Ultimately it means nothing and is in the category of facts that are t best “interesting” but I am one of the people who experienced “9/11” (lower Manhattan edition) first-hand, meaning I saw the second plane hit the south tower in “real time” with my own eyes from at most a couple miles away, felt the ground shake underneath me as the towers fell, evacuated alongside all those people covered in ash etc. etc. I say this not to pull any sort of rank or even imply that my opinion on the day is better than anyone else’s. But I do think it’s something worth noting because I often genuinely forget that when people bring up “9/11” the anniversaries etc. most often they’re talking about something they watched on television in Cedar Rapids or wherever, (or happened when they were a little kid) which just has a different valence to it then seeing it happen right in front of you with your own eyes as a 28 year old.
This is also why I’m so skeptical of anything like “trutherism” regarding the attacks, at least in New York. The older I get the MORE open I actually am to accounts of big events that counter the official narrative and which some might dismiss as “conspiracy theories”. However, with truthers many of them are denying facts I saw happen with my own eyes, along with what has to have been at least tens of thousands of other people. So, the maximalist truther position — that airplanes didn’t actually run into the towers — is obvious nonsense. I might be willing to entertain, at an absolute maximum, the idea that maybe the planes weren’t what caused the twin towers to fall, like that was actually done by simultaneous detonations in the basements or something. But then you’re crediting the powers that be with an incredible level of competence to pull of what would surely then be the most elaborate conspiracy of all time, and to what end? (I suppose the answer would be to set up the justification for an open-ended “war on terror”? Okay this is sounding a bit more plausible but I still don’t believe it.)
I might be willing to entertain less maximalist questionings of the official narrative such as the idea that Bush and Cheney may have intentionally allowed the attack to happen in collusion with their Saudi allies (again with the justification that this would lead to an open-ended global war on terror which suited both their interests). This formulation at least has the advantage that it’s consistent with me seeing the planes hit the towers with my own eyes. But ultimately I think the most likely “countering the official narrative” narrative is simple incompetence and stupidity on behalf of our government, missing obvious warnings that this was going to happen. (Note I’m not talking about WTC 7 here. That’s a whole different thing.)
I only mention truthers at all because, perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, they always had a big presence in downtown Manhattan around the 9/11 anniversaries, starting with maybe the second or third one. Lower Manhattan always had an outsize presence in my life for some reason. I was always either working there or commuting through there or my wife worked there. We commuted through the temporary WTC transit hub before they put up the permanent, fancy Calatrava designed station they have now. And around the anniversaries there would always be truthers around, passing out their shitty pamphlets etc. It seemed like a pretty bad way to commemorate the anniversary, especially by going straight to the area where there were more people likely to have been traumatized by the actual event. Then in 2009 the idiotic racist so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy started right around the time that the “Tea Party” movement started and they took over the 9/11/2009 anniversary with big demos etc. This was significantly worse than the truthers.
The extreme hysteria and Islamaphobia of the “Ground Zero Mosque” moral panic happened a full 8 years after the attacks so if you weren’t there it’s hard to convey the total utter bloodlust and batshit insanity of that moment in the NYC/tri-state area. This episode of Chapo Trap House does a pretty good job of capturing the tenor of these times. The important thing to remember is that if you’re too young to remember it or you didn’t live in the US at the time and someone tells you they weren't part of it they’re lying.
While folks in Cedar Rapids or wherever worried about how to fortify their public library against likely terrorist attacks, in supposedly “progressive” New York City the calls for immediate retribution, to bomb someone anyone were near universal. All conservatives, all liberals, even most “leftists” completely supported the invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and even more broadly the idea of a general “war on terror.” You could look up any of your “faves” and I’m fairly sure they said something regrettable during this time period. (I was still a conservative 20 years ago and so have far more to atone for than than just this time period) But it’s also important to point out how insane the atmosphere was on the ground at the time and not just due directly due to the attacks. As the Chapo boys point out it’s hard to overstate how much the anthrax letters freaked people out and kept them on edge. And in New York the prevailing wisdom was that there would almost certainly be more attacks. And when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in November on top of neighborhoods filled with cops and firefighters it was immediately assumed it was another terrorist attack.
I remember in one of the immediate days after 9/11/01 when the WTC was still a smoldering ruin and you could still smell the smell of burning human flesh I saw some activists who were holding signs that said something like “prosecute, don’t bomb”. I remember scoffing at them and certainly most people were not ready for the message at this point. But imagine how much better things would be now if we’d follow their advice instead of mounting a global, open-ended “War on Terror?”
