Question about 9/11...

[Badgerino]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Why is always the big question. Why him/her? What did they do to deserve that? Or in the extreme, why them and not me?
It's easier to answer if the deceased is old or been sick a long time. Especially tough to answer when it's one of those "shit happens" things like a tree falling or getting hit by lightning.
Quite often it ends up the only explanation is, shit happens or God's will. You have to figure out what works for you.

I knew a man my age about 10 years ago who was a very devout Christian and was dying of cancer. He said that people asked him if he ever asked, "Why me?" and his reply was, "Why not me?" The Bible says that the rain falls and the sun shines upon the just and the unjust. Just a nice religious way of saying that "shit happens". Sometimes what goes around comes around and sometimes it doesn't. The most absurd saying is that everything happens for a reason: Duh! Of course it does, but not everything happens for a purpose.
Or even better is the "if it's my time, it's going to happen". To which I answer,
"then why look both ways or even at all when you cross a street because after all if it's your time to die, it's your time."

9/11 taught this country that we are not living in Neverland anymore. People had been dying all over the world from terrorism, but we remained relatively unscathed. But then we hold American lives more dear than people in the rest of the world hold their lives. Also, we would not give an all-American looking boy such as Timothy McVeigh a second look if he sat down next to us on a bus.
But those towel wearing A-rabs are a different story. Amazingly, not all the peoples in the Mideast are Arabs, but they get tarred with the same brush.

9/11 was our "welcome to the club", welcome to what many nations of the world had been enduring for many years. After 9/11 the world had an empathy and good feeling for us that could have lasted for a generation, but good old George has thrown that away.
Don't care what the rest of the world thinks of us? Might want to think about that again if countries start deciding to use the Euro as the currency for world debt rather than the US dollar. Money talks.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Badgerino

9/11 taught this country that we are not living in Neverland anymore.

9/11 taught this country that this adminstration stifled good Americans from uncovering and stopping 11 September. 9/11 taught us that this president was so in denial as to blame someone who was a threat to no one - Saddam. Badgerino knows this but somehow forgot to remember those facts. 9/11 taught us that the president does not even read his own memos - as even his own Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill reports.

America is attacked only when we decide to become a colonial power. We said we would leave the Middle East after Kuwait was rescued. We lied. We did not leave. The world changed starting 1 Aug 1990. America that could have demonstrated why America was a good and honest nation, instead, began to impose American principles on others. To discover why America is threatened, start with those damning numbers. American popularity dropped from 70% approval rating to 15%. Therein lies why is it now dangerous to adverstise an American citizenship. This problem created when extremists decided to fix those other nations rather than let those other nations fix themselves.

Previously, the French were more often attacked and threatened. Who now has an international approval rating worse than the French? Thank you George Jr for making Americans a target.

Those living in hate assume that other people always hate or are jealous of Americans. Same liars that also created and now deny this 15% approval rating.

[Badgerino]

Originally Posted by tw

9/11 taught this country that this adminstration stifled good Americans from uncovering and stopping 11 September. 9/11 taught us that this president was so in denial as to blame someone who was a threat to no one - Saddam. Badgerino knows this but somehow forgot to remember those facts. 9/11 taught us that the president does not even read his own memos - as even his own Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill reports.

America is attacked only when we decide to become a colonial power. We said we would leave the Middle East after Kuwait was rescued. We lied. We did not leave. The world changed starting 1 Aug 1990. America that could have demonstrated why America was a good and honest nation, instead, began to impose American principles on others. To discover why America is threatened, start with those damning numbers. American popularity dropped from 70% approval rating to 15%. Therein lies why is it now dangerous to adverstise an American citizenship. This problem created when extremists decided to fix those other nations rather than let those other nations fix themselves.

Previously, the French were more often attacked and threatened. Who now has an international approval rating worse than the French? Thank you George Jr for making Americans a target.

Those living in hate assume that other people always hate or are jealous of Americans. Same liars that also created and now deny this 15% approval rating.

I think that we are very closely politically aligned and I agree with what you write. My sarcasm may have been too subtle, but my opinion is that before 9/11 the American people tended to think that terrorism is what happened in other countries such as Israel or Northern Ireland which lived with terrorism for years. 9/11 brought it home that it can happen here (hence, "Neverland", but we lost our innocence). Terrorism can be like the difference between a sniper and a sharp shooter--it depends which side you are on. This does not make it right, but often terrorism is not created in a vacuum. Terrorists do hate and are jealous of Americans, but there are undoubtedly other ingredients that go into their making. Foreign policy decisions made my this country over the years by this country have not helped. If these same type of things had happened in the United States would there be some Americans with right-wing religious fanaticism who would become "snipers" or "sharp shooters"?

Badgerino, a blue-state, bit "L" Liberal Democrat who is proud of it and justifiably so considering who is in charge now.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by tw

9/11 taught this country that this adminstration stifled good Americans from uncovering and stopping 11 September.

Okay, so 9 months of Bush is responsible for what 8 years of Clinton isn't.

I think I'm starting to get it.

That was sarcasm.