12 Years Ago...

Twelve years ago this morning, 2,977 innocent people, mostly American, were killed by al Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four aircraft.  Two were crashed into the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, one was crashed into the Pentagon, and one went down into a field in Pennsylvania (presumably because the passengers overpowered the hijackers).

Like most Americans, I will never forget the shock and horror of that day, or our fears in the days immediately following.  I mourn those 2,977 innocents, and each year on this day I take a few minutes to remember them.

I also will never forget how this nation came together in response.  I celebrate that American spirit each year on this day.  But that sure didn't last long, did it?

As the years go by and our ineffective, intrusive, and downright un-American response to 9/11 congeals into institutional concrete ... I'm beginning to think that the cure was worse than the injury.  The TSA appears to be nearly completely ineffective, but costs billions of dollars each month and is as entrenched as any bureaucracy I've ever heard of.  The NSA revelations, still slowly and painfully rolling out, collectively reveal how precious little our government doesn't know about us.  The only thing that seems to have truly been improved is our intelligence capabilities, and I'm really just hoping for that – inferring from the lack of successful follow-on attacks that our intelligence gathering must be working...

The Fake 9/11 Survivor...

This is just plain weird!

No Words Needed...

Via reader “Ole Timer”:

New York on 9/11 + 10 Years...

During my recent business trip to New York, I stayed on the 43rd floor of a hotel directly overlooking the old World Trade Center site.  In the first photo below, you can see the two squares of the 9/11 monument; in the second, the new Freedom Tower rising just alongside them.  As usual, click to enlarge.  Quite a sight...

Remembering 9/11...

This morning I find it hard to concentrate on anything other than remembering that awful day 10 years ago.  Wandering around the intertubes, I ran into some related things that struck me for one reason or another.  First, George W. Bush's speech yesterday dedicating the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania:





Don Surber looks forward, saying “We shall fear no evil.”

Neo-neocon declares the 9/11 memorial in New York a “Fitting tribute.”

A pilot who was ready to give her life on 9/11.

And finally, Mark Steyn in his inimitable fashion skewers the multi-culti, touchy-feely, pansy wing's response to 9/11.  As usual with him, I feel the need to laugh and cry at the same time...

Meaninful Adjacencies...

The New Yorker has an interesting short article on how the names of the dead will be arranged at the 9/11 memorial (due to open on 9/11/11).  It's a solution to a problem that I'd not thought of: when you have several places to display names, which names go in which place, and what order do they go in?  I'd most likely have opted for a simple alphabetical order, but as the article points out, this is actually less than ideal.

The solution turns out to be mathematically challenging, and computers were used to figure out the final ordering.  The guiding principle used is “meaningful adjacencies”, meaning that names found next to one another are connected in some way (organizational affiliation, relationships, families, etc.).  Fascinating stuff.

Newly-Released Photos of 9/11...

From the N.Y. police department.  They're just as shocking now as they were over eight years ago...

Remembering 9/11...

Eight years ago, it was.  I still think about it every day – usually, for some reason, on the way home from work.  I still remember my shock, and over the next few days, my dawning realization that the radical Muslims were actually serious about killing us all.

These days I feel like a bit of a minority...

In reading many other rembrances this morning, Peggy Noonan's piece resonated most strongly.  A taste:

They've been marked by 9/11 more than they know. It was their first moment of historical consciousness. Before that day, they didn't know what history was; after that day, they knew they were in it.

It was a life-splitting event. Before it they were carefree, after they were careful. A 20-year-old junior told me that after 9/11, "a backpack on a subway was no longer a backpack," and a crowded theater was "a source for concern." Every one of them used the word "bubble": the protected bubble of their childhood "popped." And all of them said they spent 9/11 and the days after glued to the television, watching over and over again the footage—the north tower being hit by the plane, the fireball. The video of 9/11 has firmly and ineradicably entered their brains. Which is to say their first visual memory of America, or their first media memory, was of its towers falling down.

I'd never fully realized this: 9/11 was for America's kids exactly what Nov. 22, 1963, was for their parents and uncles and aunts. They were at school. Suddenly there were rumors in the hall and teachers speaking in hushed tones. You passed an open classroom and saw a teacher sobbing. Then the principal came on the public-address system and said something very bad had happened. Shocked parents began to pick kids up. Everyone went home and watched TV all day, and the next.

And her conclusion:

He remembered after 9/11 those who rose up to fight terrorism. Even as a child he was moved by them. There are always in history so many such people, he said. It is always the great reason for hope.

The whole thing is here.