal search and seizure wiped away as if they weren’t constitutionally guaranteed. Blackwater. Halliburton. Weapons of Mass Destruction lied about, never found, foisted for purposes of plunder, pillage and killing hundreds of thousands of brown people.

Predator Drones. Muslim-bashing. Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson/Scooter Libby.

Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Alberto Gonzales. I could go on and on.


But it makes me sick to do so. As horrifying as the events of 9/11 were, I think what has happened to our nation, and what our nation has foisted on the world, is far more horrifying. It’s been ten years, so I think we’re reaching some sort of equilibrium. But we live in much more of a police state than when we started, and that’s not going away any time soon. Neither is, I guess, perpetual war - or, ya know, killing of brown people.

I don’t like what’s happened since 9/11, much of it in reaction to or capitalizing on 9/11. The crashing of airliners full of people into skyscrapers full of people may just have turned out to be some of the most innocent and harmless parts of the whole sordid, sickening affair.


I certainly never imagined on that day ten years ago that the repercussions would be so terrible or last so long. And I certainly never thought for an instant that day that I was not seeing the worst of it. That so much worse was yet to come.



Personally, I’ve had one of the best decades of my life. I’ve largely been unaffected by any of the awful echoes of nine eleven. But it saddens me so much, as ten years is clicked off, that the events of that day changed our country and our world so much for the worse, and maybe forever.

Personally, while looking for something specific I have ended up reading all of the threads started at MousePad on 9/11 and the couple days after. It is interesting to see the raw reactions again, some long forgotten names (Lacrosse Boy!), and just the odds and ends of what comes up in a niche focused community.

This first hand account from the only NYC member we knew of, who watched it from her apartment window:

Interesting to see CP noting the new security bag checks and that they seemed nice. Marla (aka HBTiggerFan) warning us all that an email that 9/11 was predicted by Nostradamus is a hoax, etc. Being reminded that even I wasn't so curmudgeonly to publicly resist the idea of using flags as avatars (though privately I continued to think using the flag as a display of anything meaningful to be silly at best). The behind-the-scenes discussion of how MousePlanet should cover it.

I'd completely forgotten about the moment of silence (after emptying all rides, stores, and offices) and parkwide playing of God Bless America at the park the next day.

Well Pooh.

Hmmm...it's in the Lounge so if you're logged in I thought you should be able to access it (unless there are other rules I don't know/remember).

I can see it.

Oh noes, I must have forgotten my mousepad login info. Oh well.

I wasn't in the Park that day, but I'll never forget them closing the Sleeping Beauty Walk-thru in the middle of mouse adventure on the day we started bombing Afghanistan roughly a month after nine eleven. There was a quest that took you thru the walk-thru and - like many mouse adventure unplanned glitches - we "wasted" time on that, while every team ended up getting automatic credit for the quest since it became un-doable mid-game. Heheh, not fair - but it was the last time we'd see the inside of the castle for about 8 years, and the very last time we'd see the hokey '70's version of the walk-thru.


Oh, also, thanks to the uber-patrioticness flooding the soul of the nation that year, Disneyland's 2002 Fourth of July fireworks were the Best Fireworks Show Ever in the History of Mankind.





Back more on track, but following this tangent a bit - - - We STILL have the absolutely useless Disneyland Bag Check to slow down and uglify our entry to the theme park area of the Resort. Pfft, I smuggle contraband into the Park on a regular basis, and could easily bring in a gun, a vial of anthrax, or even a small bomb with no effort. Stupid, lame, Nine-Eleven nonsense still with us.


Heheh, I guess it's the only part I personally deal with, since I'm not (yet) a terror suspect or anything like that - - and I doubt the government knows any more about me than facebook does. But I'm a privileged white boy living in Southern California. I think there's lots of people still living with the repercussions of nine eleven, and ten years is enough. Let's stop already! Sheesh.

That was before I had joined MP, still only hearing things about it through CP.

I do recall being slightly weirded out looking over her shoulder and seeing all of the flag avatars.

Interesting. It does show me as logged in, but I can't post and the lounge is marked private. I guess that's what happens when you don't log in for a few years.

EDITED to add: Ahhh! Mystery solved. I changed emails quite some time ago and was put on hold for having a bad email address. That's updated and now I can view the thread.

On a positive note this corresponds closely with the time I started meeting all of you personally. I still fondly remember those days of fear right after and how empty that made the parks for us to play in.

But yeah, the culture of fear that spawned and is still with us in silly security checks and annoying invasions of privacy makes me think the terrorists were at least successful in defeating that aspect of the American ideal. I also remember how much the rest of the world loved us in those moments after and how quickly we squandered all that good will.