I started writing this in January of 2011...
Watching World Trade Center was much the same way. I don’t want to rehash that day but I can admit to being fascinated with it. It’s a scab one can’t help to pick at.
I would have to say that of there is one defining event in our nation of the last 20 years that is it. Everything since has been colored by that day although we no longer seem to mouth the platitudes that were on everyone’s lips for quite some time afterward.
Thinking about what it was before that, at least as far as our country goes I might have to say it was the Iranian hostage crisis but that was a prolonged affair.
Everything from September 11th, 2001 until today has revolved around those events and I have to wonder what things would be like if they hadn’t happened.
In the Bizarro logic that is a terrorists mind, all this effort and energy was spent in making some kind of statement but like a dog chasing its own tail, the rest of the equation wasn’t thought out or if it was, it was certainly bad math.
To think that somehow we would just throw up our hands as a nation and walk away without retribution of some kind shows how much we are misunderstood in certain quarters of the globe. That’s a two way street though in essence that there are a lot of people, here in our country, who look at the rest of the world and intrinsically believe that people in other lands, in other societies and from other backgrounds would have the same worldview we have, would approach things as we do.
I’m spinning my wheels here though on a bit of an unfinished thought.
There was one thing that came out of that day, one thing that motivated those decisions that were made in the weeks. months and years afterward. One promise that was made to the American people that I think was a bill of goods.
It was safety.
Every war, every bombing, every action, every moment we have to take off our shows, or walk through a metal detector, or appear on some camera, or have our bodies scanned, every single bit of freedom and liberty that we have that has insidiously been removed from us, that we have surrendered willingly has all been done for one reason and one reason only.
And I have to ask, with all of this and beyond everything I have mentioned, bea r in mind that it all carries a significant price tag:
I made a mistake.Picking up, I know what I was going to say was that the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan where they are on the beach during the D-Day invasion had me crying. It’s just a train wreck to watch in that it seems very realistic, much more so than any other war film I’ve seen. The confusion and the wanton death make awtching the film a truly visceral experience.
I like watching streaming movies – about the only complaint I have about the whole streaming thing is that you don’t have access to closed captioning (at least not that I know if). So, while I’m working on one monitor, I can have a movie on the smaller monitor.
Usually this is a good thing and one of the things in the instant queue was the Oliver Stone movie World Trade Center.
Right away, I see things that bother me. Things that stick in my craw as a New Yorker, things that are easy to slip by people who aren’t from New York but the thing you really notice living here all your life.
The first thing is seeing a Number 2 train or rather that would be a subway train badged number two but obviously an IND or BMT train (IRT trains are narrower and the MTA actually separates the two guages classifying IRT as A Division and IND/BMT as B Division).
Then there was a scene in front of the PA Bus Terminal up on 42nd Street. And it was shot in front of the PA Terminal but the problem was in the shot there are a series of planters in front of the terminal.
Thing is, they didn’t put those kinds of planters (barricades) in front of buildings until AFTER September 11th.
Anyway, I’m a big sap when it comes to sentimentality in the movies but scary or gory stuff doesn’t really register that much for me. I’ve seen a fair amount of pretty gory stuff over the course of my life and it’s been bad enough movies have a pretty hard time even coming close.
Some things though... even get to me.
That first half hour of Saving Private Ryan when I saw it in the theater was
Watching World Trade Center was much the same way. I don’t want to rehash that day but I can admit to being fascinated with it. It’s a scab one can’t help to pick at.
I would have to say that of there is one defining event in our nation of the last 20 years that is it. Everything since has been colored by that day although we no longer seem to mouth the platitudes that were on everyone’s lips for quite some time afterward.
If we don’t (insert stupid and mundane facet of life) then the terrorist will have won!
Thinking about what it was before that, at least as far as our country goes I might have to say it was the Iranian hostage crisis but that was a prolonged affair.
Everything from September 11th, 2001 until today has revolved around those events and I have to wonder what things would be like if they hadn’t happened.
In the Bizarro logic that is a terrorists mind, all this effort and energy was spent in making some kind of statement but like a dog chasing its own tail, the rest of the equation wasn’t thought out or if it was, it was certainly bad math.
To think that somehow we would just throw up our hands as a nation and walk away without retribution of some kind shows how much we are misunderstood in certain quarters of the globe. That’s a two way street though in essence that there are a lot of people, here in our country, who look at the rest of the world and intrinsically believe that people in other lands, in other societies and from other backgrounds would have the same worldview we have, would approach things as we do.
I’m spinning my wheels here though on a bit of an unfinished thought.
There was one thing that came out of that day, one thing that motivated those decisions that were made in the weeks. months and years afterward. One promise that was made to the American people that I think was a bill of goods.
It was safety.
Every war, every bombing, every action, every moment we have to take off our shows, or walk through a metal detector, or appear on some camera, or have our bodies scanned, every single bit of freedom and liberty that we have that has insidiously been removed from us, that we have surrendered willingly has all been done for one reason and one reason only.
And I have to ask, with all of this and beyond everything I have mentioned, bea r in mind that it all carries a significant price tag:
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the United States of America and U.S. Territories (including Protectorates)[vague] from and responding to terrorist attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. In fiscal year 2011 it was allocated a budget of $98.8 billion and spent, net, $66.4 billion...
With more than 200,000 employees, DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
The Department of Homeland Security has been dogged by persistent criticism over excessive bureaucracy, waste, ineffectiveness and lack of transparency. A House of Representatives subcommittee estimated that as of September 2008 the department has wasted roughly $15 billion in failed contracts. In 2003, the department came under fire after the media revealed that Laura Callahan, Deputy Chief Information Officer at DHS with responsibilities for sensitive national security databases, had obtained her advanced computer science degrees through a diploma mill in a small town in Wyoming. The department was blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud after audits by the Government Accountability Office revealed widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats purchased at double the retail price (many of which later could not be found), and iPods ostensibly for use in “data storage.”
So, let me ask you... do you feel safe?
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