From: David Martin
Category: Other stuff
Date: 11 September 2004
Can this facetious website cover tragedy? A: It must, because it's a place for thoughts, silly, profound, anything. And we don't need to self-censor ourselves into only discussing trivia.
9/11 achieved a lot of the terrorists' aims: publicity, drawing the US further into the middle-east, defining the world into a dualistic battle (they think they're the good guys); and now politics has meaning again, like it or not, history began again on 9/11.
You could argue the US response was premeditated, and that the Iraq invasion was waiting for the right provocation (lack of evidence of Saddam involvement notwithstanding), but it was still the event which either caused or was used an excuse for two invasions. And that is quite a lot.
Shall we not forget the people who died, and were bereaved, and the others who felt painand fear? No, we can't. It does not make their suffering less, to add that the world we live in, by its very design and economy and our choice, lets millions die young and live in shit.
And today there is more fear in the richer countries, and not much more understanding of elsewhere, and a righteous lack of sympathy for fanatical religious zealots ( who are the most stupid wrong people, whether they are Christians or Muslims) and I predict that civilisation will not be blown up, and will lumber on, subject to and creating more and more extreme disasters, and still vaguely forward.
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