August 16, 2006

What If 9/11 Never Happened? (via) An indepth review of what life might have been like had the attacks not occured. It's a long read but well worth the effort IMO.
posted by genial 18 years ago
  • Good article. I would like to think that Bush would not have been re-elected. I'm betting Edwards would have won that election. And if that had happened, I wonder how Katrina would have been handled. *ponders*
  • What if it had never happened? BushCo would have had to find another excuse to invade and start a teh warz on terrerism in order to take away our rights and freedoms.
  • andrew sullivan's is the worst of the mostly poor lot here.
  • I think it is an interesting argument that war would have happened eventually even without the attacks. Of course it's all conjecture, but to dismiss everything we've gone through in the last 5 years as excuses is perhaps shortsighted. I can definitely believe that in the shortterm the administration would not have had the capability to extend to Iraq with the ease they did, but I do think the possibility is likely that without a 9/11 we would have seen another attack at some point and time (worse or not who knows, doesn't matter much) that would have further prompted the situation we find ourselves in already. Although it would have indeed been interesting to see how a different president would react to such threats....
  • I found Andrew Sullivan's very interesting - and believable. Where I think it failed is that he saw Gore as potentially taking the exact same steps and with the same talking points as Bush. I think Gore may have done some things - like invade Afghanistan - but the talking points would have been somewhat different. I might hope that perhaps the planning for resconstruction - of which there was NONE for Afghanistan or Irag, which is the greatest crime and the source of all the problems - but I'm not sure. Perhaps if the military were let to do things their own ways, and not being driven by the incompetent political appointees like Rumsfeld. At least he took it seriously - some of the others didn't. That said, without the Sept 11 attacks, Afghanistan and Iraq would have never happenened, and I don't think that the London bombings (either last year's tube and bus, or this year's attempted) would have happened. Because, while the Saudi group of AlQuaeda would definitely still be a threat, the London bombings were done by different people. They claim allegiance, but that's what it is -- allegiance. There isn't a great network of people and supplies, the network is of ideas. Dreadnought calls it a "franchise". And the British franchise of Al Quaeda is directly reacting to British (not just American) foreign policy (as well as local tensions), no matter how anyone in Britain might deny it.
  • No, I don't believe that the Bush administration would have been able to push through a war in Iraq - I'm not even sure they wanted to. Some at the Project for a New American Century, maybe, but not the whole administration. They had a domestic adgenda.
  • I don't really get the point of discussing shiznit what did not occur. Really.
  • *has no imagination*
  • It's an exercise in multi-level wishful thinking, Wolof. Much like creating, say, a list for Santa. Our society is so complex, so multivarious, that nearly any prognostication is likely to be wildly, laughably wrong - Jeanne Dixon would have just as much a chance for hitting it right as Sullivan or any of the other commentators. It's like the ludicrous, assumption-fat prognostications of government economists, except for in this case they're shaving even more off the already shallow floe of intellectual rigor.
  • I often like to think about what it would be like if Fes and Wolof had never occurred. Mmmmm. Aaaaah. Hee hee! Mmmmmm. Oh sorry, I was just lost in thought there.
  • I have pondered that as well, and my opinion is that the world would be inestimably worse off - although, generally speaking, there would have been a concomitant, statistically significant increase in marijuana stocks, especially during the "drought" years of the late '80s.
  • Now, let’s be clear, we’re well aware that the dangers of counterfactual speculation (If Bobby Kennedy had never been shot, then Nixon would never have been elected! So no Watergate! No Carter! No Reagan! Etc., etc., etc.) are almost as grave as those of unbridled futurism. But we also see the virtues of an approach that appeals both to left-brain analytics and right-brain imagination—and that, in the process, tends to uproot subterranean assumptions and challenge conventional wisdom.
    I think for the purpose of reanalyzing current policy and how it has changed (presumably as a result of 9/11) in relation to how society has not changed (terrorism was alive and kicking long before planes were flown into towers) it is a useful analysis. No one expects the opinions to be anything more than that, but a small dose of navel gazing is sometimes appropriate for a reality check on some levels. Even I find myself sometimes saying "Well sure we shouldn't have liquids on airplanes if there is a threat, and I mean, they thwarted another terrorist attack so security must be working." and then I realize just how dumb that sounds. Pondering what life would be like without the attacks for me just further serves to keep reality in check and remind me that the only thing that has really changed after 9/11 is what the government is able to get away with.
  • What if I had never been conceiv...
  • Very good, Genial. What this gummint needs is a "few" reality checks.
  • What if Hitler had been aborted? And Stalin? And me?
  • If 9/11 hadn't happened, our calendars would've gone from 9/10 to 9/12. ANARCHY!!!
  • Hey, I can play this game. If 9-11 never happened, than one of the non-victims would have run for political office in 04, and by 2010 we'ld be under the thumb of a fascist dictator who'ld be rounding up gays and sending them to be forcibly straightened or euthanized along with quidnunc! I can imagine it so it must have been possible. Thank God for 9-11.
  • And God help the quidnunc kid.
  • I wonder how long it will take 9/11 to go the wayside with time... I thought I was over it. Suppose I *never* will be. The onslaught of movies, documentaries and special broadcasts has ensued. Five years, so we must reflect (?). I almost half-expect Kasey Kasem to host the 20 Moving Moments of 9/11 next month as the seconds click down... I stood on the subway platform last week and saw a man flipping through a photo album of WTC destruction (I thought they were before and after images from Lebanon). Two days ago, a construction worker pouring concrete displayed a ridiculous-looking hard hat with two very large foam towers reaching a good two feet over his head. The other night, I couldn't get to sleep after watching a special on the Discovery Channel; the gaping hole, the confetti shower, the glowing orange spittle, the voltaic billowing smoke, the larger-than-life fireball, the bodies dropping one-by-one... *gulp* If 9/11 hadn't happened, I wouldn't be posting this. Last night, saw a car catch fire while walking the kiddies. Started strong and swiftly, then a large black plume of smoke rose as the fire became fully-engaged. The smell... the smell... all I could think was how much I hate that smell! (same stench that covered lower Manhattan for a good couple months after 9/11)
  • More details. Looks like an accident.
  • Gotta love CNN's sensationalism: "Watch the orange flames ravage the apartment". Nice.
  • Yep people are jumpy about that. Notice how I don't go running to get Fox News' take on it. Ohhhh . . . Allright. "The crash set off a raging fire that sent a pillar of gray smoke over the city, police said. Witnesses reported seeing a gigantic fireball come out of the building, according to authorities. Flames could be seen shooting from windows on two upper floors of the 50-story building, near the East River. Burning debris fell from the tower, and a column of gray smoke rose over the city." Also I understand that some form of gray "smoke" was seen rising over the city. In an ominous, "ooOOOOOoo!!" kind of way. Er, but without the sounds, obviously. Just the smoke. And the city. Ooo.
  • Judging by the comments on Mefi (once you get past the sniping and bitching), it looks like the pilot of a small plane (Cirrus SR20?) was showing off for a companion, doing tricks, probably flying up a special corridor along the Hudson River that allows small planes to sightsee along Manhattan without filing a flight plan or staying in contact with flight control. Some trick went wrong and the plane nosedived into the building. Four dead: pilot and other occupant of the plane, two residents of the building. Everything is conjecture and hearsay for now, though.
  • NORAD fighters scrambled in response, according to NORAD Admiral Timothy Keating, though the White House has told CNN that they have no indication that the crash is related to terrorism. Keating would not say how many NORAD jets are up but that they are airborne as a precaution. If the crash was indeed terrorism and there was a continuing threat then NORAD is charged with shooting down any aircrafts. "We've been in contact with our intelligence partners, coalition partners around the world," Keating told CNN. "And there are no, repeat, no indication that there is anything underfoot beyond this one airplane or helicopter." No, repeat, no.
  • CNN.com is now reporting that Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was the sole person aboard the plane that crashed into a high-rise apartment building in New York.