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.
- 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 electric 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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