Yea, 9/11 was a bad event...but...

Urgg, every year its the same where people start saying how horrible 9/11 was and how tragic and how amazingly terrible an event it was...

Ok, yes, 3,000 people dieing is bad (not saying we shouldnt think of the people who were needlessly killed)... but what about the rest? Why dont i hear about the strong feelings of sadness when the day the iraq war started comes about? Is it because the people dieing there arent "one of us" ?

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Just saying, if you are talking about how horrible 9/11 was and how much it moves you and how sad you feel...you better be saying the same things towards a much more horrible event in our recent history when that day comes along.... (and not just for "our" people, you should be feeling the same thing towards ALL the innocent humans needlessly killed....)

Really bugs me when i see all the activity and "sadness"...and then the rest of the year is silent and back to normal... just smacks of phoney masks people put on....

Mourning each person individually would be impossible... but you can respect the dead in general.

When you hear of someone dieing (for whatever reason) you can take that and learn from it... and then after you have done what you can (learning to fix or not make the same mistakes that caused the death)...then they join the club of general dead. Its just as things are, fix it and move on.

If the person was close to you, then there is more to it... but most americans didnt know the 3,000 people other then "one of us". So why does it affect them so much more then "one of them"....

Erm, what are you supposed to learn from it? Everyday people have pretty much nothing to do with the deaths. It is sad, yes, but I don't understand your comment: Mourning each person individually would be impossible... but you can respect the dead in general.

Do you think the dead want our respect? I am quite certain they do not want or need anything from anyone, because, well, they are dead. So I don't respect the dead. If they have done good/great things in their lifetime, then I respect them for that. When I hear of innocents dying it is their family I feel for. Exactly how does one "respect the dead"? Especially in a general sense?

It is sad that innocent people die... What can I personal learn from it... erm... well nothing more than the basics that you learn as a child. Life is unfair. I am not saying that means we should just accept the deaths, but we also have to acknowledge that they will always happen, always have done.

I think who we mourn for is more to do with media coverage. The tsunami was not "close to home" but with such news coverage, it touched many people. But they can?t report on everything, so yes, they would usually go for things closer to home.

Exactly what do you expect us to do? Apart from "respect the dead" and all that vagueness? Everyday should we give a little thought to all the people that died that day? That would do as much good to them a praying for them. Meaning, it won?t do a damn thing.

You can learn sooooo much from the deaths of people! The reasons that made that death possible should be understood, if its unavoidable...then there isnt much you can do... but if its because of a bad government, being unclean, not eating right (and so on, and so on); there is much to be learnt!

When i say "respect the dead", i simply mean understand their death and recognize its not the desirable goal we should be after as a society (or world). Understand that their lives actually were innocent and that death should not have happened (ideally), which means there is something that needs correcting to keep it from repeating over and over.

As for mourning, well, thats a tricky subject. But basically most people feel sad not for the person that died, but for their own loss in that persons life (selfish reasons). The ideal? Well, thats another subject all together :)

Ok, so I am assuming that you are somebody that "learns" from the dead/death of innocent people. Has learning/respecting/understanding them help prevent any more?

Some people are serial killers. Me understanding about a serial killers mind, and how/why they do such things, is not going to prevent other serial killers. Me educating myself in matters of government (when it is directly causing deaths) is not going to stop it causing deaths. Just because you educate yourself about other situations, further from home, doesn't prevent them, unless you are a person in some sort of power.

Everyone knows there are things in this world that need to change, everyone knows many many people die every day that shouldn't. But knowing something needs to be corrected, and having the problem actually corrected are two different things.

I never do those minute silence things. I didn?t do it for 9/11 and I didn?t do it for the English terrorist attacks we had on the trains- one of which my brother was just one train ahead of getting caught up in. It should be up to people whether or not they want to think about those things, and if they want to think about those things specifically. Personally it seems a bit patronising to the dead and their families, and dismissive to all the other people that have had their lives snatched away from them.

Let?s play ?Death in Numbers?:

2,973 people died on 9/11

29,569 gun deaths in America (2004)- even if you take away the amount that are suicides, it is still higher than the twin towers. Where is the ?war on guns??

Africa: Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every five seconds?.. That?s daily!!

10.1 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday (2005)

An estimated 7.6 million died of cancer in 2005?

The whole ?never forget? thing surrounding the terrorist attacks is a joke too. It will be pretty much forgotten, or if not forgotten, than seen as a mere historical event rather than a catastrophe:

137,000,000 people died of the bubonic plague- where are their two minutes? Reread that number again and again.

33,000,000 people died in the An Shi Rebellion

20,000,000 in the Taiping rebellion?.. Most probably haven?t even heard of these two, good ol? wiki.

Etc And there are many more times when huge amounts of people have lost their lives, and yet are now mere stories in history books.

154,889 people die every single day?

 I don?t know how many of these people are ?innocent? but I?m sure quite a few, and I am sure some could have been prevented.

We can?t stop every death, and I believe we have to pick and choose what we think about and acknowledge. I have my own views what charities should get the most money, what problems should have the most attention etc etc. But each to their own I guess. There are just too many deaths, past, present and indeed future, to think about all, even in a general sense, unless you are seriously generalising it to a point of dismissing it.

I'm not directly responding to anyone's post, but wanted to say what this thread is making me think about. 

Some people argue that it's partly the United States and other rich countries' fault that poor countries are poor.  That kind of thing is pretty difficult to prove conclusively one way or another.  Some of the reasons they make that argument (as best I understand) are

1. historically the western rich countries took slaves from and then colonized many of the countries that are poor today.  The history is recent enough that it seems pretty reasonable that it would still have a negative effect on the poor countries.  Also the western rich countries drew the border lines for the current countries in Africa without regard to the ethnic groups that were there originally.  It continues to be difficult for ethnic groups that were originally enemies to become a cohesive government.  So there are civil wars/ assassinations of political candidates, etc.  

 2. World trade rules unfairly favor rich countries over poor countries.  Poor countries have crops to sell. Rich countries subsidize the farmers in the rich countries so the poor countries can't compete.  At the same time, rich countries (via the World Trade Organization), force poor countries to accept the rich countries' products.  That makes it even more difficult for farmers in poor countries to survive.

 3. Everyone knows that the leaders in some poor countries are corrupt.  These leaders do not represent the people of their country. These leaders take their government's money to live opulent lives while many of the people in the country live in dire poverty.  These leaders come to power through violent means such as coups, political assassinations, and intimidation of political opposition.  The motivation for these "leaders" to come to power is that whoever siezes control of the country will receive payment from rich countries for whatever natural resources exist in the country that the rich countries want (oil, diamonds, etc.).  Since the rich countries know that some poor countries' leaders are thugs, it isn't very ethical to encourage them by giving them the money for the natural resources.   

It would be great if someone who can articulate these things better than me wants to jump in. 

I think when people in rich countries learn about these things, pretty often they start to think there's a possibility that rich countries are partly responsible for poverty and death of innocent people in poor countries. It's easy to say that it's our politicians' fault or the rich corporations' fault or the media's fault.  It is partly their fault, especially since they have more power than others to do something about it.  But almost everyone who lives in a rich country benefits from living there.  And almost all of us have the opportunity to do some things about it.

Lorik, every time this year I have the same thoughts as you. As tragic as 9/11 was (and I am certainly not undermining the huge loss thousands of families suffered as a result of 9/11), I have to take a moment to ask myself why we don't put nearly as much emphasis on the thousands of innocent civilian lives being unjustly taken over in Iraq. We are all people, deep down we are all the same. Killing is killing and death is death, so we should all take a moment to honor ALL those whose lives have been cut short due to acts of terrorism or war.

9/11 was a shock because it was so senseless and out of the blue, and it was made even worse by our corrupt and incompetent president's exploiting it endlessly by trampling the Constitution and beginning an illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq, during which he forced our troops to murder over 50,000 Iraqi civilians, NONE of which had anything to do with 9-11.

 

I disagree with you, though, that one tragedy is worse than the other. The numbers are irrelevant to the families of the victims. The relatives of victims of George Bush's criminal invasion of Iraq are in no more or less agony than relatives of the innocent victims killed in 9-11.  Americans were right to be angry and hurt in the wake of that act - but it was wrong of Mr. Bush to use that anger to help him to start wars that were NOT in our country's interest and not useful in combating terror - it was the height of cynicism, but typical of a family built on cynicism. It's only natural that Americans are more affected by the deaths of Americans than those of Iraqis. I'm sure that most Iraqis didn't wake up on 9-12-01 and weep at the news that thousands of people had been murdered by terrrorists in New York - they probably just went about their daily business. Such is life...

People focus on the tragedies that are real to them, that hit close to them. Our news media pretty much make sure all we ever hear about is what's going on at home, so it's not much of a stretch to see why as nation we focus on tragedies at home.

When you die Lorik, your family will mourn your passing. Will their mourning of you be disingenuous because they don't mourn my passing? It's the same thing. Your death is real to them, it hits close to home. My death however tragic a loss to my family means nothing to your family.

Anyway, I know some folks like to get all angsty about this stuff, but could you imagine a society where people mourned every terrible thing that happened in this world? I'm sure the makers of anti-depressants and Kleenex would view that as christmas in June... or worse yet, a society that didn't mourn any tragedy at all.

Being from the same country isn't the same as being from the same family.  I'm American but I didn't know the people who died in 9-11.  Mourning for them isn't like mourning for someone I'm close to.  I'm  aware of the victims of 9-11 because of the news media.  If the news media drew my attention to the violence in Nigeria or Haiti more often, I'd be more aware of the victims there.  Therefore, it seems like a good idea to think about why the news media doesn't draw American's attention to Nigeria or Haiti or other poor countries.  We know there is terrible suffering in many poor countries.  The fact that the news media doesn't focus on those countries doesn't seem like an ethical reason for Americans not to make an effort to pay more attention to people in those countries.  We have access to the Internet, libraries, books, and international newspapers, so why not make an effort to pay attention to the other countries sometimes?  If you're interested, here's an article about violence Nigeria, which is a country in Africa that rich countries get oil from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/world/afric a/09nigeria.html ;

I'm so sick and tired of people downplaying the seriousness of 9/11 to this country. If you can find me any other one-day event that occurred on our soil (natural disaster, attack, architectural collapse, what have you) that was as devastating (in terms of human life lost), senseless, and unexpected as 9/11, I will laud your abilities and forever shut up.

But I lost two immediate family members (FDNY) that day; that left 3 children and two wives without their fathers/spouses. Virtually everyone in the upper Northeast was touched by the attack by losing someone very close to them. I could feel my middle school, miles away, shake that day and I could hear incessant sirens in my sleep for probably a week. People were leaping from the top floors of the buildings, for Christ's sake.

If you don't want to take part in the grieving process, then don't. But don't start questioning the merits of those of us who do, and don't you dare accuse us of being "phoney" people wearing "masks."

Figures you're from Kansas. What the hell would you know about it, anyway? People like you -- the ones who think it's phony to grieve at tragic anniversaries (from 9/11 to personal funerals) -- make me sick.

If you can find me any other one-day event that occurred on our soil (natural disaster, attack, architectural collapse, what have you) that was as devastating (in terms of human life lost), senseless, and unexpected as 9/11, I will laud your abilities and forever shut up. 

Ummm, Pearl Harbor.

The Navy and Marines suffered a total of 2,896 casualties of which 2,117 were deaths (Navy 2,008, Marines 109) and 779 wounded (Navy 710, Marines 69). The Army (as of midnight, 10 December) lost 228 killed or died of wounds, 113 seriously wounded and 346 slightly wounded. In addition, at least 57 civilians were killed and nearly as many seriously injured.

Add those up that's 2,402 deaths in a surprise attack on the US. About the same as 9/11 (off by a few hundred deaths, but if you add in injuries Pearl Harbor effected more Americans).

Way to miss the forest for the trees pepper... the first paragraph is my argument, while the second paragraph is an analogy to illustrate the original argument (not an argument itself). 

Original Post by kindoflikesarah:

If you can find me any other one-day event that occurred on our soil (natural disaster, attack, architectural collapse, what have you) that was as devastating (in terms of human life lost), senseless, and unexpected as 9/11, I will laud your abilities and forever shut up.

Ummm, Pearl Harbor.

The Navy and Marines suffered a total of 2,896 casualties of which 2,117 were deaths (Navy 2,008, Marines 109) and 779 wounded (Navy 710, Marines 69). The Army (as of midnight, 10 December) lost 228 killed or died of wounds, 113 seriously wounded and 346 slightly wounded. In addition, at least 57 civilians were killed and nearly as many seriously injured.

Add those up that's 2,402 deaths in a surprise attack on the US. About the same as 9/11 (off by a few hundred deaths, but if you add in injuries Pearl Harbor effected more Americans).

You're comparing civilians being targeted during a time of peace, to the military being targeted during a time of war...

Seriously?

I'm comparing two "surprise" attacks.

9/11 was horrible, but not special.

 

Original Post by kindoflikesarah:

If you can find me any other one-day event that occurred on our soil (natural disaster, attack, architectural collapse, what have you) that was as devastating (in terms of human life lost), senseless, and unexpected as 9/11, I will laud your abilities and forever shut up.

Ummm, Pearl Harbor.

The Navy and Marines suffered a total of 2,896 casualties of which 2,117 were deaths (Navy 2,008, Marines 109) and 779 wounded (Navy 710, Marines 69). The Army (as of midnight, 10 December) lost 228 killed or died of wounds, 113 seriously wounded and 346 slightly wounded. In addition, at least 57 civilians were killed and nearly as many seriously injured.

Add those up that's 2,402 deaths in a surprise attack on the US. About the same as 9/11 (off by a few hundred deaths, but if you add in injuries Pearl Harbor effected more Americans).

Pearl Harbor was a strategic military attack on legitimate military targets.  While it was most certainly an underhanded attack, it was an attack that a person could make sense of.  Japan foolishly thought that if it dealt a crippling blow the the US fleet, that they would be able to expand their empire without further interference from the US, and of course the exact opposite proved to be true.

 But 9-11 was an attack against civilians, at work in the middle of a bustling city.  It truly was an unprecedented act of evil in our history.  Pearl Harbor doesn't make me angry - it makes me amazed and puzzled at how incredibly foolish the Japanese military leadership was.  A few adjustments in their strategy and they truly could have continued to expand their empire with little interference from the US, but they decided to kick the sleeping giant.  I don't hate Japan for its foolish attack than I hate the US for its deplorable invasion of Iraq.

 

But whoever pulled the 9-11 attacks was a real piece of work.  The thought of what those people did still infuriates me because of the innocents they killed and because of how horribly our country has changed in the wake of those attacks, especially since the attacks were completely symbolic and served no real strategic purpose.  I don't think you can compare the two attacks at all.

Original Post by kindoflikesarah:

I'm comparing two "surprise" attacks.

9/11 was horrible, but not special.

I have to wonder exactly what you consider "special" attack-wise.

I'm not stupid, I realize that the two situations aren't exactly the same.

The point I was trying to make is that we have had another time in our history where the US was attacked and lost thousands of lives in one day. I don't value civilian life over military life, so 9/11 and Pearl Harbor are in my opinion, just as bad. A life is a life.

 

You know, what's clear from JD's post (#50) is that he is still hurting intensely from losing two family members that day.

I can understand that because I'm still hurting about losing two family members 2 years ago and they just died of normal causes - not anything unusual like an intricately planned mass murder.

I feel sure that JD is not alone in his grief which began that day.

I do not diminish the pain and anguish of every Iraqi mother who has lost her child(ren) during this war.  Nor do I diminish the very real suffering of the people who've lost loved ones since 9/11 -- we've now more than doubled our losses with over 3800 troop deaths from the Iraq war. 

I do not think it is for me to judge the sincerity or legitimacy of another's suffering.  That, to me, is either exceptionally cold, or a pathetic plea for attention.

Original Post by nomoreexcuses:

I do not think it is for me to judge the sincerity or legitimacy of another's suffering. That, to me, is either exceptionally cold, or a pathetic plea for attention.

 And that strikes me as a perfect place to end this thread. Well put.

Ok so I have a question. Everyone seems to agree that the loss of human life is tragic, especially innocent human life. Also, everyone agrees that more should be done to help save innocent lives.

Also, everyone seems to agree that the war in Iraq is wrong and we have no right to be there and that it was done for profits and oil (Which I have to disagree with, for if it was done for that reason wouldn't you think gas and oil prices would have fallen by now? hmmm.)

But my question is, if everyone is for helping innocent people, why are people against the overthrow of a cruel dictator that has been reportedly responsible of the deaths of up to 1 million innocent people. I have even read several reports that up to 500,000 children have died due to malnutrition, even when international organizations tried to bring food into the country and was subsequently taken by the regime and later found in massive warehouses. Everyone agrees that it is a horrible thing and something should be done about it, but when somebody steps in and tries to stop it, we don't have the right to do that? In WWII we didn't enter the war earlier because it wasn't 'our problem', even though Hitler was causing the lives of millions of innocents. Imagine how many lives could have been saved had we stepped in sooner to stop the atrocities occurring in Europe.

But I find it baffling that people always want to help the innocents of the world and to stop the suffering of innocent people, but when something is done about it, we had 'no right' to do it. Do you really think the Iraqi people were happy under the Hussein regime, do you really think that their lives don't at least have a chance to be better now that Hussein is out of power, when upwards of 1 million innocent people were killed because of him and his regime in a country of 27 million?

I know most of you don't see it this way, and probably never will, but I just felt a need to point out a different side to things that really hasn't been pointed out yet in this thread.