Tag: 9/11 Terrorist Attack

A lot of the comments from the usual suspects on the 9/11 attacks run along the lines that no one ever imagined terrorists would be capable of, much less want to, simultaneously hijacks several jets and crash them into American targets. In fact, CNN reports that the FBI was warned several years ago that terrorist Ramzi Yousef had planned just such an act,

In another development, the FBI was warned six years ago of a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings, Philippine investigators said.

Philippine authorities learned of the plot after a small fire in a Manila apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef escaped at the time, but agents caught his right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, who told them about plots to hijack U.S. jets.

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X created a controversy when he characterized the assassination as “chickens coming home to roost.” Malcolm X believed that the United States was a fundamentally violent society, and his point was that in the context of that violence it is hardly surprising that someone would direct violence at the nation’s political leaders.

Harry Browne, the recent Libertarian Party presidential candidate, wrote an article yesterday which bluntly blamed American foreign policy for Tuesday’s terrorist attack,

Our foreign policy has been insane for decades. It was only a matter of time until Americans would have to suffer personally for it. It is a terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often have to suffer for the sins of the guilty.

When will we learn that we can’t allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?

President Bush has authorized continued bombing of innocent people in Iraq. President Clinton bombed innocent people in the Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia. President Bush Senior invaded Iraq and Panama. President Reagan bombed innocent people in Libya and invaded Grenada. And on and on it goes.

Did we think the people who lost their families and friends and property in all that destruction would love America for what happened?

Myles Kantor is outraged in response and claims that this is excusing or justifying the terrorist acts.

I think that is an untenable position. Browne’s point, at least as I read it, isn’t that somehow these terrorists were justified because of U.S. military intervention, but rather that if the United States is going to engage in the killing of innocent people abroad, we are foolish to think that those people won’t try to strike back in a similar fashion.

Kantor says that, “For a libertarian to soft-pedal it [mass murder] is obscene incoherence.” No, Myles, what is obscene is that our government has for far too long been an active participant in exactly the sorts of cowardly terrorist acts that were committed on Tuesday (though rarely on that scale).

George W. Bush says that countries that harbor or stand by and allow such acts to be planned and carried out are just as guilty as the terrorists. Well, where does that leave the United States given that the Central Intelligence Agency not only knew about but clearly provided aid and comfort to the Guatemalan military while it murdered tens of thousands of civilians? How can members of Congress go on television and talk about cowards who murder civilians when they just a few months ago approved a multi-billion dollar package to fight a war against Colombian civilians?

There is no excuse or justification for the 9/11 attacks, and the United States needs to respond appropriately by tracking down and bringing to justice, one way or another, those responsible for that heinous act. But we also need to have empathy and understanding for the civilian victims of the U.S. military and foreign policy and say enough is enough.

There’s an ArsTechnica thread on the 9/11 attack which features very moving collection of pictures of people around the world mourning for those who died in Tuesday’s attack.

The Boston Herald is reporting that five Arab men have been identified as suspects in the hijacking of four planes in the United States yesterday.

The disgusting part is how the men apparently lured the pilots out of the cockpit,

Once in the air, the hijackers in one plane began killing flight attendants in order to lure a pilot from the cockpit and seize the plane, said one source.

“They started killing stewardesses in the back of the plane as a diversion. The pilot came back to help and that is how they got into the cockpit,” said the source. The source could not specify whether those events took place on the American Airlines flight that left Logan, or the United Airlines flight. Both planes were plunged into the World Trade Center roughly an hour after they departed Boston.

The suspects had no guns, but used shaving kits and other carry-on luggage to smuggle knife-like weapons made up of plastic handles embedded with razor blades, sources familiar with last night’s developments said. That finding is consistent with reports of a flight attendant’s cell-phone call from one of the doomed airliners.

As if public opinion weren’t already inflamed enough.

Somebody today actually put up a t-shirt on Cafe Press with a graphic of a plane hitting the World Trade Center with the text, “I flew a plane into the World Trade Center … and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

Not to mention reports that E-Bay has had to yank auctions of World Trade Center debris.

Blackholebrain I think has it right on the nose about the coordinated terrorist attacks in the United States:

My thoughts: This is war… with these attacks being as serious as Pearl Harbor, if not worse.

He’s probably right assuming there is a viable target to hit. It’s hard to go to war against terrorist groups who rely on suicide bombers.