Page 1 of 2 [ 22 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

King0fSpades
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2021
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 764
Location: The City of Roses

10 Sep 2021, 8:18 pm

Can we all just admit that America has been going steadily downhill since that tragic event? :(


_________________
♡ The Clergy
◇ The Merchants
♧ The Peasants
♤ The Military


shlaifu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 May 2014
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,659

10 Sep 2021, 9:27 pm

the US have become a surveillance state with heavily militarized police, while losing its international credibility. Yet, I think this would have happened either way. If it jadn't been the war on terror, it would have been some other war, probably on drugs. Or immigrants. The deregulation and subsequent collapse of the financial industry would have happened. The anger, the wealth divide, the "culture war" fabricated by fox news and the likes - all these things would have happened, with or without 9/11, and chances are, George Bush's stupid crusade through the middle east might have just as well. Maybe not through Afghanistan, but 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, and they invaded anyway.


_________________
I can read facial expressions. I did the test.


King0fSpades
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2021
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 764
Location: The City of Roses

10 Sep 2021, 9:29 pm

shlaifu wrote:
the US have become a surveillance state with heavily militarized police, while losing its international credibility. Yet, I think this would have happened either way. If it jadn't been the war on terror, it would have been some other war, probably on drugs. Or immigrants. The deregulation and subsequent collapse of the financial industry would have happened. The anger, the wealth divide, the "culture war" fabricated by fox news and the likes - all these things would have happened, with or without 9/11, and chances are, George Bush's stupid crusade through the middle east might have just as well. Maybe not through Afghanistan, but 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, and they invaded anyway.



Yeah, it really sucks. :(


_________________
♡ The Clergy
◇ The Merchants
♧ The Peasants
♤ The Military


Pepe
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2013
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 26,635
Location: Australia

10 Sep 2021, 9:35 pm

King0fSpades wrote:
Can we all just admit that America has been going steadily downhill since that tragic event? :(


Firstly, it is 9/11 already, here in Australia. 8)

And I honestly do think Bush Jr's invasion and occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan was the beginning of America's economic decline.
Thank you, Republicans, for that. [sarcasm] :mrgreen:



UncannyDanny
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 Nov 2014
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,745
Location: Middle-Earth

10 Sep 2021, 9:37 pm

Yeah, two freaking decades have passed since this incident occurred.

I heard they're making a new World Trade Center now. I wonder when it will be done.



King0fSpades
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2021
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 764
Location: The City of Roses

10 Sep 2021, 10:17 pm

The ultimate irony (at least to me) is that everything The Tower card symbolizes in tarot is exactly what has happened to our country during and after the destruction of The World Trade Center.

The Tower card was inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel btw. Just food for thought...

Image


_________________
♡ The Clergy
◇ The Merchants
♧ The Peasants
♤ The Military


ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,237
Location: Long Island, New York

11 Sep 2021, 8:48 am

I feel bitter today.

I think both sides lost. The Jahidists did not come close to getting their worldwide caliphate.

I believe Bin Ladin and Al Queda did it and there was no controlled demolition. I think because of their business ties with the Bin Ladin family the Bushes let it happen. So yeah I believe Bush and Cheney and crew got away with treason so I am bitter about that. This is a topic for another thread that I have no desire to start because I believe the “9/11 Truth Movement” is a lost cause and has been since 2009.

If I was President in 2001 I would have ordered the assassination of the Saudi Royal Family.

The months after 9/11 were as the cliche goes it was best of times and the worst of times. Every day it seemed on the way to and from work we had to stop to let a funeral procession go by. My brother and a couple of people I know were close enough to the towers that I could have been a part of these processions not an onlooker. OTOH for a few months there was unity that we have not been close to in my lifetime before or since. People were nicer to each other, there were flags everywhere, people emotionally patriotic even in the places you least expected it like Greenwich Village. For a time the usual disdain New York and the rest of country has fo each other melted away. Most of the rah rah kill the towelheads type patriotism was not coming from the New York region, we were too close to the actual death and destruction. I understand that type of intensity could not last, it was inevitable life would resume but that we pissed it away to the point of being in the 180 opposite place we are today is just too painful and frustrating to adequately express in words.

In hindsight while the unity was genuinely felt it temporarily covered up the divisions. In the long run 9/11 blew these divisions wide open. Out of fear we gave away our privacy and certain freedoms way to easily. I think a loose line can be drawn between no weapons of mass destruction, 9/11 conspiracy theories, birther and stolen election conspiracy theories, Trump actively working for Putin conspiracy theories. I can’t envision Trump winning without 9/11 and its aftermath. While immigration has always been a contentious issue the added fear of terrorists slipping in was an important factor in making it such a winning issue for Trump.

What makes this anniversary particularly bitter is not so much that it is the 20th anniversary but the defeat in Afghanistan.

Image


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 33,873
Location: temperate zone

11 Sep 2021, 9:51 am

In the Nineties Ben Ladin planned to get the US into a military quagmire....in a Muslim country. He was thinking maybe in...Somalia, Yemen, or maybe in Afghanistan.

Ben Laden got his wish.

He also got killed.

Nine eleven unified the US. Like Pearl Harbor. But in only a couple of years we went from Pearl Harbor to Vietnam- from the unity of the second world war to the polarization and division of the Vietnam era.

W. Bush had to invade Afghanistan, but he did not have to invade Iraq.

So you can condemn W for the later, but not for the former.

And therein lies the rub. The whole 20 year US involvment is bracketed by two Presidential "decisions" that, let face it, were NOT decisions but actions that no POTUS would have had the choice to do differently: Bushs invasion, and Biden withrawal.

Bush had no choice but to respond to 9-11 but to counter attack.

And its hard to imagine how any POTUS could have withdrawn twenty years later by not creating a disaster.

John Bolton said that we should stay in Afghanistan for (essentially) forever in an open ended commitment (I suppose he means like our presence in South Korea and in Germany) as "an insurance policy against terrorism". Not sayin I agree, but its a logical opinion.

So its either stay forever, or pull out.

Biden knew that part of why many voters were driven to vote for fringe candidates like Sanders and Trump is because of war weariness. So Bolton's option is not ...an option. So he chose to end it.

If thats the choice then it hard to imagine a POTUS withdrawing with significantly less disgrace. You could imagine a POTUS using a long secret timetable, and placing Americans and Afghans with American connections near the capital city and near the airport for easy evacuation. But that would have tipped off everyone that the US was planning to abandon the country and sell it down the river. That would have demoralized our Afghan allies and emboldened the Taliban to attack. And the house of cards would have still have collapsed just as fast. So there would have been little difference.

So the whole 20 years was like a Greek Tragedy. Fate that the US couldnt escape- starting with an unavoidable invasion, and ending with an unavoidably disasterous withdrawal.

So what have we learned Dorothy...from all of this?

Beats me.



Last edited by naturalplastic on 11 Sep 2021, 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

aghogday
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Nov 2010
Age: 63
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,561

11 Sep 2021, 12:08 pm



9/11, A STory of Karma

Actions And Consequences;

Yes. Reminded of the Day

By Coincidence Making my
9,911th Post At 1:01 AM on 9/11/2021 on the "Wrong

Planet" Of Course Only Psychologically Meaningful

To Me As Just Part of What Humans Naturally

Do With Acausal Connecting Principle (Synchronicity) Events in Life...

The Story of Karma Continues; Just Actions And Consequences;

One Country Imperially Acting For ItS Own Benefit Using the
9/11 Tragedy to Bond and Bind A Country, the United States,

In A Distraction of Iraq To Kill Way over 100,000 Innocent

Brown Muslim Lives That Made No Difference to Power and

Greed Seeking to Tear Down and Rebuild A Country For

The American
Dollar

God

Profit

And Expansion
of Powers In Another
Line of Unwarranted Wars
Since World War II, Where Many

Innocent Folks Died for Not Any God Damn
Good Reason at All Except for Power And Greed...

That is Never A Good Reason For Sacrificing Human Lives...

And The Rest Of Nature As Atomic Bombs Might do
in Future Unwarranted Conflicts too... So the

American Way of Economic Greed And

Power Continues As We continue

To Eat Away 40 Percent

of Humanity's

Resources on
the Planet Earth
With 4 Percent of the

Population; WHere Selfish Human

Beings From Minions to Despicable Leaders

Can't Even Join Hands in a Decision to Safely

Vaccinate to Thwart A Defeat Of Our Economy
And Way of Life By A Common All Natural Enemy

Of A F In

Pandemic

Virus Used

As A Tool for
Only Political Gain

No Matter How Many

Humans Around the World
May Fall to Death As A Consequence

of the Ignoricism Real Religion Now Professed
in Churches Across the United States From Pulpit
And Politics Same

Creating

A Special

Brew of

Armagedon
Pandemic
Ignoricism Disease

As Blood Runs Ripe and
Diseased on Our Soils Now...

Karma of over 666,000 Souls

Many Now Unmasked and Unvaccinated

Associated Who Didn't Need to Die at all...

Yet We Take All Day to Remember the 3,000

Or So Who Did For that one Day 20 Years Ago When

Another 1500 or So Will Die Today Just Because We

Cannot Bond

Together

to Defeat

A Common Enemy

Vaccinated to Thwart

A Deadly Pandemic

Variant From

Killing

Our Neighbors Dead;

If Jesus Could Be Real

And Living Today; All there

Would Be to Show is Tears now

Through Face Palms Forests Thick....

On That Day, 9/11, 'The Soul of America' These Days,

Existed in a Department Head Meeting At the Military

Station i Was Employed at as a Federal Employee; A Manager
of A Facility of the Base With Other Managers too And the Leader

In Charge's Response

Was Get Back to

Work It's

Likely There

Will Be More Attacks;

Our Work is More Important

Than What is Happening in New, York, New York Now...

This Work Ethic of Soulless Humanity is the Plague Now

And Then Still That
is Steadily Falling

Steadily

Falling U.S.

As HeLL ON Earth...

The Pandemic of Destruction;
The Ignoricism of Humanity
That A Substantial Part of
Humanity Has become

Within Our Borders..

Karma Never

Sleeps Nor Does Death...

9/11 Has Been the Smell of
The Soul of America Since the 1950's...

As The Portable Morgues On Our Soils Continue to Fill-up

Out of Sight, Out of Mind For Most, If only A 'Twin-Tower' could

Be Blown

Up in

Each

Hospital

so We Could

See How We

Are Blowing Each

Other Up As Blood
Runs Deeper than
Ever Now on Our Own
Soils For the Sake of

Both Money

And the
Reality of
What the
Real Religion
of this Country
Most Ignoricism
Does In Terms of
Harming, Raping, Maiming, Killing Most...

i Am Sorry For Those Deaths on 9/11; Yet

The Reality is the Karma From That Day
And Before We aRe ALL Facing Now As

THere is No Separation

In A Village No
Matter

How
High
the Walls
We Pretend
to Build Around Our Humanity...

Let's Remember too The Day Most of
The Country Held Hands in Plans to
Kill Over 100,000 Innocent Brown
Muslims FolkS iN Iraq For A Dream

of Domination...

Over A
Cold
Stone Lie...

It Was Clear to
me A Scam From Day One..

All i had to do is Look in George W. Bush's Eyes...

He Gets Off Easy Now With the What He Helped
Spawn with Trump too...

Never the Less

He And 'His'

Murdered

Over

100,000
Innocent Human Beings

And Now We Fall Over the Same
Money God of Power And Domination...

So Where We Are We Going; It's As Simple
As Where We Have Been for now... And Yeah,
i Remember That Feeling of Unity of Patriotism
For the First Time in my Life too When We Were

Attacked

Sadly

Those

IN Power

Cr8pped All over
The Eagle's Wings

No Longer Able to
Fly through Storms of Challenge...

Karma Doesn't Judge Yet The Blood
Flows Now on
Our Soils

And

Souls...

Such is the
True SCaRCiTY
of Life's Humanity...



_________________
KATiE MiA FredericK!iI

Gravatar is one of the coolest things ever!! !

http://en.gravatar.com/katiemiafrederick


King0fSpades
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2021
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 764
Location: The City of Roses

11 Sep 2021, 12:22 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

So what have learned Dorothy...from all of this?

Beats me.


I think the only thing we've learned at all from this is that China and Russia are right when they say that America is in a decline. :|


_________________
♡ The Clergy
◇ The Merchants
♧ The Peasants
♤ The Military


naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 33,873
Location: temperate zone

11 Sep 2021, 1:07 pm

King0fSpades wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:

So what have learned Dorothy...from all of this?

Beats me.


I think the only thing we've learned at all from this is that China and Russia are right when they say that America is in a decline. :|


America certainly has its limits .

The old order is no longer working- international cooperation lead by the US to support Democratic values- by plugging every leak in the world dike-it aint working.

Trump screwed over the Kurds. And in doing that - mortally wounded America's credibility as an ally.

Likewise Trump made a deal with the Taliban that bypassed the US backed Kabul government...which paved the way for the current Biden debacle. So you could argue that both Trump and Biden had a hand in destroying America's credibilty and image.

But...

that alliance that the two Bushes made with the Kurds back in the Nineties and early two thousands was unsustainable to begin with.

Though the Kurds were valiant allies against the common enemies of the US and the Kurds (ISIS and Saddam- and Iran hates the Kurds too)... the Kurds are ALSO hated by all of America's other mideast allies (like both founding NATO member Turkey, and by our own proxy government that we installed in Iraq). So Trump was stuck with trying to play three dimensional chess to maintain alliances with every party that we are supposed to be allied to over there. Not endorsing how he got out of that...but I cant blame him for the contradictions in the situation that the Bushes left him with.

Likewise Biden didnt have much choice other than to abruptly euthanize America's hopeless project in Afghanistan. It maybe ugly, but delaying it would only have made it even uglier.

So - I guess one lesson is that American power does have its limits. Both unilateral power, and the power of us leading group projects with our European allies has its limits. Which means we have to accomidate the folks we dont like in the world. Like Jihadist regimes, and like Russia, and China.



ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,237
Location: Long Island, New York

11 Sep 2021, 2:30 pm


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


funeralxempire
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Age: 39
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 25,176
Location: Right over your left shoulder

11 Sep 2021, 2:33 pm

King0fSpades wrote:
I think the only thing we've learned at all from this is that China and Russia are right when they say that America is in a decline. :|


I'm willing to bet Russia and China are both in their own declines. Demographics will be a b***h.


_________________
"If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made... and they won't even admit the knife is there." Malcolm X
戦争ではなく戦争と戦う


King0fSpades
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2021
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 764
Location: The City of Roses

11 Sep 2021, 3:02 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
King0fSpades wrote:
I think the only thing we've learned at all from this is that China and Russia are right when they say that America is in a decline. :|


I'm willing to bet Russia and China are both in their own declines. Demographics will be a b***h.


It certainly feels as if the whole world is dying.


_________________
♡ The Clergy
◇ The Merchants
♧ The Peasants
♤ The Military


kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

11 Sep 2021, 3:16 pm

I don’t believe many people are in “decline”—even if countries are in “decline.”



aghogday
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Nov 2010
Age: 63
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,561

11 Sep 2021, 3:20 pm



"Turn on my VCR, same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T.a.m.i. show, same tape I've had for years
I sit in my old car, same one I've had for years
Old battery's running down, it ran for years and years
Turn on the radio, the static hurts my ears
Tell me where would I go, I ain't been out in years
Turn on the stereo, it's played for years and years
An Otis Redding song, it's all I own
'When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around'
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around
Plug in my M.C.I. to exercise my brain
Make records on my own, can't go out in the rain
Pick up the telephone, I've listened here for years
No one to talk to me, I've listened here for years
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around
When I feel lonely here, don't waste my time with tears
I run 'Deep Throat' again, it ran for years and years
Don't like the food I eat, the cans are running out
Same food for years and years, I hate the food I eat
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around
Turn on my V.C.R., same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T. A. M. I. show, same tape I've had for years
I sit in my old car, same one I've had for years"

'The Police' in 1980, When i Was 20 Years Old 41 Years
Ago Capturing the 'American Way of Life' Then...

The Difference Now

Is We Aren't

Limited

To the
Walls of

This Country Alone...

And We Are Able to Hold
Hands Around the Globe
For A Synergy For New Change

That Has Never Been Heard And Seen Before...

In Other Words, It's A Totally New Egg And Chicken

Change

Is Coming

Even More...

i Can Do Everything
That 'Sting' Did Then
And Unlimited More Now

Depends On if We Are Mastered

by 'The Tool' Or The Master of All Tools...

All in
All

As Such Now
And Yes that
Has A Lot to
Do With 9/11, Change...
When The World Has Never Been The Same...

In My Opinion From What i've Seen in Life
1980, Was A Stone Age and A Modern Age

Is Just Beginning....

Yet of Course

i See NoW with
Eyes OverFLoWinG
iN Ease Again An Inside
Job This Reality Game is Within Most...

The Remedy to So Much Stuff Life is Don't Live in 'The Big City'...

Evolution, Human Evolution, Dictates The Reality of this Greatest Human Fall...

We aRe Evolved to LiVE iN Relatively Small Groups Homogenous to Get Along...

Lemmings
In Cans

Is Just Not
A Natural Human Way...

"London Bridges Falling Down"...



_________________
KATiE MiA FredericK!iI

Gravatar is one of the coolest things ever!! !

http://en.gravatar.com/katiemiafrederick