I don't know if it's just because I'm Australian, and wholly unaffected (directly) by it, but while I feel that September 11 2001 was a terribly sad thing that happened, I don't really understand it.
It seems to me that most of the reasons it gets so much publicity every single year is for reasons that don't really have a great deal to do with the actual event of people dying. Primarily, it was what started the war on terror (during which, I feel obliged to point out, tens of thousands of Afghan people have died, and over a million Iraqis have estimates to have died, most of them completely innocent of anything), and secondarily, it happened to Americans.
This is something that was said to me at Black Stump one year:
If you had known before the attacks on the Twin Towers, what was going to happen, what would you have done? It's obvious. You would have done everything you could to let as many people know, in an attempt to stop it. Come on, you'd be saving the lives of nearly 3000 people. You would have done whatever it took.
Do you what this web site says? And this one? Or even this (that one has a game - play!)?
They all give approximate figures of how many people die every day from poverty all over the world. And that number is estimated to be over 10 times as many as died on September 11 2001. Every day.
I'm not saying that you should feel bad about the fact that this is happening (though you probably should feel something) - I'm just trying to illustrate the point that all of us would have gone to huge efforts to save this group of people, who received so much media attention after their death, and who were American, and lived in a country that could afford to go to war. A war that has since resulted in the deaths of many, many more people. Americans, Australians, Germans, Somalians, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Afghan people, as well as many more. And of those, who are the ones you hear about? Do you hear about the innocent people who die in the countries that are the enemies of America? Yes, but do you hear about it on the scale that you hear about the people 'on our side'? Not even close.
I just don't understand. I'm not offering another solution, and I'm not offering my opinions on war in general. Just all the hype about September 11 always reminds me of those questions I got asked that Black Stump, and wonder why I never see any "R.I.P. people who died from hunger today."
I'd also just like to say that I have a million more issues with this whole thing, such as people's validations for the war, and the fact that a 'War on Terror' is not a thing (watch me!) as well as a bunch of other things, but I'm trying to present this in a inoffensively as I can, and only deal with a part of it, because once I start thinking of things like this, I think of more and it all ends up in a blur.
I really just feel like this is something that is predominant mostly because it happened to Americans, Americans had the ability and tenacity to carry out retaliation, and the retaliation has since caused so much to change in the world.
I'll finish with this. Yesterday in the newspaper I read a short section, where someone was simply asking how the world would be different, if America hadn't reacted with war. Not speculating on whether it would be better or worse. Just thinking about it.
Think about it.
tl;dr I say things some people will agree with, some people won't, and will cause some people to hate on me.
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