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9/11 Thread

DJ EebsDJ Eebs Moderator, Administrator admin
I'm not going to write an essay in here about what happened twenty years ago. I wanted to make a thread about this primarily because I think people are going to discuss it here, and in that case I wanted to cordon it off into its own thread and set some ground rules because this is a sensitive subject that branches out into tons of other sensitive subjects and, well, it's worth setting some boundaries.

a) Our rule about conspiracy theories is absolutely in effect here. If you want to discuss 9/11 Truthers, do so, but we don't really need to amplify the theories themselves
b) Let's try and keep the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams," and other hilarious 9/11 memes out of this thread, specifically.
c) I know that images of the attacks and the ensuing wars have been incredibly hard to avoid, and they've been hard to avoid for two decades. Still, if you want to post videos or images of it, spoil them and put a warning in front of them.

That's...honestly about it for what I have to say on rules. Everything else should be covered by our existing forum rules. I do want to emphasize that "no funny 9/11 memes," doesn't mean that mocking some of the media or political cartoons that came out of this is off the table. It is absurd that Marvel published a comic where Doctor Doom cried about this. And honestly, if there's something worth remembering about 9/11 that won't be hammered home by every cable news network for decades, it's the reaction in the immediate aftermath, and how absurd and awful it could all be, because it led directly to where we are now.

Anyways, I'll get off the soapbox.

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Posts

  • 3cl1ps33cl1ps3 I will build a labyrinth to house the cheese Registered User regular


    I have nothing to add to this tweet.

    This year has fully blown open the fact that 9/11 was just a convenient smokescreen to brutalize brown people and none of these ghouls actually care about anything.

  • 3cl1ps33cl1ps3 I will build a labyrinth to house the cheese Registered User regular
    I mean it was always that but even the barest shred of plausible deniability is now gone.

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    We've had what like a 9/11 a week if not much more this past year or two. At least on average. I think we were literally pumping like a 9/11 or more a day for a short while there. Just from the plague that is.

    Shit we practically had a 9/11 yesterday.

    Sleep on
  • DJ EebsDJ Eebs Moderator, Administrator admin
    I'm pretty uncomfortable with that framing because it categorically isn't the same thing for a lot of different reasons that ends up doing disservice to discussions of either 9/11 or the pandemic, and the victims of either.

  • JuggernutJuggernut Registered User regular
    I remember I was in 2nd grade and my parents picking me up from school and trying to explain to me "we've been attacked."

    I remember several years later having a book of photos from 9/11 and crying in my room at night looking at it. Specifically the one of the priest being carried off by firefighters after being hit and killed by debris. I remember the patriotism and the songs and the hands over the hearts. This big dog will bite when you rattle his cage, man. I remember that shit.

    Now, here we are 20 years later and one of the last acts of our glorious War on Terror, our divine crusade, was drone striking an innocent NGO aid worker in Afghanistan because we thought he was acting suspicious. Our last act was leaving everybody we roped into our dirty little scuffle to die, hanging off the landing gear of our outbound planes. Our last act was a pathetic retreat. Nothing accomplished. Nothing fixed. Millions dead. No big brass band, no hands over the hearts with a grand jet flyover. No ticker tape parade.

    Mission fucking accomplished.

  • JuggernutJuggernut Registered User regular
    Man, I still remember the sound of someone playing the audio of bodies hitting the pavement as they leapt from the towers. Pictures of people falling hundreds of stories.

    There was just so much death and carnage and it was all right there on the evening news. 8 years old and watching people die at dinner time. I'm reading stories right now about fathers carrying out the bodies of their sons, months later, after digging them out of the rubble and it still fucking hurts.

    But man now I'm old I get to remember that and I get to see how we took that pain and we turned it out ten fold onto people who couldn't even point the US out on a map. For every dead American son how many Iraqi children did we incinerate? How many Afghani mothers and fathers had to pick up the pieces of their children, too? What was any of this for? 20 years later and nobody can tell me.

    Fuck.

  • JarsJars Registered User regular
    all the people that orchestrated it are still rich and powerful

    except donald rumsfeld, he's fucking dead

  • 3cl1ps33cl1ps3 I will build a labyrinth to house the cheese Registered User regular
    Jars wrote: »
    all the people that orchestrated it are still rich and powerful

    except donald rumsfeld, he's fucking dead

    we have that, at least

  • I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    It's difficult not to have a strange relationship to it. It was a great tragedy that the government sought immediately to outdo, and for the most part, they succeeded.

    liEt3nH.png
  • TheySlashThemTheySlashThem Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    frankly I think that tweet is the only appropriate framing at this point

    9/11 happened during my sophomore year of high school and america's response to it has defined my entire adulthood, exclusively for the worse

    edited for getting way too aggro

    TheySlashThem on
  • DouglasDangerDouglasDanger PennsylvaniaRegistered User regular
    edited September 2021
    I was on a field trip to Washington DC on 9/11. I was inside the Capitol, waiting to meet one of my representatives, I think. The receptionist asked if we knew what was going on, we had no idea. She directed us to the TV in the little waiting room. It showed the aftermath of the first plane hitting.

    We are all stunned. People were saying it was an accident.

    Then, the second plane hit, and we were evacuated. I think we heard the plane fly over on its way to the Pentagon, but that might be memory playing tricks.

    We were ran out of the building, but there wasn't any shelter or anything, so we just joined a huge mass of people wandering around the streets for hours.

    I was 17 years old.

    DouglasDanger on
  • HobnailHobnail Registered User regular
    Broke as fuck in the style of the times. Gratitude is all that can return on your generosity.

    https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
  • miscellaneousinsanitymiscellaneousinsanity grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered User regular
  • TallahasseerielTallahasseeriel Registered User regular
    I was 13 and home from school sick

    I still remember it pretty vividly. I told my mom to come look at the tv after the first plane hit just in time for the second.

    And ever since then I dunno if a day has passed in my life where I wasn't, somewhere in the back of my head at least, always aware of the massive body count demanded by our bloody empire.

    The stretching out of the war on terror over the two decades that followed never seemed right, but after being beaten into our over and over heads it began to feel normal. In the sense that it's something big and bad about life entirely outside of your control.

    As normal as it began to seem that we would shatter so many lives and bodies overseas and far away just to turn a profit the creeping realization that the USA runs on death settled over me, but only in the last 5 or 6 years have I really opened my eyes to how willing they are too turn the weapons and tactics of that endless war back on people here. And over the pandemic realizing that to them everyone is just more grist for the mill.

    And I'm tired. And I feel old beyond my years and also somehow too young to do anything to make a change. This has been happening since before I was born afterall. It's Big capital B.

    I dunno why I'm rambling about it all like this. My thoughts aren't super organized as always. I guess I just hope someday we can live in a world where we care for one another instead of... This.

  • JayKaosJayKaos Registered User regular

    I definitely remember some of those free internet games being shitty 'bomb Osama' type things so I ain't gonna pretend I was completely above all that

    Steam | SW-0844-0908-6004 and my Switch code
  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Ok
    Earlier that week we were doing beach assaults the night of the 8th they gave us the next 10 days off. I remember goofing off on the 9th as I went to the BX looked at GBAs and the games they had [I bought one that Jan at the BX in Afghanistan in Kabul THe BX was selling things out of boxes and containers on the tarmac} Rode my bike around and went to bed early. Sometime during the afternoon of the 10th someone wanted to go to the strip clubs my friend asked if I would go as a "safety" It's kind of blurry as the next clear memory I have is waking up on the floor of the barracks seeing a plane hit and thinking what f ing movie is this. It's quiet even outside .
    About 20? 25 minutes after the plane hit I hear over the loud speaker for everyone to be outside in 5 minutes. The base commander pulls up and with a bull horn says
    You may have seen what happened, You know what this means you have 15 minutes to gather your ass and thoughts and be ready.}
    A M35 truck pulls up one of the men on it says Be sure to label your container! make it legible! we will be checking! they gather the stuff we are not taking with us . And I see at the other barracks they are picking up people in whatever they can find school buses, the Mwwv with the soft shelter and much much more. Taking us to 29 palms As we get off the bus There are various people directing people to their units
    We board the plane bound for Guam. I remember how clear the skies were all the way. We land in Guam sometime that night where we are pointed to an office so we can call whomever you are limited to 15 minute phone calls

    It was surreal still as I remember it even now how it was go go go

    But things that happened after we went to Afghanistan
    After Mazar-i Sharif, Qala-i-Jangi, Tora Bora, and Operation Anaconda. Several of us went ot our overall commander and asked WTF are we doing? is there any plan? I remember him shruging and saying your guess as good as mine. My bosses seem to have no idea. The fun and games of waiting to catch the ones that fled to Pakistan launching raids back into Afghanistan as we had to busy ourselves with finding stashes and caves as well.

    I remember coming back in 2003 and how alien it felt as this was not the US everything was different
    I remember being macabre and sarcastic about Iraq as it was no suprise we invaded as I did say they could have just said we are going back to finish what we started and the press would have hyped it up as well as Iraq was a whole other can of worms

    I can go on and on but i feel I will end it here since this is an awkward thing to talk about

  • HobnailHobnail Registered User regular
  • I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    JayKaos wrote: »

    I definitely remember some of those free internet games being shitty 'bomb Osama' type things so I ain't gonna pretend I was completely above all that

    liEt3nH.png
  • RedTideRedTide Registered User regular
    It would have been nice to have started at most one forever war in my lifetime instead of two.

    RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
    Come Overwatch with meeeee
  • DirtyboyDirtyboy Registered User regular
    Still hard for me to watch anything 9/11 related.

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular

    Jesus

    I actually remember some of those

  • JayKaosJayKaos Registered User regular
    JayKaos wrote: »

    I definitely remember some of those free internet games being shitty 'bomb Osama' type things so I ain't gonna pretend I was completely above all that


    Definitely remember the banana boat one yeah and the rest were very much of the type

    Steam | SW-0844-0908-6004 and my Switch code
  • TallahasseerielTallahasseeriel Registered User regular
    Wasn't their multiple pretty big budget video games where you hunt bin laden?

  • DeliciousTacosDeliciousTacos Registered User regular

    Maybe the one heartening thing about life in the 2020s is that most people at least seem to agree on how deranged our culture and politics are? The 2000s were every bit as insane, but it was just treated as completely normal and anyone who questioned it a kook, at best.

    Hopefully that’s the first step toward the next couple generations making things a little better, anyway

  • OrcaOrca Also known as Espressosaurus WrexRegistered User regular
    edited September 2021
    DJ Eebs wrote: »
    I'm pretty uncomfortable with that framing because it categorically isn't the same thing for a lot of different reasons that ends up doing disservice to discussions of either 9/11 or the pandemic, and the victims of either.

    I think the framing is apt.

    We killed a million people to avenge 3000

    and now 3000 people a day die and we tut tut and nothing happens

    edit: to be accurate, we're up to ~1500 deaths per day as opposed to the previous peak of ~3000 deaths per day

    Orca on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    Remember when Dr. Doom came to help with 9/11 recovery efforts and shed a tear

  • Duke 2.0Duke 2.0 Time Trash Cat Registered User regular
    10 years old. In the same month my families house would burn down and my parents filed for bankruptcy. For how insane the country got in response to the attack my own sense of place at the time didn’t grasp it as much. The illnesses of our society were causing enough grief outside the context of 9/11. Going to school in a predominately black school district observing how little was provided to us. My father, deep into evangelical conservatism, completely losing his mind over the lack of a job. Young me desperate to belong denied opportunities to hang out with school kids outside class because it was considered too dangerous. From the beltway sniper to sordid tales of kidnappings in the 90s to 9/11, the public was now a dark dangerous forest to the youth.

    This nation has a long history of grifters influencing the direction of society, but their schemes seemed to completely dominate us for the last half-century. Our society spiraling down the drain so people don’t have to ask themselves Were We Wrong? Was I Tricked?

    VRXwDW7.png
  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular

    Maybe the one heartening thing about life in the 2020s is that most people at least seem to agree on how deranged our culture and politics are? The 2000s were every bit as insane, but it was just treated as completely normal and anyone who questioned it a kook, at best.

    Hopefully that’s the first step toward the next couple generations making things a little better, anyway

    Yeah if they’re given a chance

  • sponospono Mining for Nose Diamonds Booger CoveRegistered User regular
    I somehow managed to avoid seeing any footage of the planes actually hitting the towers until yesterday, when I watched the netflix documentary on 9/11

    It's fucking me up pretty good

    I'd say that if you've also managed to avoid seeing it until now, maybe keep it that way

    640qocnq4ske.gif
  • PerrsunPerrsun Registered User regular

    Maybe the one heartening thing about life in the 2020s is that most people at least seem to agree on how deranged our culture and politics are? The 2000s were every bit as insane, but it was just treated as completely normal and anyone who questioned it a kook, at best.

    Hopefully that’s the first step toward the next couple generations making things a little better, anyway

    Right after the “where were you when you heard the news?” stuff, this is one of my strongest memories; in the following years being made to feel like I had something wrong with me because I wasn’t all Rah-rah about a war or plastering everything I owned with a flag. This constant sentiment of “if you aren’t with us, you’re with them”…

    Some of my “favorite” comics from that thread…
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    4cyjqbcekj9i.jpeg

  • MrMonroeMrMonroe passed out on the floor nowRegistered User regular
    Twenty years ago, at almost exactly this time actually, I made probably the best prediction I've ever made in my whole life. "The whole country is about to go completely fucking crazy."

  • A Dabble Of TheloniusA Dabble Of Thelonius It has been a doozy of a dayRegistered User regular
    edited September 2021
    It's weird for me. I was getting ready for work when and watched the 2nd plane hit. But then still had to go to work where the only news we had was on the radio. Surreal day.

    And conspiracy theorists about this are just so infuriatingly stupid. I'm just finding out today that there's people that think flight 93 just.... didn't crash? What?

    A Dabble Of Thelonius on
    vm8gvf5p7gqi.jpg
    Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
  • WotanAnubisWotanAnubis Registered User regular
    Orca wrote: »
    DJ Eebs wrote: »
    I'm pretty uncomfortable with that framing because it categorically isn't the same thing for a lot of different reasons that ends up doing disservice to discussions of either 9/11 or the pandemic, and the victims of either.

    I think the framing is apt.

    We killed a million people to avenge 3000

    and now 3000 people a day die and we tut tut and nothing happens

    edit: to be accurate, we're up to ~1500 deaths per day as opposed to the previous peak of ~3000 deaths per day

    I say this as someone who's not from the US, so I could be wildly off the mark here, but I think what made 9/11 so traumatic was that it challenged the notion of American invincibility.

    The United States of America, that great beacon of Freedom, that shining city on the hill, emerged from the two World Wars and the Cold War as the sole victor. The last, Great Superpower of the World.

    And you can be attacked too. By some dudes in a plane.

    What do you do when you're the strongest country in the world, high on a never-ending supply of American exceptionalism, and then it turns out you can still be hurt by a handful of determined foreigners?

    What's just another disease compared to that kind of trauma?

  • sarukunsarukun RIESLING OCEANRegistered User regular
    It was a very weird day.

    My mom told me about it as I was waking up.

    I had to go work at Triple A that day. It was right before school started up again.

    I remember almost nothing but that very vivid moment in the morning, and then just the general feeling of working all day at a job I didn’t care for.

    I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with those memories by now, I think.

  • OrcaOrca Also known as Espressosaurus WrexRegistered User regular
    Somewhere I still have logs of the realtime reactions of all of us on IRC, which was the custom at the time

    the amount of undirected rage was impressive

    decent split between "WE GOTTA GO FUCK SOMEONE UP" and "what good is that going to do?"

    Well

    the answer is it did nothing good, but that wasn't ever the point

  • RedTideRedTide Registered User regular
    spono wrote: »
    I somehow managed to avoid seeing any footage of the planes actually hitting the towers until yesterday, when I watched the netflix documentary on 9/11

    It's fucking me up pretty good

    I'd say that if you've also managed to avoid seeing it until now, maybe keep it that way

    I watched the first episode of the Natgeo series they had up on Hulu and that was enough, I couldn't manage any more.

    It uses footage from a documentary that was being made about the FDNY at the time and both it and the source documentary are both very well done

    RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
    Come Overwatch with meeeee
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    I was helping run a grenade launcher range, by that evening I was kitted out with live ammo guarding the flight control tower at our heliport and when I finally got to go home a couple days later there was a humvee with a .50 on the turret parked on the playground of the elementary school across the street because everyone was paranoid about attacks on everything from everywhere.

    Edit: then of course by November we'd gotten a nearly full retooling of our gear and off to the desert!

    Weaver on
  • MidniteMidnite Registered User regular
    dante wrote:
    every moment of my adult life has been shaped by the horrors of the American government's response to 9/11 so at this point I think it's hard to feel anything about the original event other than a sort of dry humor. "bummer"!

    This tweet sums up my feelings much better than I could hope to.
    (dante is a games writer/indie dev)

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