Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘9/11’

Jeff Jarvis reflects on three years after the twin towers fell:

But our stock-taking as a nation and as a civilized half of the world is troubling this year, for we are fighting with each other, not with our enemy.

And that enemy has only dug down to new depths of atrocity: from jets filled with innocents killing innocents, down to children strapped up as bombs, down to bombs in backpacks on trains, down to beheadings on video, down to schoolchildren captured and killed. They fall deeper and deeper into hell.

And we just yell at each other: left v. right, Kerry v. Bush, Swift v. Kerry, Moore v. Bush, France v. America, America v. France, Iraqi v. Iraqi, damned near everybody v. Israel…. We fight all the wrong fights and wrong enemies and meanwhile let our real enemies invent new evil and drag us down with them.

We’re all falling.

(Via Allison).

An absolutely compelling article appeared today by Australian Tony Parkinson in The Age entitled Why appeasement is always wrong.

As the link requires registration, I’ll post the beginning. But you owe it to yourselves to read the rest.

More than 100 schoolchildren in southern Russia are seized at gunpoint on the first day back from summer holidays. Teachers and parents die trying to protect them.

Eleven Nepalese workers in Iraq are lined up and shot in cold blood. A 12th is beheaded, purely for show.

Sixteen bus passengers in southern Israel are blasted to death by suicide bombers. Explosions at a Moscow subway station kill 10 workers. Another 90 lives are lost when terrorists force two Russian passenger jets from the skies.

In almost any other time in modern history, a week of atrocities such as this would have stunned the world.

Yet, today, as the third anniversary of September 11 approaches, it is no longer a shock to see Islamist extremists carrying out these depraved assaults. Many thousands of innocent civilians have already died. Sadly, there will probably be many thousands more.

But maybe, just maybe, the excruciating horror of watching seven-year-olds monstered by fanatics with bombs strapped to their bodies will prompt more people in free societies to grapple with the true awfulness of this phenomenon – and to confront the reality that muddling through with the old verities of international diplomacy is no answer to the threat.

New evidence about Montrealers’ links to terror emerged in the U.S. report on 9/11.

It sure is comforting to know that our tax dollars pay bureaucrats in Ottawa to allow these guys to come live here.

The United States is seeking extradition of Abu Hamza al-Masri, a British imam charged with coordinating a hijaking in Yemen and trying to organize a terrorist training camp in Oregon. But Britain and Yemen both want to press charges against him too:

Eleven charges were announced Thursday by U.S. authorities against Abu Hamza al-Masri, whose real name is Mustafa Kamel Mustafa. He was arrested earlier in the day by British police and is being held in London pending extradition proceedings.

Charges outlined Thursday of providing assistance to terrorists could spark a 100-year prison sentence for Mr. al-Masri, 47. He could theoretically receive the death penalty on the hijacking charge, though the United States probably will have to foreswear that option before Britain, which has abolished capital punishment, will consider extraditing him.

Further complicating the case is the fact that Britain is already considering charges against Mr. al-Masri. Yemen is also seeking his extradition.

“This case could take months and months to sort out,” a senior British security source told Reuters.

This is not a nice guy. He held services at the same mosque that the Shoe Bomber and one of the September 11th hijackers attended. He’s also implicated in working directly with the Taliban and Al-Qua’eda in Afghanistan. Britain was so threatened by him that they’ve been trying to deport him… but now it seems like they want to keep him so they can put him on trial.

Al-Masri, for his part, is sure to do everything in his legal power to stay in Britain and avoid extradition to the U.S. He knows full well that sentencing will be lighter there, and media coverage much more favourable. He’s probably counting on becoming a “martyr” through media coverage and attention, and the British press is sure to oblige.

Yippee. I can’t wait.

Update: The nauseating “political-pawn” articles are already beginning.

I’m breaking my promise not to mention the American election until September – but only tangentially – because I want to highlight this post by Debbye:

I’ve been watching the hearings of the independent commission of Sept. 11 on CNN, and it is frustrating. Did the administration under FDR have to face a similar inquiry about lapses of failure after Pearl Habour? (That is strictly a rhetorical question, okay?)

There is so astounding a lack of common sense and humility in these proceedings that it begs the questions Are you more interested in winning this war or this election? In what way does what did or did not happen before Sept. 11 actually pertain to the post-Sept. 11 period?

Honestly, just when did The Blame Game become the second American pastime?

[ . . . ]

I can’t summon up outrage against the Clinton administration. I can’t summon up outrage against the Bush administration. The somebody should have known mindset is all very well and good if you actually believe the technology in The X-Files is online and available to our government.

[ . . . ]

Ooh, brainstorm! Why don’t we just blame the terrorists for Sept. 11?

Because, Debbye, people are more interested in pinning catastrophes on their political rivals than on those really at fault. Left blames right. Right blames left. And the cycle continues.

I’m tired of reading endless attacks and character smears on Kerry from right-wing sites, and just as tired of hearing them about Bush from left-wing sites. Yes, it’s an election year. Yes, passions run high and there are certainly people out there who are party-loyal and view the other guys as the devils-incarnate. And yes, maybe it’s easier for me, with my outsider’s perspective, to roll my eyes and remark that it doesn’t matter.

That’s right. I said it doesn’t matter.

Because the terrorists don’t hate Americans because they have a Republican president. They hate Americans because they’re Americans. September 11th would have happened even if Gore won the Florida battle… and the terrorists wouldn’t have batted an eyelash when the whole world tried to make him out to be the devil incarnate.

Would Gore’s team have attacked Iraq? Unlikely. And yeah, that changes things somewhat on the world scene. But would the terrorists have capitulated or given up with a Democrat in the White House? Not a chance! Most of the planning for 9/11 took place during Clinton’s term.

So vote for Bush. Or for Kerry. Or for Nader. Or for Mickey Mouse. Or for the Purple People Eater. The terrorists aren’t going to start loving the U.S. no matter who Americans elect as their President… unless it’s Bin Laden. (Hmmm, I figure he could probably dominate the election in San Francisco…)

The “Great Satan” of America is a myth that’s believed by a large portion of the world… and they don’t care who the Americans vote for as their President – they just care that Americans can vote at all.

I’m so sick of seeing this basic truism being turned into a finger-pointing election issue that I felt it necessary to break my promise and rant about it. Now I’m done, and we’re back to our regularly-scheduled programming. But 9/11 wasn’t Bush’s fault, or Clinton’s fault, and it’s certainly not Kerry’s fault or Gore’s fault or Rice’s fault or Rumsfeld’s fault. Like Debbye said, it’s the terrorists’ fault. And somehow I doubt that the families of the 3,000 people who were murdered in the WTC would grant anyone the right to cheapen their lives as an election issue.

Meryl cites a Ma’ariv article about the victims of terrorism and the reasons for the security fence, and discusses how the world of terrorism is a small one:

It’s a small world, the world of terrorism. My sister-in-law’s cousin died in the World Trade Center. Everyone in my area knew someone who lost someone, or knew someone who knew someone. Even in a metropolitan area of what, 10-12 million?

Israel has about 5.4 million Jews. More than 7,000 Israelis have been killed or injured in terrorist attacks since September of 2000. You do the math. I’m not up to figuring how many September Elevenths that works out to. But I know that per capita, it’s far more than we lost.

The math has been done a number of ways. I’ve picked one. If we round the number of people killed and injured on 9/11 off to 10,000, in a country with approximately 250 million people, then on a per capita basis, the terrorism Israel has faced since September 2000 works out to about 30 September Elevenths.

30 times.

The actual number isn’t important. What is important is recognizing that Israel is about out of options. There is nothing the world will let Israel do to defend its citizens. It can’t counter-attack. It can’t use “excessive” (read: any) force. It can’t even build a fence. Could you imagine the world trying to tell the United States, after 30 September Elevenths in a row, that it has no right to go after Osama Bin Laden? And yet, that’s what happens with Israel’s polities of targeted assassinations against terrorists, or its house-to-house searches or bulldozing of the homes of suicide bombers.

I remember having, a few years ago, a discussion about the various forms of antisemitism that have evolved throughout Jewish history. Someone made the observation that one of the reasons the Holocaust was so much worse than, say, the Spanish Inquisition, is that the Inquisition allowed Jews to live if they converted to Christianity (or, in most cases, pretended to and didn’t get caught), while Hitler and the Nazis killed all Jews, converts, children of converts, or even those with a Jewish grandparent. Jewish law permits breaking just about any rule in order to save a life. But in the case of the Holocaust, there was no action that would allow a Jewish person to save his own life. There was nothing that anyone could say, or do, or renounce even, that would satisfy the murderers. They were targeted not for what they did but by the mere fact that they existed.

To borrow an analogy, Israel too is targeted not by what it does but merely because it exists.

Israel’s enemies won’t be satisfied with a pullout from the territories, or with a peace negotiation, or with granting Palestinian statehood, or with a rewriting of state laws, or with any action that Israel could possibly take, short of wiping itself off the map. Hamas doesn’t want Ramallah; they want Tel Aviv. It’s written in their charter, in black and white.

Israel’s enemies that won’t let it exist and its friends won’t let it defend itself. What does that leave us with? Israel has a right to exist, and to defend that existence. If a fence is needed to prevent more terror attacks and defend that existence, then Israel is within its rights to build it.

LGF has the scoop on the latest Palestinian opinion poll, which says, among other things, that nearly 60% of Palestinians would want to continue the armed intifada even after being granted a state, and that almost two-thirds don’t think that the 9-11 pilots were terrorists:

Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created, a new survey shows.

Similarly, 80 percent of Palestinians say that, under those circumstances, the Palestinians should not give up the “right of return.”

The poll of Palestinians, Israeli Jews, and Israeli Arabs was released in Washington on Wednesday by Itamar Marcus, founder of Palestinian Media Watch and written by pollster Frank Luntz. It was conducted by two polling firms, the Public Opinion Research of Israel and The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.

The poll also examined Israeli and Palestinian attitudes towards the US and towards terrorism.

Nintey-six percent of Israeli Jews say the people who piloted the planes on September 11 were terrorists, while 37 percent of Palestinians share that view.

Slightly more than one in four – 26 percent – of Palestinians believe Israelis planned the 9-11 attacks.

Forty-two percent of Palestinians and 61 percent of Israeli-Arabs stated that they support the people who are attacking Americans in Iraq. Zero percent of Israeli Jews said they did.

The next time someone starts ranting about how the Palestinians would be peaceful if only they had a state, I suggest they consult the opinion polls.

“In a New York Minute, everything can change . . .”

Damian Penny notes that Global is re-airing the documentary “Confrontation at Concordia” tonight – presumably in recognition of the one-year anniversary of said confrontation. Charles Johnson’s got the scoop on Abu Ala, the new Palestinian puppet – er – Prime Minister. In the meantime, Gil Shterzer says that Israelis are just waiting for the next Hamas terror attack. Jonathan Edelstein has an Arrival Day 2003 blog summary. Mike Silverman notes that conservatives seem to like affirmative action when it applies to them. And Michele, in the leadup to the two-year anniversary of September 11th, has a moving post on the things that those lost in the attacks were carrying.

Gore had won the 2000 election?

The game of “what if” can be endless and pointless but it can also be fun. So I was thinking about what might have happened if the outcome of the 2000 election was different. What if the whole Florida ballot scandal never happened and Al Gore was voted into office in 2000?

In light of the events of the past few years, a lot of people might think that this would have been the worst possible thing for the US. But I’m not so sure. Because September 11th, 2001 would have happened no matter who was in the White House. Clearly, the US government had to strike back. Republican or Democrat, no US president could have reacted otherwise to an attack on American soil. The speeches might have been worded differently, but ultimately the reaction against Al Qua’eda and against the Taliban would have been military, just as it was – swift and decisive.

Where the difference might have come in is in events since. Oh sure, you could argue that a Democratic government might not have attacked Iraq. There’s no way to really know but I somehow doubt that’s the case. Faced with the same situation, the same set of facts, and the same military procedures, I have a feeling any government would have come to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein needed toppling. The world is a different place than it was in 2000.

So then what? Right now we have a polarized US – indeed, a polarized world. Bush is, to all but his supporters, only about a step worse than the devil incarnate. The decisions of his government are easily attacked and dismissed as hawkish, right-wing, gun-slinging Texas cowboy acts, when in truth Bush is merely acting on the advice of the experts 99% of the time. But as a Republican, he’s an easy target.

But a Democrat making those kinds of decisions? Well, he’d be a bit tougher to attack, wouldn’t he? For one thing, there would probably be a lot of money directed to CYA reports on politically-correct issues to try to appease the naysayers. For another thing, where would the Left go, after abandoning Gore? To the Republicans?

Ironically, it would probably have been a lot easier for Gore to get United Nations support and backing than it was for Bush. And as a result, the anti-American sentiment that is so heightened right now in Europe and around the world might not be nearly as prominent. It’s one of the paradoxes of politics, that a dovish leader has an easier time making war, just as a hawkish leader has an easier time making peace.

Is this what would have happened if a few hundred ballots in Florida were counted differently in 2000? Short of inventing a time machine and changing the past, we obviously can’t know. There are too many variables. But with the next election coming up in a little over a year, it makes interesting food for thought.