Gray Watson Personal Thoughts 2001.09.12
The New Day of Infamy
9/11 Timeline 9/11 Pictures 4 Months After
Additional Material
The following are my thoughts from the time on and after
9/11/2001. They are neither fully coherent nor necessarily
appropriate. Some of the information has been edited or added at
later times but I have endeavored to keep the bulk of the text as it
to preserve my feelings and thoughts at the moment.
- It is the day after the destruction by terrorists of the World
Trade Centers and a portion of the Pentagon. The images of the last
24 hours are almost unbelievable. What a surreal world we Americans
are in right now. There are a lot of serious and subdued people over
here. I feel my mind coming to grips with the reality of the
situation slowly although as the day continues, very unpleasant images
and knowledge constantly intrudes on my consciousness. Reviewing the
events of yesterday was my first conscious thought this morning and
will undoubtedly be so for the near future.
- What a coup for the group that did this! We've not had a
hijacking since 1991 and yesterday they got 4 planes. They
were all full of jet fuel ready to be converted into bombs. They
chose low demand flights on a Tuesday after Labor Day which means they
were looking for flights with fewer passengers for them to control.
They chose 757 and 767 aircraft which have the same cockpits so they'd
only have to train on one type of plane. They chose American and
United airlines probably because they were the largest US carriers and
would have the most economic effect. With a name like American
Airlines, they probably would have been a target no matter what.
There is evidence that a number of people shorted airline
stock in the days running up to the attack.
- Initial reports seem to indicate that the hijackers only used
homemade weapons made of razor blades stored in their in shaving kits.
I don't see how all but the most strick policies would stop this low
tech approach. Imagine, for a second, how easy it would be make a
weapon and store it in your carry-on luggage. I could see a number of
other ways that people could get bad stuff on planes and I wonder if
we'll ever be able to stay ahead of the bad guys.
- So the question now is what to do? What should we do as a
nation? Obviously the first thing is to get as much information about
the perpetrators as possible. Already law enforcement has dug up an
amazing amount as rental cars, video surveillance, and flight records
are combed. We need to be ready, however, to deal with the reality
that we may never fully know who was behind this. Already, the grief
and anger is turning towards rage. You can imagine what it will be
like if we don't have a "target" within a couple of days. Within a
week, the pressure on the intelligence community will be immense for
them to come through with the identities of the responsible parties.
No "legitimate" organization has claimed responsibility because who
wants that much heat? I'm sure (for example) the Taliban government
in Afghanistan is sweating it out right now.
- So maybe, if we are lucky, we find out who's responsible or maybe
we have a good guess. I expect the military will hit them hard and
hit them long. This won't be a surgical strike but a full payload.
But if we do carpet bomb suspected terrorist camps or sympathizers,
are we not fighting fire with fire? An eye for an eye? It might make
us feel good during this emotionally charged time, but is it the right
thing to do? I would support a campaign to hit the specific people
who are responsible but I would much rather extract them and try and
convict them in court and throw them into a cell for the rest of their
lives. A violent fiery death will make them martyrs and will only
serve to help recruit the next generation of suicide bombers. In
addition, the larger the response the more innocents that will be
killed. Given the number of civilians killed yesterday, do we really
want that repeated? Israel is a good example of
how not to respond to terrorism. During the past year they've
killed 500 some people over there from rock throwers to grandmothers
and the certainly don't have peace. They respond to sniper attacks
with helicopter, tank, and missile attacks and still the boys throw
stones and the occasional suicide bomber takes out the pizza shop.
What makes anyone think that a proportional response -- or hell even a
nuclear strike -- won't have the same minimal if any effect on this
war.
- Given that I have little to no control over what my country will
be doing over the next weeks and months, maybe a better question is
what should I do as a citizen? Give blood? Sure. Donate
money to victims funds? Of course. But what else? My brother said
that this should make us all better citizens -- and he's exactly
right. Driving around yesterday delivering some food to blood
donation sites which had 3-4 hour waiting lines, I thought to myself
that this feeling that I was having was the same one that caused
people to join the military forces after Pearl Harbor. Maybe it is
just the male response to tragedy -- not to surrender to our feelings
but go out and try to "fix" the problem. So I am a programmer and I
wonder what I can do with my skills to help. I'm talking about
helping the military, law enforcement, or intelligence communities
over the mid to long term. Maybe little to nothing.
- Another question in people's minds is will they rebuild the
WTC towers? Should we? Their rebuilding would be an impressive
symbol of our determination, as a people, to not bow to the forces of
evil. However, I'm not sure that I'd want to work there.
- People are wondering why the intelligence community was not
alerted to this beforehand. I've always wondered why they find out
about so many of these attempts -- more than we even know about. It
could be as few as 50 people involved with this. If you pick the
right ones and have money, I don't see how anyone could find out about
it. We take it for granted that criminals slip up because so many of
them are idiots, but when you have intelligent, determined
individuals, who are ready to give their lives, I don't see how
anything but blind luck would stop them.
- So what civil liberties will be threatened because of this
travesty? Already representatives are calling for a ban on all
encryption from the floor of Congress. This is, of course, without
any proof that it was used by the terrorists. Calls for the FBI to do
more active monitoring of the web are being sounded. What is next?
Are we really willing to sacrifice our liberties to get security? Can
anyone really make the promise that this will never happen
again if we give law enforcement more power? "We're in a new world
where we have to rebalance freedom and security," said House
Democratic Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo. "We're not going
to have all the openness and freedom we have had." Senate Minority
Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., repeated the warning: "When you're in this
type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated
differently."
- It was interesting to watch the veteran newscasters struggle
through the story without the usual scripts. When told that the
military in the NY area was on their highest alert status, some bozo
on Fox asked if that was DEFCON 5 -- peacetime. Another fool said
that the reason why all of the telecommunication systems were down
along the East Coast was that most of them were controlled in NY City
-- not that they were melting under the load. Another announcer got
completely flustered at around 7pm and turned to his co-host and
apologized and said it had been a long day. He's complaining about a
10 hour day with what is going on? Poor baby.
- The online news sites were melting under the load all
yesterday and still today. CNN had a home page with a single small
image and less than 3 lines of text. It was impressive that they'd
figured out that shrinking the images and download size would make a
difference. Most web departments are never that smart.
A Week Later 2001.09.20
- So it's been 9 days since the tragedy and you see some changes
in America if you look around. Every other car and business is flying
a flag. Blood centers are overwhelmed with donors and food donations.
Every site on the web caries ads for the Red Cross, United Way,
fireman funds, and prayer and thought announcements. Every front page
and all news organizations are still focused on the event.
- It is interesting to see a popular movement encouraging
restraint. All of my friends and family are in agreement that
military strikes right now will only satisfy some animal need and
would not help the long term situation and almost definitely would
harm it.
- My reaction to citizens who are just coming out of the wall
now in support of the country is:
Why don't you do this the rest of the time?
Why aren't you giving blood every month? Why aren't you
tithing to non-profit orgainzations every year? Why have you
never read our Constitution? Why does it take these moments to get
people actively involved with their communities and country? I'm not
surprised, just disappointed. Citizenship takes time and work.
I'm certainly not perfect. Tithing implies 10% of one's income a year
and I'm not at that level unfortunately. I've had a lot of ambitions
over the years to start neighborhood cleanup operations, additional
political parties, etc.. I hope that when my son is older I can
return to these dreams. Not sure that the political party is
realistic but local volunteering is something we all should be doing
more of -- myself included.
- I've been pondering the reactions of "middle America". Surely
the polls still say that Americans are entirely behind military
action. Given the often heavy Christian doctrine which infuses this
country, does this not seem hypocritical? What happened to forgive
thy neighbor for their sins? I didn't see the "except when they are
really bad" exemption. And what even happened to the American justice
system of innocent before proven guilty in a court of one's peers?
Does that only work for Americans? Remember that this is not a
war.
- We were having a conversation the other day about the word
terrorist. As in all things, the words that you use are very
important. Right now Bush has announced "Operation Indefinite
Justice" -- you think I'm kidding. Should be "Operation Immediate
Reprisal" is you ask me. The Oxford American Dictionary defines
terrorist as "the use of violence and intimidation, especially for
political purposes". I guess that there is some truth to calling this
a terrorist attack although the political purpose is not necessarily
obvious. I wish people were discussing the demands of the attackers
because they probably should be discussed -- not as a response to last
week because that would only encourage them. Really I feel this to be
closer to a "revenge attack" than "terrorism". Terrorism adds an
element of violence without reason -- without provocation -- without
morality. Maybe it indicates the scale of the act.
- The other day on the Connection they were talking about what
facets of our foreign policy contributed to this and what can we do
about it in the future. What a great topic. I listened in disgust
however to the guests talk "inside of the box" with regards to
involvement in the Middle East and globally in general. What is it
really which causes us to have aircraft battlegroups half way
round the world? Just about every other country which uses oil
doesn't have a presence over there. Is it really required? Are we
doing a service for the world that we are not getting reimbursed for?
OPEC proved to themselves in the 70s that if the price gets too high
people respond with increased interest in alternative sources of
energy and if they force the demand too low the hydrogen car will
become a reality a lot faster. In the Gulf War, did Kuwait
really deserve our help? It's not a democracy. The first thing they
did when the ruling family returned was kick out all of the
Palestinians. We have to understand that our international "world
cop" badge not only has a large sticker price attached but
also, as we painfully know now, is accompanied by other non-military
costs.
- President Bush is reminding me more and more of why I didn't vote
for him. Whenever I see extemporaneous quotes from him, he always
speaks in 5th grade English. "These are bad people... They'll try
and hide but we'll get them..." His nationalistic sentiment makes me
wince every time, and his use of unfortunate words like "crusade" and
"wanted dead and alive" make me put my head in my hands. Still, every
other national emergency, the President is getting very high marks
from the general population although he is just being reactionary. I
can only hope that this will fade with time like his father's Gulf War
support did.
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