4 ms·

The terrorist in the USA won a long time ago. The unfortunate lives lost on September 11th will never be forgotten and the wars fought over them won't either.

by d0ne 15y ago

The terrorist in the USA won a long time ago. The unfortunate lives lost on September 11th will never be forgotten and the wars fought over them won't either. Sadly, the freedoms lost because of these events set back the Unites States many many decades. I remember growing up a proud US citizen who was happy to be patriotic because my country stood for the right things for the right reasons. Now, I'm ashamed. My country took a head first dive into the quick sand of ignorance and fear even though there were countless, larger than life, signs warning us it was right there. To my fellow citizen, and the rest of the word, I'm sorry America is no longer the beacon of freedom it once was.

kiba 15y ago
The terrorist in the USA won a long time ago. I don't think terrorists actually win. What they got on 9/11 is more intervention in the middle east. The fact that it terrify the US government into terrorizing their own citizen is just incidental.
- d0ne 15y ago
  I agree that the chance they thought this (US Govt. terrorizing their own citizens) is what would happen is slim. However, their goal of wanting to hurt the US population / Government in a significant way was far more successful than they could ever imagine. The additional intervention in the middle east was a given either way so I don't think that can be looked at as a loss for them.
  - pallinder 15y ago
    I would think they wanted more intervention in the middle east. Why? To drum up more support for their cause and to have an easy villan. I would say their attacks were fairly successful.
    - d0ne 15y ago
      Agreed
    - scott_s 15y ago
      Bin Laden very much wanted the US to invade Afghanistan. He wanted to draw the US into the same kind of war the Soviets were sucked into.
- BerislavLopac 15y ago
  Good point. It's easy to see who profited most from the 9/11 attacks.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  The goal of terrorism is to cause terror. Was the US sufficiently terrorized by 9/11? It'd be near-impossible to argue that we weren't. Not only did we shed quite a few civil liberties, and subject our own citizens to a wide range of inconveniences and violations, but we also spent trillions of dollars in an ongoing "War on Terror" that seems to have no end and no realistic, tangible goals. (As with the "War on Drugs," it reifies an intangible concept, and then attempts to fight that concept as if it were tangible). Getting the US out of the Middle East is a long-term goal of Al Qaeda and similar organizations. But the short-term goal, i.e., how they plan to get us out of the Middle East, is by causing our society to collapse -- financially and socially. To paraphrase one of OBL's treatises, Al Qaeda wants to "bleed" us to death. Terror is their chief tactic in pursuit of that strategy. OBL is dead, and depending on whom you ask, Al Qaeda is either spent or significantly weakened. But that's sort of beside the point. Those guys never really expected that 9/11 would cause us to withdraw immediately from the Middle East. In fact, their entire plan was to draw us deeper in, where we could waste blood and treasure and engender further ill will in the region. And the fact that we whipped up a security frenzy in our own country (PATRIOT act, airport security theater, paranoia, etc.)? That's either icing on the cake, or part of the cake itself, but it's certainly a big win in Al Qaeda's column. Now, if you take the long view, you could argue that there's still time for us to correct our course. The terror and repurcussions of our reaction to 9/11 can still be undone. We recovered from McCarthyism. We recovered from the Alien & Sedition Acts. Time and again, our country has temporarily threatened its own principles or abandoned rationality, and then come back to its senses in the long run. It's entirely possible that the post-9/11 security frenzy ends up being another historical footnote.
  - kiba 15y ago
    On the other side, the United State government benefits, as they are seen as more important than ever and they can justify further tax increase In other words, they benefit from a situation they did not create. Of course, it was not rational in the long run. But for the careers of certain individuals, it is a good thing. The harm may be so dispersed that they barely felt it or they are shielded from it altogether. Furthermore, they are fueled by our irrationality of perceiving rare, media-worthy like a terrorist attack as more important than many common death scenarios and the more common(and arguably more important) horror. Keep in mind that organizations will either choose to expand, or disappears. If the US government choose the rational way for society and enlightened self-interest, it would have make itself disappear by unemploying themselves in the process. Of course, the government choose to makes job for the insider instead. In some sense, this is what the party of the US government wanted and what terrorists desire. But if they aren't so wrapped up in the government or being a terrorist, they might have a different perspective. It's like being a luddite at the dawn of the industrial revolution. We saw that we are losing our jobs, but we don't see that eventually our quality of life is going to increase. Now that we don't have to make clothes, we can enjoy the finer thing in life.
- scythe 15y ago
  I don't think the terrorists won, but it's hard to deny that the American people lost.
code_duck 15y ago
The actions of the US government were not actually a response to the 'terrorism'. Those incidents were merely their excuses and cover stories as they proceeded to do exactly what they intended and desired previously (witness the Patriot Act, appearing in it's full 8,000 page glory 2 days after the WTC was destroyed).
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  "When I was chairman in '94 I introduced a major antiterrorism bill--back then,...I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up [the Patriot act] was my bill." - Joe Biden http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/rhetorical-question http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/rhetorical-question In 1994, his bill was considered too extreme and heavily criticized for not protecting civil liberties.
neutronicus 15y ago
When did you grow up? Was it before WWII or J. Edgar Hoover's tenure as FBI director? Because I wouldn't really describe either of those periods in American history as "beacons of freedom".
- d0ne 15y ago
  I'm 24 (soon to be 25) I grew up in the 90's
hrktb 15y ago
Perhaps we can go back to roots of the word "terrorism", and remember it was about the government doing random raids and arbitrary, abusive punishments on civilians, and thus spreading terror to keep the people low profile. Yes, terrorists have long won in USA.

by d0ne 15y ago

kiba 15y ago

The terrorist in the USA won a long time ago. I don't think terrorists actually win. What they got on 9/11 is more intervention in the middle east. The fact that it terrify the US government into terrorizing their own citizen is just incidental.

d0ne 15y ago
I agree that the chance they thought this (US Govt. terrorizing their own citizens) is what would happen is slim. However, their goal of wanting to hurt the US population / Government in a significant way was far more successful than they could ever imagine. The additional intervention in the middle east was a given either way so I don't think that can be looked at as a loss for them.
- pallinder 15y ago
  I would think they wanted more intervention in the middle east. Why? To drum up more support for their cause and to have an easy villan. I would say their attacks were fairly successful.
  - d0ne 15y ago
    Agreed
  - scott_s 15y ago
    Bin Laden very much wanted the US to invade Afghanistan. He wanted to draw the US into the same kind of war the Soviets were sucked into.
BerislavLopac 15y ago
Good point. It's easy to see who profited most from the 9/11 attacks.
jonnathanson 15y ago
The goal of terrorism is to cause terror. Was the US sufficiently terrorized by 9/11? It'd be near-impossible to argue that we weren't. Not only did we shed quite a few civil liberties, and subject our own citizens to a wide range of inconveniences and violations, but we also spent trillions of dollars in an ongoing "War on Terror" that seems to have no end and no realistic, tangible goals. (As with the "War on Drugs," it reifies an intangible concept, and then attempts to fight that concept as if it were tangible). Getting the US out of the Middle East is a long-term goal of Al Qaeda and similar organizations. But the short-term goal, i.e., how they plan to get us out of the Middle East, is by causing our society to collapse -- financially and socially. To paraphrase one of OBL's treatises, Al Qaeda wants to "bleed" us to death. Terror is their chief tactic in pursuit of that strategy. OBL is dead, and depending on whom you ask, Al Qaeda is either spent or significantly weakened. But that's sort of beside the point. Those guys never really expected that 9/11 would cause us to withdraw immediately from the Middle East. In fact, their entire plan was to draw us deeper in, where we could waste blood and treasure and engender further ill will in the region. And the fact that we whipped up a security frenzy in our own country (PATRIOT act, airport security theater, paranoia, etc.)? That's either icing on the cake, or part of the cake itself, but it's certainly a big win in Al Qaeda's column. Now, if you take the long view, you could argue that there's still time for us to correct our course. The terror and repurcussions of our reaction to 9/11 can still be undone. We recovered from McCarthyism. We recovered from the Alien & Sedition Acts. Time and again, our country has temporarily threatened its own principles or abandoned rationality, and then come back to its senses in the long run. It's entirely possible that the post-9/11 security frenzy ends up being another historical footnote.
- kiba 15y ago
  On the other side, the United State government benefits, as they are seen as more important than ever and they can justify further tax increase In other words, they benefit from a situation they did not create. Of course, it was not rational in the long run. But for the careers of certain individuals, it is a good thing. The harm may be so dispersed that they barely felt it or they are shielded from it altogether. Furthermore, they are fueled by our irrationality of perceiving rare, media-worthy like a terrorist attack as more important than many common death scenarios and the more common(and arguably more important) horror. Keep in mind that organizations will either choose to expand, or disappears. If the US government choose the rational way for society and enlightened self-interest, it would have make itself disappear by unemploying themselves in the process. Of course, the government choose to makes job for the insider instead. In some sense, this is what the party of the US government wanted and what terrorists desire. But if they aren't so wrapped up in the government or being a terrorist, they might have a different perspective. It's like being a luddite at the dawn of the industrial revolution. We saw that we are losing our jobs, but we don't see that eventually our quality of life is going to increase. Now that we don't have to make clothes, we can enjoy the finer thing in life.
scythe 15y ago
I don't think the terrorists won, but it's hard to deny that the American people lost.

code_duck 15y ago

The actions of the US government were not actually a response to the 'terrorism'. Those incidents were merely their excuses and cover stories as they proceeded to do exactly what they intended and desired previously (witness the Patriot Act, appearing in it's full 8,000 page glory 2 days after the WTC was destroyed).

yummyfajitas 15y ago
"When I was chairman in '94 I introduced a major antiterrorism bill--back then,...I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up [the Patriot act] was my bill." - Joe Biden http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/rhetorical-question http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/rhetorical-question In 1994, his bill was considered too extreme and heavily criticized for not protecting civil liberties.

neutronicus 15y ago

When did you grow up? Was it before WWII or J. Edgar Hoover's tenure as FBI director? Because I wouldn't really describe either of those periods in American history as "beacons of freedom".

d0ne 15y ago
I'm 24 (soon to be 25) I grew up in the 90's

hrktb 15y ago

Perhaps we can go back to roots of the word "terrorism", and remember it was about the government doing random raids and arbitrary, abusive punishments on civilians, and thus spreading terror to keep the people low profile. Yes, terrorists have long won in USA.