Matt Yglesias

31 Responses to “9/11/08”

1. Glenn Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 9:51 am

   If you’d told me on the morning of September 12 that seven years later the country would have gone without an additional al-Qaeda attack on US soil, I’m not sure I would have believed you.

   I take your point, Matt, but the significance of this statistic always escapes me. The time between the 1993 WTC attack and 9/11 was over 8-1/2 years. They are in no hurry. Meanwhile, ask the folks in London or Madrid or any number of other places if they think Al Qaeda has been rendered impotent in the meantime.

2. ed Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 9:55 am

   It will forever rankle that the Cheney Administration and the Corporate Media list as a key achievement, the fact that the U.S. hasn’t suffered a major terrorist attack on its soil since 9-11. As though 9-11 didn’t happen on Cheney et al’s watch with more than ample warning (”OK, you’ve covered your ass…now watch this drive.”). Thanks a lot, Cheney and lackey Corporate Media.

3. Edward, the mad shirt grinder Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 9:59 am

   What Glenn said. It’s a matter of record that Al Qaeda would prefer that Republicans stay in power and there are less than two months before the election.

4. Don Williams Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 10:03 am

   Re Matthew’s comment “And if you’d told me that seven years later Osama bin Laden would still be at large, I’m sure I wouldn’t have believed you. ”
   —————
   Why not? Bin Laden, after all, is extremely useful for Dick Cheney and Big Oil’s agenda. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him trotted out next week to justify letting Big Oil have our offshore oil deposits.

   I also wouldn’t be surprised if someone reported seeing Bin Laden in the penthouse suite in one of Houston’s better hotels.

   Naw — last thing Bush and Cheney would want to do is capture this very useful bogey man.

5. The Third Policeman Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 10:04 am

   I would certainly have believed the first item. On September 10, 2001, not everyone in America, and I mean citizens, was ignorant of al-Qaeda, meaning many of us knew there was a small group of dangerous people in the world. But I believe these same people – unless I truly am speaking for myself – knew that this always was and always would be the case, that the idea of the End of History was idiotic. As terrible as 9/11 was, it didn’t put me in a panic. There were never any armies of terrorists, and spectacularly successful tactics like those used on 9/11 cannot be repeated once the target knows what they are.

   It was clear right away that 9/11 was not part of a direct war against America, and certainly no such war was possible, and it’s not possible now. There is no terrorist navy, no terrorist parachute divisions. Terrorism is insidious, political, ever-present. It has existed pretty much as long as civilization, they go together. Despite the panic over the anthrax attacks, it was pretty apparent that those were not terrorist attacks, which is why the government seems complicit in avoiding solving them.

   As for Iraq, that tragic idiocy started to become clear pretty soon after 9/11/01. The Administration and their frightened enablers across the political spectrum started to think of terrorism as a geo-political problem, which it isn’t, mainly because people paid by the government to think, and people paid by publications and think-tanks to think, generally are not very smart or well-informed. And they certainly don’t have very much courage. So, frightened as they were and unwilling to actually think about the problem, they looked for the first satisfying target to smash – Afghanistan wasn’t satisfying enough. It just didn’t look good on TV, didn’t supply the proper sense of vengeance fulfilled. Because once people started talking about evil, then it was just vengeance, nothing to do with actually solving terrorism.

   For myself, it was pretty clear bin Laden was going to get away after the less than half-hearted attempt at Tora Bora, and no one was allowed to talk about that effort, and as for Iraq, when I first saw it was being broached, there was no way that war was not going to happen, and I told people over and over that invading the country would be easy, but what happens afterwards.

   I’m not trying to say I am special, just that there are smart, forward looking people in this country who bother to think stuff like this through, and they were and still are completely shut out of any discussions of problems like this. They were prematurely right, and like the Premature Anti-Fascists their existence embarrasses Establishment opinion. And that cannot be tolerated.

6. anonymous Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 10:11 am

   And if you’d told me that seven years later Osama bin Laden would still be at large, I’m sure I wouldn’t have believed you.

   I will never ever forgive the Republicans for letting bin Laden get away. And if, god forbid, another attack comes, it will be because George Bush let Osama bin Laden kill 3,000 Americans and get away with it.

   Say what you will about Bill Clinton and his interns, but he put Tim McVeigh on death row.

7. msw Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 10:18 am

   If you’d told me Republicans would nominate a VP candidate with zero experience in national security and a large percentage of voters would see this as a positive move I would have said sounds about right.

8. Don Williams Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 10:23 am

   Re anon’s comment “Say what you will about Bill Clinton and his interns, but he put Tim McVeigh on death row.”
   ———–
   Yeah, but whatever happened to the other guy in that truck? Remember?

   Heh heh heh

9. Adolphus Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 10:24 am

   And if you would have told me on 9/11/01 that in 7 years, with OBL still on the loose, American troops in at least two countries as a result of those acts of terrorism, and US troops on the brink of invading yet another country or two, that the lead story on most news outlets was a discussion of lipstick and pigs, I wouldn’t have believed it.

   If this is our political discourse and how we choose a leader, I WON’T be surprised at the next terrorist attack.

10. vanya Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:30 am

    And if you’d told me that seven years later Osama bin Laden would still be at large, I’m sure I wouldn’t have believed you.

    That’s the one that sticks with me too. If somehow on September 12th,2001 you could have proved to Americans that Bush would do nothing to try to capture Bin Laden, Bush probably would have been lynched by an angry mob. Yet somehow the administration managed to successfully deflect public anger onto the convenient scapegoat of Saddam, and has never been held to account by conservatives for failing to punish the individual responsible for one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in American history. How any Bush supporter can look in the mirror and honestly consider him or herself a patriot is beyond me.

11. Rob Mac Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    Only the fact that we’ve avoided another attack would have surprised me. Everyone with any sense knew right away that Bush would use the attack as an excuse to act out his every fantasy, which everyone knew included an invasion of Iraq. And everyone with any sense knew that he was an incompetent boob, so the fact that the government failed to catch OBL would not have surprised me a bit.

12. neil Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    Sucker.

13. danceswithgoats Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    The reason we haven’t been attacked is because we went on the offense. Say what you will about Iraq, but it attracted every wannabe jihadi shitbird and pitted them against the U.S. military. It absorbed the vast majority of Al Queda effort and funding. They lost. The twofer is that a relatively democratic Iraq will serve to drain the dysfunctional cesspool that is the Middle East. If we can keep the Iraqi democracy up and running for a couple election cycles, a big if, your average Arab is going to wonder why they are living in a repressive regime that does not allow religious, economic and social opportunities/freedom. The next step is to lean on the Saudis to quit pushing the filth, Wahabbism, that is their state religion.

14. jg Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    the U.S. hasn’t suffered a major terrorist attack on its soil since 9-11

    Why would we? The purpose of the attack was to get us over there kicking open mosque doors and peeking under burkahs. We’re doing that. We won’t be hit again unless we stop. Bin Laden wants all muslim lands under one rule. The fastest way to achieve that is to rally them in defense against a common aggressor. If they actually wanted to terrorize america they wouldn’t have stopped. They’d be walking into malls loaded up with explosives or machine guns, they’d be blowing up bridges and attacking chemical factories. They’re not. They hit us and run back to where they want to be chased.

    We’re playing checkers, Bin Laden’s playing chess.

    Obama seems to recognize this, if McCain has I can’t tell and most likely would play along anyway to continue war spending.

15. Arnold Evans Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    the country would have gone without an additional al-Qaeda attack on US soil

    I would have been cautiously optimistic on that. 9/11 depended on so many parts going unnoticed that I would have been sure it couldn’t happen again. Another attack would be a step down from that level of magnitude. If the FBI had been on 9/12 alert levels, or 2002 alert levels on 9/10 or in 2001, the attacks easily would have been thwarted.

    more Americans wound wind up dying in Iraq than died in the World Trade Center

    The invasion itself didn’t have to go as well as it did. The US had planned for house to house fighting in Baghdad which would have cost over 4000 soldiers right there. Given an invasion and occupation, the US has not paid an unexpectedly high price for Iraq.

    The US has conceded Iraqi control of Iraq to a degree I didn’t expect. I was sure Chalabi would play the role Mubarak plays in Egypt or Abbas plays in the Palestinian territories. Keeping Chalabi in would have required more of a fight against Iran/Syria supported insurgents which also would have led to more US deaths than actually happened.

    The US never got its ally in the war on terror, but it didn’t pay as high as price as I would have expected it to pay.

    
    seven years later Osama bin Laden would still be at large

    I wouldn’t have cared. The personality of bin Laden is less important than that there is an organized, non-state anti-Western/anti-Zionist organization with some capacity to conduct attacks at least in the Middle East if not in the West. I would have been sure that would be the case ten years after 9/11, whether or not bin Laden was killed. And bin Laden may well be dead and we just don’t know it.

16. danceswithgoats Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    jg – your line of reasoning is worthy of the most delusional, irrational and conspiritorial (sp?) “Arab street” analyst. Al Queda has been at war with the West for years. They finally got our attention on 9/11.

17. Hector Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    Danceswithgoats,

    ‘Your average Arab’ doesn’t give a f–k about ‘religious, social, and economic freedom’. People in some countries are too smart to fall for the American suburban utopia, it appears. Don’t assume everyone is as dumb or unreflective as you.

18. danceswithgoats Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

    Hector – you’re wrong. Religious, social and economic opportunities/freedom is not some American suburban utopia. We consider these truths to be self evident; Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Believe it or not; a lot of people in the world want what we take for granted.

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