Overall, I think the attack worked more than al-Qaeda planned it to. They got their 2000+ lives, and as an added bonus, they got a large number of people to turn against their president because they can't understand they difference between the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
Actually I'm afraid the attack worked better for Al-Quaida than they could have ever hoped for. There was the huge chance after 9/11 because for a while almost the whole world stood behind the US and had some effort been taken at that moment to not just kill terrorists but also attack the causes for terrorism rather than starting a totally unrelated war in Iraq the world might look a bit better today. The way things stand the rift between the western and the eastern world has become deeper than it has been for a very long time and as a consequence of the crimes committed and the ideals betrayed there are flocks of new recruits to the ranks of the terrorists. People who would have never turned into terrorists had it not been for some of the actions taken after 9/11.
Anyway, I understand this thread to be mainly about our memories to that fateful day. Therefore I strongly suggest to keep our political views on it for a different thread and instead make this one a thread for our memory to the events.
I remember some things about the time preceding 9/11 like the murdering of Ahmad Shah Massoud (leader of the "Northern Alliance" in Afghanistan two days before the attack, the arrest of the members of the aid organization members "shelter now" in August (who seemed to be held like hostages rather than for an actual reason). The destruction of the Buddha Statues by the Taleban in the spring of that year, and in late August 2001 the Tampa affair, where the Australian government refused to permit a boat with 430 refugees, most of whom were from Afghanistan, to land in Australia. I remember that one in particular because just a few days before the attack I wrote an email to the first other LBT fan I ever met (she is the same one to whom I was writing when the news of the attack came in and she is from Australia) saying something to the effect that I too would try to leave if I was in Afghanistan.
Another thing I remember from the time preceding the attacks was the utter horror we felt about the news of suicide attacks during the second intifada in Israel. The idea of so many people blowing up themselves in order to kill some random other people was just something beyond our comprehension. In later years we almost stopped taking notice when the reports of the newest suicide attacks (which came on daily basis) with the number of victims came in :unsure:
In spite of all this I remember a statement from a fellow student of mine (not a friend mind you) who said (I think it was less than a month before 9/11) that he was "bored" and that there ought to be "some real war" so there would be something "interesting" in the news again. I wonder if he remembered the statement after the attacks.
As for me I have been a little "haunted" by a statement which I gave during a school trip in summer 1999. I was talking with a cousin of mine (who was in the same class as I was) about terrorism and I said something to the effect that terrorists were incompetent (I probably used a term more literally translated as "stupid"). Referring to the 1993 attack on the WTC I said something to the effect that if they took so much effort one would expect them to bring the entire building down. You can imagine that this statement of a then 14 year old gave me something to chew on came 9/11
Another thing I remember of that fatal Tuesday was my concern when I heard about a plane nearby Harrisburg in Pennsylvania. The reference was of course to Flight 93 which crashed near Shanksville. When they mentioned Harrisburg in the news a real shiver ran down my spine for I was thinking about what would happen if they stirred a plane into the nuclear power plant (if that had been committed I'm afraid 9/11 as we know it would in spite of all its horrors look small by comparison)!
One of the eeriest thing however was the day after, September 12th. I'm going to tell more about it, but in another message. I am really interested in everybody's recollections of September 11th and would really like to hear from you. I beg everybody for a moment to cut out political discussion (we can do that in another thread) and refer just to their personal memories of that day or of other memories relating to it.
