Could this ever happen again - post 9/11

[malaise]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t-NAum8kY8&feature=related
I remember weeping like a child watching this during the 1992 games.
What a dad!

[Goldstein1984]

1. Great video. Thank you.

Some things that could happen before 9/11 can't happen now.

And some things happening after 9/11 wouldn't have been tolerated before.

[malaise]

3. Profound point

but the dad wouldn't get near the track now.

[Goldstein1984]

6. No, I don't think he would, either.

The world has changed.

I used to read about the fire bombing of Tokyo or dropping the second atomic bomb just to make a point that was already made. I read Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" and wondered what kind of people could incinerate over 100,000 noncombatants in Dresden? Or who would drop napalm on Vietnamese villages and kill hundreds of noncombatants in hopes of killing a few VC along with them?

Post-9/11, I know the answer to that question:

The same people who allow their government to kill innocent civilians with Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drones in the hope of killing a few "terrorists" in the process. The same people who respond to the deaths of 3,000 Americans with an unrelated war that kills a million Iraqis, and then wonder why the don't like us. The same people who attack Afghanistan to get the people who attacked the US, and continue the war for another decade without regard to how many people are dying in a war with no way to recognize victory.

We think we're brave. Collectively, we're cowards who traded liberty for a false sense of security. We wallow in victim status to justify disproportionate atrocities. If it were just George Bush, just 9/11, then it would have stopped. It hasn't stopped.

Again, thanks for the video. But the sense of loss it brings moves me as much as that father's love for his son.

[malaise]

7. Yes we're all wimps

and they get away with murder in our names. Human beings are capable of unbelievable evil.

[msongs]

8. yeah but "Admiral" Mullen is delivering for the war profiteer corporations nt

[Electric Monk]

2. What does that have to do with hijacking planes to fly into buildings?

:shrug: I don't see any connection.

[malaise]

4. The dad running onto the stadium track

would be 'tasered', or grabbed by a gazillion security people.

[rug]

5. Wow.