Remembering 9-11, 15 years later

from Australia
I came home latish and had a cuppa watching the 10.30 pm news, there was a fire in New York, they said they would leave the live feed running instead of their normal programmes.
I switched channels but no one else had anything about it, turned back to hear them say a plane had hit the tower( it was an American morning show) I thought 'that's bad',
then the second plane hit, I was utterly shocked and numb with disbelief, I even teared up, but stayed watching till the end
 
I was only 6 years old on September 11 of 2001, and I remember wanting to know what the weather would be like that day (at the time I was afraid of storms so every day I listened to the weather on the local station). My parents said that there had been an incident in New York so the weather not be on that morning. Being 6 years old I didn't think much of it and continued eating my breakfast until I heard gasps and a faint shriek on the radio. Everyone looked at the radio, and for about 10 seconds there was silence, until one of the newsmen spoke up and said "I just witnessed a jet fly directly into the second tower. What is going on?" in a dazed voice. I didn't understand the significance of what was going on, but my parents were much more frantic that morning getting myself and my brother to school, and all of the teachers that day were so absent-minded.

I don't remember much else aside from hearing on the news that evening someone say that we were at war, and I asked my dad if that meant terrorists would be bombing Minneapolis, and if he would be drafted (my dad was in his forties at the time). Six year old me had some very strange ideas. :crazyeye:
 
from Australia
I came home latish and had a cuppa watching the 10.30 pm news, there was a fire in New York, they said they would leave the live feed running instead of their normal programmes.
I switched channels but no one else had anything about it, turned back to hear them say a plane had hit the tower( it was an American morning show) I thought 'that's bad',
then the second plane hit, I was utterly shocked and numb with disbelief, I even teared up, but stayed watching till the end

I was 9 at the time, so wasn't watching TV at 10:30pm, and found out before I went to school the next morning, which I suspect is when most Australians found out. By that stage the basic facts were known, so there wasn't any confusion as to whether it was or was not a terrorist attack. I guess that has an interesting framing effect, because I don't associate panic and confusion with that news - I was dealing with an established narrative.

Finding out was a bit strange and memorable, because in my household no-one ever watched TV in the morning (unlike most of my friends, who watched cartoons while having breakfast or something). So when I woke up that morning and my parents told me to go and see what was on TV (which they were watching too), it was immediately apparent that there was something momentous or weighty happening.
 
I was 9 at the time, so wasn't watching TV at 10:30pm, and found out before I went to school the next morning, which I suspect is when most Australians found out. By that stage the basic facts were known, so there wasn't any confusion as to whether it was or was not a terrorist attack. I guess that has an interesting framing effect, because I don't associate panic and confusion with that news - I was dealing with an established narrative.

Finding out was a bit strange and memorable, because in my household no-one ever watched TV in the morning (unlike most of my friends, who watched cartoons while having breakfast or something). So when I woke up that morning and my parents told me to go and see what was on TV (which they were watching too), it was immediately apparent that there was something momentous or weighty happening.
back then before 24 hour news all the stations had 10.30 news reports Sandra Sully was the only one to actually make the decision to run overtime about a fire in the world trade centre, the shock of actually seeing the second plane strike really did change the world. To me it was the first world event that came as shocking and un-moderated not uncommon now days. Other events were the SAS going into the Iranian embassy in London or the opening salvos of Bagdad's bombing, in retribution I had popcorn ready and was expecting something for them

it must really have been traumatic for New Yorkers, is an understatement
 
I was asleep that morning, but was awakened by a call from a friend who told me, "Turn on the TV and tell me what's going on." It's not that she didn't have a TV; she just didn't understand what she was seeing. So I asked what channel she was looking at, and finally found CBC Newsworld. The first plane had hit the tower, and the news anchor (Ben Chin; he was the early morning news anchor) had a couple of people on, speculating that it was an accident. I don't remember if anyone mentioned the word 'terrorist' or 'hijacking' at that point.

I told my friend that if this was anything worse than a simple unfortunate accident, they'd haul the senior anchor (Peter Mansbridge) into the studio to take over - which is what did happen.

All talk of it being an accident ceased when the second plane hit; I remember seeing that as it happened. I told my friend that this was no accident. I didn't have any idea who did it or why; at that time I hadn't heard of Osama bin Laden or the bombing in 1993.

My friend decided to turn off the TV and go make breakfast, so we ended the call. I was pretty well glued to the TV the rest of the day. My dad was shocked at what happened, but decided not to worry about it. After all, New York is over 2000 miles from here.

I remember everything being chaos that day. It was pretty much the topic of every conversation, and there were fears that other cities and even other countries could be targeted. Some people wanted to know more, some had family or friends to worry about, and of course Americans are not the only people who died. That's one thing I've found annoying at times - the way some people claim that it was "3000 Americans" who were killed. There were many countries represented among the dead, accounting for at least 300 people.

At some point that day, the news anchors went into a "Where's George Bush" loop, since nobody knew where he'd gone after leaving the elementary school where he'd been reading to a group of kids.

The conspiracymongers are BS!C as far as I'm concerned. None of this could have been faked, and only the most utterly depraved person would ever have deliberately set this in motion.

Something Canada did that day that some Americans tend to forget was to help out the passengers who got stranded after the U.S. closed its airspace. Several Canadian communities on both the east and west coasts allowed U.S.-bound planes to land, and the passengers were given a place to sleep... in private homes, in the case of Gander, Newfoundland. Gander is a small community whose population temporarily ballooned when a few dozen planes landed there and the people needed food, a place to sleep, and of course they wanted to communicate with their families to let them know that they were safe and to check on them in turn. All of this was provided.

I remember seeing the towers fall on TV, and people running to get away. The world there basically turned grey, from smoke and ash everywhere.

It's weird; I wasn't there, nothing happened to me, I didn't know any of the victims except in one of those bizarre "6 degrees of separation" ways - a friend of a friend of a business acquaintance of a colleague sort of connection. It was enough to make this more real than just abstract people on the news. I remember having trouble looking at skyscrapers for weeks - just imagining planes flying into them, and being grateful that the tallest building in our downtown area here (at that time) was only 7 storeys tall.

I watched a lot of TV back then, and got my news from a mix of CBC Newsworld and CNN. One thing I remember about CNN in the days and weeks following this was that Larry King sometimes had musicians on, and one of them was Enya. Anyone here who used to watch this show back then would have heard her song "Only Time"; it became a sort of unofficial "hymn" that was often played.

Here's a video of her appearance on his show; it was on November 8, 2001:


Link to video.
 
It really just changed us all in a lot of ways we still don't fully understand. I mean it didn't affect me directly but it changed so much of the world and how we see it, next came constant war and bad economies, polarizing politics. I can't say 9/11 caused all this but it did seem like a tipping point where the upbeat and hopeful 90s ended.
Yes, I think there's no question. I flew to France not long after, and there were soldiers with guns in the airport. In Paris, there were armed soldiers around the tourist sites. I don't know if that's supposed to make people feel safer, but it certainly doesn't make me feel safer. And of course 9/11 was the pretext for our invasion of Iraq, which has done immeasurable damage. There was an estimate a few years ago that the war in Iraq will ultimately cost the United States $3 trillion, and that doesn't even account for the damage done to the Middle East. Of course our recession in '08 had more to do with domestic financial practices, the housing bubble and whatnot, but the money spent on the "war on terror" has probably exacerbated our deficits in things like civic infrastructure, responses to natural disasters, and everything else that's needed attention in the last 15 years. And of course our current national election is almost entirely about our national loss of trust in our government. Surely 9/11 punctured a lot of feelings of security and the efficacy of our government and contributed a great deal to feelings of generalized anxiety and xenophobia.

And I believe the Camp David reference came from United 93 (the PA plane), when they knew its direction, then lost it on radar, and kinda thought it went down but didn't know exactly where. I guess they were assuming then that the 'jackers had downed it on a target, and they thought Camp David was kinda the closest site of federal governmental note in that region?
Yeah, that could be. At the time, it seemed like people were just rattling off all the potential targets they could name.

@Spengler: Where were you at the time?
Boston.

Something Canada did that day that some Americans tend to forget was to help out the passengers who got stranded after the U.S. closed its airspace. Several Canadian communities on both the east and west coasts allowed U.S.-bound planes to land, and the passengers were given a place to sleep... in private homes, in the case of Gander, Newfoundland. Gander is a small community whose population temporarily ballooned when a few dozen planes landed there and the people needed food, a place to sleep, and of course they wanted to communicate with their families to let them know that they were safe and to check on them in turn. All of this was provided.
I haven't heard much about other towns (I think Halifax & Vancouver landed a lot of planes bound for the US, being on the coasts), but Gander has certainly gotten a lot of attention. There was another program about them on the radio on Sunday.
 
Hey @Valka, you double-posted there. (Thought a retired mod would want to know.)

But really, I wanted to say this ...

... and of course Americans are not the only people who died. That's one thing I've found annoying at times - the way some people claim that it was "3000 Americans" who were killed. There were many countries represented among the dead, accounting for at least 300 people.

THAT is an awesome point. One of those that makes you say "duh!" when you hear it (well, I did), because it was known in the back of the mind and also obvious that not only American citizens would be in the Towers or even on the planes. But, you are absolutely right ... we Americans (besides being so full of our "Americanism" in general) get so hyper-focused on this tragedy, which we regard as something that happened "to us," that we go into generalizing (i.e., not thinking) mode, and decry that "our people" were killed, as if that were everyone killed (or affected).

Thank you, Valka, for raising my awareness that I might possibly speak about this topic in that way which would be grossly insensitive to those who "country-identify" elsewhere.

[Just noticed this:] If you listen carefully (to media and individuals), we're so bad at the tunnel-vision that some will focus so much on the towers that the Pentagon, flight 93, and sometimes even the people in the NYC planes are quickly mentioned after briefly forgetting to do so.

Something Canada did that day that some Americans tend to forget was to help out the passengers who got stranded after the U.S. closed its airspace. Several Canadian communities on both the east and west coasts allowed U.S.-bound planes to land, and the passengers were given a place to sleep... in private homes, in the case of Gander, Newfoundland. Gander is a small community whose population temporarily ballooned when a few dozen planes landed there and the people needed food, a place to sleep, and of course they wanted to communicate with their families to let them know that they were safe and to check on them in turn. All of this was provided.

This is what I love about Canadians. Thank you.

But, "forget?" Until this moment, I never even knew! In fact, I was just for the first time thinking of/discussing with my wife this weekend, "What happened to all those grounded people once they got on the ground, most of them away from home or destination? The hotels must have been packed, places to eat, etc." I was visualizing my BWI airport area. I never once thought they also landed in small(ish?) towns, and I certainly never thought they were allowed to land outside the U.S. Just never heard or thought it before.

So, now knowing, I say Thank You to all of the Canadians who assisted on the ground the people on those U.S.-based flights on that horrible day. "The more you know!"
[I'll tell on myself: I almost wrote "assisted the Americans that day" ... see? thanks for that awareness!]

Larry King sometimes had musicians on, and one of them was Enya.

And then you touch my heart with this?! Enya is one of my top 5 all time faves and takes me back to fun/formative college days. *sigh*
 
A heart-stopping thought: Considering the grounding of all planes and subsequent over-crowding of airports just alluded to, we should thank our lucky stars these a-holes weren't prepared & coordinated enough to also have had several suicide vest bombers waiting to greet the now-grounded passengers in several big airports (esp. since you could get farther in without any ticket or security check back then).

That wouldn't have been an incremental "more of the same terror" on that day ... that addition would have fundamentally altered even how the 9-11 we got ended up fundamentally impacting us.

As bad as that day was, for our lack of security, it actually could have been much, much worse.
 
But is the world any safer, by our response to this event. "Violence begets Violence", a phrase our leaders should have used. All that followed seemed like a 'knee-jerk revenge' as opposed to a considered "Why did they do it?" response and then work on the root causes.

I suppose given the lack of success of the "War on Drugs", I suppose we should not expect any different outcome from the so-called "War on Terrorism".

I hope one day more rational response to tragedies happens in future.
 
I was supposed to fly to the east coast on business that morning. My flight was cancelled obviously.
 
But is the world any safer, by our response to this event. "Violence begets Violence", a phrase our leaders should have used. All that followed seemed like a 'knee-jerk revenge' as opposed to a considered "Why did they do it?" response and then work on the root causes.
Well, my knee-jerk response is no, the world isn't safer. I heard yesterday, in a story about the cease-fire, that 250,000 Syrian civilians have been killed. Of course the war in Syria has more causes than just our bull-in-a-china-shop moves in Iraq, but that was certainly part of it. But knee-jerk responses aren't to be dismissed out of hand. If you look at whether people feel safer, the answer has to be a thunderous no, and how people feel influences how people behave. The rise of the right, Brexit, "the jungle" in Calais, Donald Trump's wall on the border with Mexico - practically everything that's happening in American and European politics right now is being influenced by terrorism. And when Europe and America sneeze, everybody gets a cold, to borrow a phrase.

I suppose given the lack of success of the "War on Drugs", I suppose we should not expect any different outcome from the so-called "War on Terrorism".
And before that we had Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty." It seems like whenever the United States 'declares war' on a concept, the results are sure to impress. :rolleyes:
 
I was already an alleged adult at the time, graduated from university and working at a real job. However, I was home from work, sick with the flu, which I'd had for a few days.

It was also the day after our parliamentary elections here in Norway. Being sick and a bit reclusive to begin with, I stayed indoors and avoided all forms of media for most of the day, expecting nothing but bad news (the last polls before the election had not been to my liking). Spent the entire day alternating between dozing on my couch and playing whatever computer game I was most into at the time (can't really remember which one it was). Finally when it was time for the evening news I thought I might as well get it over with and have my election-related fears confirmed; and as I expected there was nothing but bad news but none of it was about the election. Spent the rest of the evening and following night in a state where I was mostly pissed off.

(The election also did turn out crap, as I'd feared.)
 
I was 15 at the time, and I was having an açaí outside of my school (in Rio) during a break as the news begun dominating all talks. One thing that I distinctly remember was a guy who looked like a drunken hobo saying "you can bet this was done by Osama bin Laden!". What are the odds that a drunkard in Rio, where most people don't know and don't care very much about the rest of the planet, would it get it exactly right as the facts were still unfolding?

But is the world any safer, by our response to this event. "Violence begets Violence", a phrase our leaders should have used. All that followed seemed like a 'knee-jerk revenge' as opposed to a considered "Why did they do it?" response and then work on the root causes.

Nonsense. Toppling the Taliban was not a knee-jerk revenge, it was perfectly justifiable and rational. And invading Iraq was also not a knee-jerk revenge, as it happened several years later. It was stupid and / or criminal, but not knee-jerk.

It's all good to say "violence begets violence", but what would you have them do? Send flowers to old Osama and ask him to be friends? Of course a violent response was both necessary and entirely justified; the question is: was it the right violent response?
 
I was in New York earlier that year and it was a time of my life I was visiting US fairly often back then. I have seen it life on the Czech TV and was definitely in shock as it seem to me extraordinary for such a strike to be carried out within one of the centres of the US. I have been to Manhattan couple of times and its skyline with the dominant WTC towers was to me one of the symbols of the US.

To share something quite alternative: I did have early on "knowledge" from what I would call perhaps an occult source. It pointed out to the 9/11 events foreknowledge of the NYC mayor Gulliani and that of Bush too. I did find it quite hard to believe and didnt pay much attention to it back then and I even at least partially supported invasion of Iraq (to take out Saddam) but looking back and taking trouble to connecting the dots in both the US domestic and foreign issues its becoming clear how devil can hide behind the apparently noble. There is rationale behind it and it reveals the ignorance of the masses and its manipulativeness too. Again not very surprising even though not encouraging either. After all some people do not believe in holocaust - its apparently something too shocking and it happened in one of the most developed countries of its time...
 
I held a prayer rally at the flagpole out front on 9/11/01. Normally I would not be so overtly religious in that secular environment, but 9/11 was extenuating. I had Muslims show up and pray with us, and I welcomed the Muslims. I got in a fight earlier that day, because I was defending Israel and calling for Israel to expand their borders. Tempers were naturally very raw. I supported the party line, go invade Afghanistan, take down the Taliban.

A few months later, I did a reversal. Realized I had been not only dead wrong, but fighting on the wrong side. Ironically (on multiple levels), it was an Israeli who finally got through to me. To this day I tend to be understanding and forgiving to most people who feel the same way I once did, but also heavy-handed. Because that's what it takes. I've been there, so I would know.
 
It's all good to say "violence begets violence", but what would you have them do? Send flowers to old Osama and ask him to be friends? Of course a violent response was both necessary and entirely justified; the question is: was it the right violent response?
I have yet to see where any violence in my lifetime, that has made the world a better place. Even wars were abhorrent, so many civilians killed by both sides, how have their families become better of by losing these innocent family members. It only breeds more hatred.

While I am not a Christian, it seems as if His words "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" are now worthless, in today's world. Or conversely, if you want to attack them, you must be want to be attacked by them.
 
I was walking out the door for a tee time in Lawrence and glanced at the TV screen and saw a plane hitting a building but I figured it was a tragic accident. I found out at the golf course it was an attack and Bush's plane with a fighter escort flew over us headed for an airbase in Nebraska, or somewhere up north. Heartbreaking :(
 
I remember news how was Taliban destroying Buddha statues, that time I was realy stunned by such barbarism and that world did nothing. I dont know why but it was more this than 9/11 which made me supportive for intervention against Taliban.
 
I remember news how was Taliban destroying Buddha statues, that time I was realy stunned by such barbarism and that world did nothing. I dont know why but it was more this than 9/11 which made me supportive for intervention against Taliban.

Yes; one of my first thoughts after the attacks in the US was "well I guess at least this means the Taliban will probably get some of what's coming to them."
 
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