13 years after 9/11, the world shift

[jofillips]

hang on, I'm pretty sure there has been a political divide in the US from well before Bush Jr - wasn't Reagan successful in gaining the emerging religious right vote back in the 80s??

Bagor - sorry for going OT there, I should know how emotional the troubles were/are.

[SeeBass]

You forgot to credit where you got this from Cap'n

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by jofillips

hang on, I'm pretty sure there has been a political divide in the US from well before Bush Jr - wasn't Reagan successful in gaining the emerging religious right vote back in the 80s??

Bagor - sorry for going OT there, I should know how emotional the troubles were/are.

They do say that's where it began, but dubya made 'born again' sexy, talked to god, etc. And the politics of divide really got serious with Rove.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by SeeBass

You forgot to credit where you got this from Cap'n

huh?

I wrote this myself

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

1) The aftereffects of 9/11 did vast economic damage to the United States and its western allies. Two wars that in a way I would call failures because the face of warfare changed (more on that later), a major cost in terms of lives and actual dollars. I read somewhere that the American's had spend $10 trillion on the war on terror in an effort to protect its citizens, the British and Canadians also had to refocus their efforts because the enemy had changed. Osama Bin Laden had a brilliant mind for this. He knew that he could draw the Western Powers into the Middle East and then steadily bleed them in terms of lifes which effected trust in government and in terms of money. While you can trace the U.S. economic collapse to greed and mismanagement. You can also say that Osama kicked that first pin out.

Now the American Empire is toppling economically and sliding backwards.

2) The after effects militarily - No-one doubts that the American's have the most kick-a$$ingest military in the world, its massive, and technologically advanced. Right now the American Navy could probably defeat all of the other navies in the world combined. Pre-9/11 Western Military's were configured to defend American borders from external nation state threats. Their offensive capabilities were configured to destroy enemy military's in the field piecemeal. They had come off of a very successful first Gulf War. They went into the second post 9/11 gulf war and swept Hussien's army underfoot like a combine in a wheat field. But that's when things changed.

There was no end game scenario. The American's quickly found themselves fighting an enemy they couldn't identify, that would pop up, bleed them and then vanish into the night. An enemy that didn't care about planting bombs in civilian areas and on highways. The American's were slowly bled white they had 4500 soldiers killed and another 31,000 wounded. while it certainly doesn't match up to American casualties in a much shorter conflict like WW2. It destroyed the moral of the American people. After Vietnam the American armed forces reformed itself, and American people had gotten used to relatively blood free victories. In Afghanistan there were 2000 servicemen and woman killed and 17,000 wounded. America's former will to fight was sapped. They had literally had their belt buckle grabbed and their a$$es kicked.

The funny thing is that a lot of anti-war advocates predicted these outcomes and were vilified for it at the time. A lot of people lost perspective. It's seemed fairly obvious at the time that bin Laden was trying to draw the U.S. into a long and expensive conflict. The fact that it was also used being as a pretext for destroying one of bin Laden's own enemies (Saddam Hussein) would also have been funny if not sad.

[Acey]

This occurred to me only within the last hour: children born on 9/11 will become teenagers tomorrow. Every year in the last ~5 years you'll hear a, "such and such has happened since 9/11, man it's been a long time," but this is the first one that really has me thinking about it.

Glad to see they are still doing the "Tribute in Light" because it's spectacular. A few hours ago:

[SeeGeeWhy]

There is a lot to be said about the possibility that World War 3 has come and gone, and was the cold war. Furthermore, one could argue that we are moving towards what could be a 4th World War, one that will be centered around what is happening in the Muslim world. This is difficult for people in Western cultures to think about, because our viewpoints are so American-centric, its tough to imagine the Middle East being the centre of the world. But if you can shift your perspective to that lens, you can begin to imagine a different series of events playing out.

Those who planned and perpetrated 9/11, to me, represent a collection of men that since then have shown pretty clearly that they are on a mission to establish an empire of control to spread a doctrine through horribly violent means, and is quite adept at using the games that existing powers play against one another to further their cause. Like a swarm of vampire like creatures, they draw the sustenance they need to continue bleeding victims by creating conflicts and using well established lines of self-interest to keep streams of weapons, money, soldiers, etc coming into keep their mission fueled.

The world seems to have evolved to a point that the idea of a holy war seems ludicrous. Is there a population that is passionate enough about their Christianity to fight an ideaological war with a Muslim army that is globally distributed, not necessarily tied to a nation-state, and gathers its assets through unidentifiable and shifting channels. 9/11 was a push to the old bully Christianity, and Christianity did not have the will to push back violently. The Americans have done what they need to do to protect their economic interests and their positions relative to other old powers.

Wars used to be about value creation through taking things. When technology evolved to the point that we could create value out of ideas instead of stealing stuff from another population, and found that our machines and science could destroy each other, it turned into something else entirely. After world war 1, and especially after world war 2, there is not one Western society that has an appetite for war on that scale anymore. Two words - the bomb. And God knows what else our worst "in theory" technologies and strategies could deploy - only a world war can unearth those horrible ideas. We aren't there yet and while I am sure there are those who are prepared, no one wants it to happen.

So the "terrorists" are born and dubbed so, because they know the world is afraid of itself, of each other, so use that truth to walk a line so fine to get what they desire without doing so much as to bring the true full force of an organized and advanced opponent upon them.

To me, the only population with the desire to accept the possibility of fighting for God would be a group who is fighting for the accumulation of ideological capital. I think that the cause that Al-Queda is fighting for is such a cause, and they are looking for a tangible enemy themselves on this crusade. Well, maybe not explicitly, but if they push enough they will either find or create one. They're pushing and fighting but no one is really fighting back, because I don't think there is a clearly identifiable population, with a collective ideology with a strong enough will to fight back.

Only warriors can fight for the idea of God. Especially so if they embrace death and want to meet God. Most of the people on this planet are not warriors, do not want to meet God, and have the fear of the massively destructive forces our technology and dark side are capable of.

Al-Queda is doing that and until they press up against an ideaology that will resist their own with great force, things will keep progressing this way - small currents of warm water eating away at a massive block of ice. Eventually, if the currents gather enough strength or erode enough of the ice, things will suddenly and massively shift.

9/11 to me, was not this shift, but an instance of one of those streams eating away at the ice a little deeper.

Muslim populations around the world are rapidly expanding, and although a small % of these populations are extremists, if the whole number is increasing, so are the number of extremists.

People are sick of Team America policing the world, but their relative economic might is declining rapidly and will likely be surpassed by China in a few decades to the point where weird stuff, the likes we have never experienced, will start to go down.

How can Al-Queda, a group with an identity forged with a death wish and service to God find an enemy in a world that is constantly changing to be so focused on self and individualization? You cannot defeat billions of people who are so self-centered because when an individual of that culture dies, no one really cares enough to do something about it on a moral basis so long as they are fine.

So my question is, how powerful does this extreme non-state have to become before they have the ability to shake up that culture of me enough to get a real push back; or how long do we have to wait to see what China will become and be about when they finally overtake the US as the supreme economic force on the planet? And can Al-Queda meet an ideaological equal in whatever that is?

When I reflect on it... maybe 9/11 is another milestone that will be looked back upon in step with the decline of the American Century, towards the future that will become.

[Flash Walken]

Here's an old port authority video on the construction of the World Trade Center.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2080404629/

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Really? How so?

The act of terrorism worked to bring the United States down to the level of the terrorists, and made them compromise and abandon long established and hard fought-for ideals. Best example of this moral decay, in my view, is to have a former vice president of the US trot around, proudly boasting of torturing people, and a sitting president who acknowledges the fact but ignores its legal and moral implications.

Given such rot in the system, the terrorists didn't just win. It has become a rout.

[Domoic]

Originally Posted by The Goon

Sorry to be pedantic, but it's only 12 years since 9/11.

OMG, I have been banging my head for the past 30 minutes to try and figure out as to why this was true...

[Faust]

Unsettling video shows large al Qaeda meeting in Yemen:

http://http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/al-qaeda-meeting-video/index.html?hpt=hp_t2