9/11, also known as September 11, means September 11th 2001 when Osama bin Laden’s men killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Going by the numbers killed, it was the worst day in America since the civil war over a hundred years ago. It is called “9/11” because in America that is short for the 11th day of the 9th month, the day it happened.
Osama’s men took control of four planes in the east headed for the west. They turned them back to the east and flew them into buildings in New York and Washington that represent American power: the Twin Towers, the two tallest buildings in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The fourth plane, destined for either the Capitol or the White House, never made it but went down in a field in the state of Pennsylvania.
It took America completely by surprise.
I was on my way to work on a bus headed for New York when it happened. We were across the river about to enter New York just after the second jet struck the second tower. I never saw so much smoke in all my life. They turned us back from the city. An hour or so later we heard the sickening news: the towers had fallen.
To see the twin towers no longer there five years later, still affects me. I cannot put it into words. Something between anger and awe.
America is far across the seas from most of the troubles in the world. And so when we hear the news about it, it seems unreal to us, like a fable. No longer.
Osama bin Laden wants to push America out of the Muslim world. So far 9/11 has done the opposite: in 2001 America sent its military to overthrow the government in Afghanistan and, in 2003, it did the same in Iraq.
Overthrowing governments was easy: but setting up strong, new, friendly governments in their place has proved to be very difficult. The governments America has set up are weak and many want to see them fail, Osama bin Laden and his men among them. So America is still fighting in those countries years later!
That may be just what Osama bin Laden had in mind: he fought Russia in Afghanistan 20 years ago. Not only did Russia lose the war, its rule over the Muslim countries in Central Asia was broken – countries it had ruled for over a hundred years!
It took nearly ten years to break Russia. America has been in Afghanistan only five years and in Iraq three. In Somalia Bin Laden saw how cowardly America was and how little patience it has. Not even Russia was that bad. So he still hopes to win.
The attacks were on September 11th because that is the day in 1922 when the British took over Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, the last great Muslim empire.
There has been no attacks in America since 9/11. That is a surprise. But if the purpose of the attacks were to draw America into a fight, no more were needed.
– Abagond, 2006.
See also:
Yeah, the Russians did not break in Afghanistan for a while, did they?
I think it is because we think differently than they do. We are willing to fight, but we are not willing to take HUGE casualties. We actually cherish human life (or so we say) whereas the Russians had, as they did in World War II, the “by any means necessary” attitude.
I mean, that’s why we dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan — we did NOT want to invade mainland Japan. God knows how many men we would have lost. Half a million maybe?
Stalin could care less that he lost 25 million people in World War II. He was just glad he was on the winning side. To the Russians, it seems, the end justifies the means.
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Democracies are ill-suited for fighting guerrilla wars:
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I remember what I was doing on 9/11. I had the day off from work and I was relaxing at home. And the first thing I did in the morning was to switch on the tv. I was shocked to see one of the twin towers burning. And then a moment later, I was also horrifed to watch the jetplane crash into second tower. I thought to myself, “What the f-ing hell is going on?” I was glued to my tv. When the towers collapsed, I cried thinking about all those poor people still in them. September 11th changed everything for America and the world.
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@proudchocolategirl:
Yes, I was in Canada at the time. Why?
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@proudchocolategirl:
I had just turned on the tv waiting for a show and almost immediately, the news media flashed images of the World Trade Center in a fiery inferno. What an awful day.
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What a terrible day. All those lives lost, and in such horrifying ways.
My sister worked just across the East River from where the towers were located, and had exited the Long Island Railroad onto her way to her job when she saw the aftermath of the plane flying into the first tower. She immediately called me on her cell phone telling me about it, and all I could figure was that it was entirely accidental, I had not considered the fact that commercial airliners probably had no business flying over Manhattan in the first place. Within moments she was telling me that a plane had just hit the second tower. I realized then that these were no accidents.
Although my sister had an excellent view from her standpoint, and had her eyes trained on the towers, she says that she didn’t actually see the plane itself as it headed toward the tower and hit. She did see the massive burst of flames at impact, however. She thinks her mind couldn’t deal with the live image of a plane full of people headed to certain destruction, and simply blanked the image out.
On her way back home that day my sister found herself in the company of a woman who had managed to escape the second tower. She told my sister that when she’d heard the explosion of the plane hitting the first tower, she immediately prepared to leave but was met by her boss, who told her to stay, as it was “only the other tower that was affected”. As he walked back to his office she picked up her things and left anyway. This lady was crying as she told my sister this, and asked my sister if she thought her boss had made it out of the building….
A scary thing for me is that I had interviewed for a position at the Dept of Taxation and Finance, which had offices in the World Trade Center. If I had taken the offer, I probably would have been in one of the towers that day….
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I was thinking of doing a tenth-anniversary post, but I do not know what I would say. It was a terrible day and that has not changed.
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go ahead
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Thanks for this post Abagond its greatly appreciate. One more interesting note about 9/11 it also happens to be the emergency call number for the police and ambulances: 9-1-1. Which makes me wonder how in the world did Bin Laden and his men make the connection between September 11 and 9-1-1 emergency service number? Is it just a coincidence? Also September 11 is an important date in Chile as well. On September 11, 1973, Chile’s democratically elected president Salvande Allende (who would be an early version of Hugo Chavez but less crazy) was assassinated in a CIA backed coup that led to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
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[…] 9/11 […]
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If the author of the blog is the same person that wrote that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the tragic crime on the day of September ,the 11th, 2001, aka ubiquitously known as 9/11 . Why have you not done an update on this article?
Do you still believe that (the) Arabs were responsible for this American tragedy? Have you shifted your opinion? Why or why not?
Surely nobody believes that Osama bin Laden was responsible for it, unless you are pushing your own agenda ,or are brainwashed by the mainstream media in service of these supracriminal mastermind ? Most of the outside world knows that the Israeli’s, the dual citizens of immense power and the traitorous US government of the time ,were responsible for this monstrous crime , it’s cover-up and the follow on genocide visited upon countries in the orbit of Israel.
I have noticed that your blog has been running for some time : this blog post was written in 2006, five years after the tragedy, when many people were already realizing the truth about that fateful day and in eleven years you have not changed your position . How so?
What do you think of Cynthia Mckinney’s grilling of Donald Rumsfeld of the missing two and half trillion dollars on the eve of the mass murder of American citizens who died in the most horrible way? Building seven and the Pentagon?
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Your silence in regards to my questions is revealing.
At the barest minimum ,a person would have thought ,that you as a fellow New Yorker who shown more interest in the biggest crime in your own backyard.
No true sense of consideration with the victims ,no sense of wanting justice. No two sides of the story. Since you hate Trump so much ,you could have trounced upon him on the pretext that he reneged on his promise to re-open the investigation (there never was an investigation,was there,only a massive cover-up with a shoddy commission). And why he silently dropped it afterwards with the press that he rails against, as quiet as you have been.
There is not a shred of evidence that Osama bin Laden was responsible (in a court of law) .
So according to you ,we must ignore the thousands of top level architects, engineers and scientists, the likes of like people Chistopher Bollyn, because you believe the words of Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu who the the first to accuse Osama bin Laden ,and shortly afterwards waging war on Afghanistan.
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Another thing, shouldn’t you and millions right thinking citizens, regardless of persuasion, should be so outraged that your ‘best friend in the Middle East’ should get away with terrorism against you,while America offers it unconditional military support and monetary support in the annual billions while many go hungry, are jobless and have no resources to eking out a decent life , except to becoming debt slaves?
Are you not suffiently appalled that the world’s leading terrorist state with all its genocidal terrorists, elevated to President: Begin , Rabin, Sharon, Barak, Netanyanhu are recipients of your tax-dollars?
Are you not the least suspicious or wary that the mainstream media has blanked out the the real terrorists and calls any-one who dares challenge the official narrative a conspiracy theorist?
Perhaps you have better things to do, like write about mermaids and Black music -mollification of the darkies, eh? and trangenderism and memes generated by Irish descended Americans, than to answer a few stupid questions on the biggest false flag ever pulled off by Israel ?
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Everyone remembers where they were on this day. God rest the souls lost on that tragic day.
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I was moving house on 9/11, packing stuff while watching the saga unfold on TV.
But it was only a few days later that I learned that one of my buddies was in the windows of the world in the WTC that morning. We never heard from him again.
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My best friend’s cousin died in 9/11. So did the fiancee of one of my wife’s friends. One of my friends worked across the street and saw the bodies falling. I was across the river about to enter the Lincoln Tunnel and saw more smoke than I had ever seen in my life. Even then I did not think the Twin Towers would fall. Oh my God.
I can still remember seeing the cranes on top of the Twin Towers back when they were building them when I was a boy. I remember thinking that the towers would still be standing long after I am dead. So, so wrong.
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I had worked late the day before, so i was pulling into the parking lot around i want to say 10,at AT&T local services (not ibm) in Dayton, NJ. My exwife called me as i was parking, screaming the government of Abu Dhabi declared war in us! I don’t remember the rest, she was at the house then.
As i looked over to the main entrance, a lot of people were standing around smoking, or even not, just standing there. I got a cup of coffee and made my way into the control room for the private network, just before the south tower fell. Omg, well that was the initial report since retracted by the bbc that the gov’t of abu dhabi issued a statement that the popular front for the liberation of palestine claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in new york city.
The tv’s in the NOC were huge, and there were 2.
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I went to church later that month at tahuti, it still smelled like smoke weeks later. I told them i was just having the phrase ‘black september’ pop into my head unbidden some time before.
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I remember seeing the breaking news just after the 1st tower was hit and instinctively knowing it was no accident.
I remember telling my wife that the 1st responders would stage, leery of a secondary attack.
I remember right after I saw the second plane enter Tower 2, saying softly, “Now you go. Time to work.”
I remember the overwhelming feelings of shock and disbelief as the first tower fell. The feelings of panic and despair followed almost instantly as I thought of those trapped inside.
Full disclosure, I’m not from, nor have I ever lived permanently in NYC. But, I remember the look of fear in my wife’s eyes as she realized that 1st responders had entered The Towers and asked, “You would have gone in there?”. As I looked at her, our 1 year old in her arms, it was the first time I realized the burden, the sacrifices, the commitment, all of it, that families of first responders must shoulder.
I remember discovering my faith in humanity as I stood in traffic, boot in hand, watching people in broken down rust-buckets stop traffic to raid their pockets, cupholders and seats for every last penny to donate to those families.
I remember seeing the smoke rising from the pile as we made our approach to LaGuardia.
I remember the quiet, solemn unity of the city still processing its grief. A city that might sooner see you pee on the side of a building than allow you to use a bathroom without buying something was now a city of restaurants giving meals to responders working the pile.
I remember the makeshift memorials of St. Paul’s, even a few years later. ( I think it’s still there, though I haven’t been to the “official” memorial yet.)
I remember that 9/11/2001 showed me the absolute worst humanity has to offer. But, I mostly remember that the minutes, days, weeks and even months after showed me the absolute best of humanity as well. Those conflicting emotions tear at me even today, as sadness and rage clash with empathy and love. 9/11 may have brought with it fear and despair, but it also gave me hope.
I Will Never Forget.
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Yeah man i used to work in bldg. 5 for 18 months at american express travel related services around 96.
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I usually didnt get off the subway at wtc every day, maybe that’s when i took the path? But just thinking of that, bldg 5 destroyed, the subway station filled with rubble, happy ptsd!
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