9/11: The Hijackers Were Soldiers, The Speech Police Are Terrorists

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

By EZRA DULIS - Sun Sep 11, 12:52 pm

For a long time, I questioned the use of the word “terrorism” in describing the 9/11 attacks– not because I felt the term needed to be something more sensitive like “man-caused disasters,” but I felt the definition didn’t match the event. Terrorism is “the use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.” In Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa declaring war against the United States, though he frames his grievances around ending American “occupation” of Muslim holy lands, it’s clear his call to Al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations goes beyond a mere political end: “We — with God’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.”

It was for this reason that I instead wanted to label the 9/11 hijackers more specifically; they were jihadists, conquerors. Their ultimate aim was not merely forcing an American policy change; their aim was the destruction of all American life. Our fear was just the icing on the cake.

Yet in the wake of 9/11, true terrorism has emerged, and its target has been the world of media, pop culture, and all public speech. Ranging from public shaming to reckless litigiousness to actual intimidation, violence, and murder, the extremist elements of the Muslim world have actively campaigned to suppress criticism of the ideology that birthed the mass murder committed ten years ago, and, sadly, many in the western world have capitulated to their hatred in slavish pursuit of “tolerance,” that most emasculating progressive virtue.

Largely unexamined through the 20th century, Islam and its theocratic culture dictates known as Sharia faced a fresh wave of scrutiny in the wake of 9/11, revealing much that does and should horrify those who believe in representative governance, individual rights, and the protection of minorities. Rape victims executed for charges of adultery, men sentenced to death by stoning because of homosexual relationships, honor killings for apostasy, draconian dress codes epitomized by the burqa– in the 21st century, these backwards and barbaric practices are the stuff of nightmares for the western world’s anti-Christian outrage machine, yet to point out their actual execution provokes a familiar litany of dismissive labels– bigot, Islamophobe, racist (?)– from those same individuals who froth at the mouth over the creeping fascism symbolized by Norman Rockwell.

But western anti-Christians have good reason to excuse, dismiss, and defend the misogynistic, anti-democratic culture brought about by Islamic extremism; they obviously don’t want to end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who, after making a short film critical of Muslim treatment of women, was shot eight times, then stabbed in the heart with a knife pinned to a five-page manifesto for Egypt’s Takfir wal-Hijra. They don’t want to end up like the 100+ innocent individuals murdered after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammed or the dozens of innocent individuals murdered after Newsweek falsely reported that Guantanamo Bay guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet.

They don’t want to live like Salman Rushdie who, since 1989, has faced the threat of assassination for writing a work of fiction. Similarly, vocal critics of Islam such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the authors of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, or even Comedy Central and South Park, whose greatest sin against Islam has been portraying Mohammed inside a bear suit. And by refusing to defend the free speech of those who dare to criticize one of the world’s most prevalent religions, shaming those critics into silence rather than those who resort to intimidation and violence, they empower terrorism.

9/11 was an act of war, and we in the west fortunately have thousands of men and women willing to volunteer to take that war away from our soil, risking and sacrificing their lives overseas to stamp out jihad and those who would conquer and enslave America and its allies. It is our responsibility, as individuals involved in media and the arts, to boldly fight against the suppression of free speech and thought sought by Islamic extremists and their cowardly western enablers.

No idea should be free from scrutiny, no cause protected from heckling, no god insulated from derision. Let us honor the memory of those who died on 9/11 by never sacrificing our freedom of speech for fear of retribution.

http://landmarkreport.com/edulis/2011/09/911-the-hijackers-were-soldiers-the-speech-police-are-terrorists/

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

RUDY DECRIES ‘IRRATIONAL APPLICATION OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS’ IN HANDLING TERROR THREATS

Edited September 12, 2011 by Crusty Old Perv

[Obama 2012 1,714]

I 'get' what the article was saying, but at the end of the day just because a select group of a religion is different, doesn't mean you take on the whole religion.

When you look at the people we've killed overseas in the wake of 9/11 (many of them defending their home/way of life and not really 'terrorists,') then it becomes abundantly clear that we are in the wrong 'war' with the wrong countries and should get out now before further damage to overall humanity is done.

This isn't a war against islam, terrorists, etc. this is a corporate defense contract war in which we make certain companies and indiviuals wealthier. It's a 'jobs' plan for American troops and private security firms.

When you look at what's really been going on and get a good grasp of it, you start to realizing that all the blood shed, all of the lives lost have been in vain. They've been for nothing more than a bunch of wealthy bastards wanting to make more money.

If we truly gave a damn about our men and women, gave a damn about our national security, we wouldn't be frisking every American before they get on a plane. We'd have a secure southern (and noorthern) border in which would be virtually impossible to pass without detection. Is that the case though? No, not at all. A 'smart' terrorist doesn't give a damn about airplanes. He cares more about buses, trains, large buildings, etc.

The American sheep have spent a decade in 'fear' over nothing.

[slim 1,514]

Outstanding post, above.

[Captain Oates 910]

I 'get' what the article was saying, but at the end of the day just because a select group of a religion is different, doesn't mean you take on the whole religion.

When you look at the people we've killed overseas in the wake of 9/11 (many of them defending their home/way of life and not really 'terrorists,') then it becomes abundantly clear that we are in the wrong 'war' with the wrong countries and should get out now before further damage to overall humanity is done.

This isn't a war against islam, terrorists, etc. this is a corporate defense contract war in which we make certain companies and indiviuals wealthier. It's a 'jobs' plan for American troops and private security firms.

When you look at what's really been going on and get a good grasp of it, you start to realizing that all the blood shed, all of the lives lost have been in vain. They've been for nothing more than a bunch of wealthy bastards wanting to make more money.

If we truly gave a damn about our men and women, gave a damn about our national security, we wouldn't be frisking every American before they get on a plane. We'd have a secure southern (and noorthern) border in which would be virtually impossible to pass without detection. Is that the case though? No, not at all. A 'smart' terrorist doesn't give a damn about airplanes. He cares more about buses, trains, large buildings, etc.

The American sheep have spent a decade in 'fear' over nothing.

It's about land and resources, or more precisely Israel and oil

The appropriate response is to buy oil stocks and don't join the military.

Apart from that, the ordinary citizen can do nothing.

When you compare the reaction of Americans to that of people in England and Northern Ireland, it doesn't seem to take much to scare Americans into a communal nervous rash.

I suppose that is a result of their history where the 3 thousand people killed is a lot. The British army attacked on the Somme in on the 1st July 1916 and took 60,000 casualties in one morning. That was the warm up to what was to follow in Spring 1917. The Americans fly each body home. The British have 300,000 killed in Northern France with no known graves. The French had 250,000 killed and wounded during the 2nd week of September in 1914. The US simply has no experiences of large scale losses - not since their civil war.

Fear has always been a feature of American life and a major selling tool for businesses and drug companies and politicians and of course the churches who have always pedaled fear of eternal damnation.

Even the Duran Duran lyrics of the 1980's referred to:

on the razors edge you trail

because there's murder by the roadside

in a sore afraid new world

How the US would react if they suffered the losses that France and the UK and Japan and Germany and Russia (20 million dead), is interesting to speculate on, but the US is not used to that and is therefore uniquely vulnerable to being scared and panicked

Edited September 12, 2011 by Alan the Red

[Obama 2012 1,714]

It's about land and resources, or more precisely Israel and oil

The appropriate response is to buy oil stocks and don't join the military.

Apart from that, the ordinary citizen can do nothing.

When you compare the reaction of Americans to that of people in England and Northern Ireland, it doesn't seem to take much to scare Americans into a communal nervous rash.

I suppose that is a result of their history where the 3 thousand people killed is a lot. The British army attacked on the Somme in on the 1st July 1916 and took 60,000 casualties in one morning. That was the warm up to what was to follow in Spring 1917. The Americans fly each body home. The British have 300,000 killed in Northern France with no known graves. The French had 250,000 killed and wounded during the 2nd week of September in 1914. The US simply has no experiences of large scale losses - not since their civil war.

Fear has always been a feature of American life and a major selling tool for businesses and drug companies and politicians and of course the churches who have always pedaled fear of eternal damnation.

Even the Duran Duran lyrics of the 1980's referred to:

on the razors edge you trail

because there's murder by the roadside

in a sore afraid new world

How the US would react if they suffered the losses that France and the UK and Japan and Germany and Russia (20 million dead), is interesting to speculate on, but the US is not used to that and is therefore uniquely vulnerable to being scared and panicked

That's what is amusing really. More soliders have died in the Middle East now than died on that day. We sit here and talk about the 'lives lost' on 9/11 and seem to forget the thousands of lives that were saved and rescued from the twin towers on that day as well.

Major events happen at the hand of other human beings. They doesn't mean you need to all of a sudden control every aspect of society. When you look at the patriot act, the invention of 'Homeland Security' and the organizations that formed because of it, you have to stop and wonder, in a population of 312,000,000 people, was all of this 'panic' worth it? It's not like someone dropped a nuke on NYC. Then we could talk about true catastrophe.

[slim 1,514]

Apart from that, the ordinary citizen can do nothing.

I disagree.

If the ordinary citizen gets out there and educates the other citizens - helps them open their eyes to the truth - it's quite possible we could save this country.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

I disagree.

If the ordinary citizen gets out there and educates the other citizens - helps them open their eyes to the truth - it's quite possible we could save this country.

Unfortunately the average citizen is so beaten down by what they've been spoon-fed all of their life by the corporate media, that they fail to believe anything different.

We live in a modern world now where 'what's on tv must be real,' and anything else is abnormal, conspiracy, lunatic fringe, etc.

The average human brain cannot ( or perhaps will not is a better term to use) comprehend beyond what it has been taught its entire life. To do so would to leave uncertainty in life and humanity needs certainty to survive. It's why religion is a live and well on this day because it gives people 'hope' and something to look forward to. Tells them their life isn't completely meaningless, when at the end of the day it probably is.

[slim 1,514]

Major events happen at the hand of other human beings. They doesn't mean you need to all of a sudden control every aspect of society. When you look at the patriot act, the invention of 'Homeland Security' and the organizations that formed because of it, you have to stop and wonder, in a population of 312,000,000 people, was all of this 'panic' worth it? It's not like someone dropped a nuke on NYC. Then we could talk about true catastrophe.

Here, here.

The average human brain cannot ( or perhaps will not is a better term to use) comprehend beyond what it has been taught its entire life. To do so would to leave uncertainty in life and humanity needs certainty to survive. It's why religion is a live and well on this day because it gives people 'hope' and something to look forward to. Tells them their life isn't completely meaningless, when at the end of the day it probably is.

They will once the power goes out and food deliveries stop.

[Dan and Judy 614]

on the razors edge you trail

because there's murder by the roadside

in a sore afraid new world

How do the lyrics used by a British rock group, referencing a book by an English writer apply specifically to the US?

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

We have raised a nation of complete tards and the politicians and big business know this and they use it to their advantage. Not many people asked why the US chose to invade Iraq after 9-11 even though Iraq had zero to do with it. Bush waved the flag, and the brainwashed masses went for it hook, line, and sinker. Haliburton stole billions of US tax payer dollars and still little reaction from the US public. Better yet Bush got reelected by the brainwashed masses. Vietnam opened eyes and since then those eyes have closed up again. No mass protest, no digging for the truth and reporting it from the US press...no nothing.

You have two loud sides in this country any more. The far right who uses fear, and the far left who wants to make our decisions for us. Where is the middle ground?

When you have a nation of morons that's raised on texting, facebook, and reality TV shows this is what happens. Most of these peeps couldn't find Iraq on a globe yet they wave that flag. It's getting worse, not better.

[SMR 368]

It's about land and resources, or more precisely Israel and oil

The appropriate response is to buy oil stocks and don't join the military.

Apart from that, the ordinary citizen can do nothing.

When you compare the reaction of Americans to that of people in England and Northern Ireland, it doesn't seem to take much to scare Americans into a communal nervous rash.

I suppose that is a result of their history where the 3 thousand people killed is a lot. The British army attacked on the Somme in on the 1st July 1916 and took 60,000 casualties in one morning. That was the warm up to what was to follow in Spring 1917. The Americans fly each body home. The British have 300,000 killed in Northern France with no known graves. The French had 250,000 killed and wounded during the 2nd week of September in 1914. The US simply has no experiences of large scale losses - not since their civil war.

Fear has always been a feature of American life and a major selling tool for businesses and drug companies and politicians and of course the churches who have always pedaled fear of eternal damnation.

Even the Duran Duran lyrics of the 1980's referred to:

on the razors edge you trail

because there's murder by the roadside

in a sore afraid new world

How the US would react if they suffered the losses that France and the UK and Japan and Germany and Russia (20 million dead), is interesting to speculate on, but the US is not used to that and is therefore uniquely vulnerable to being scared and panicked

I don't think I speak only for myself when I say that 9/11 wasn't about terror for most Americans so much as outrage. It was an attack on American soil that was celebrated openly throughout most of the Arab world. You're right though, that if you just look at the number of casualties it's not overwhelming. Far more people die in car crashes yet we don't read their names 1 by 1 in nationally televised services 10 years later.

We have lost perspective on the way we remember September 11th, probably because it's convenient for a lot of people. It's not really about the lives lost. Yes, they are important. But if you make it about remembering the people, it's just a glorified mass funeral. There are definitely some heroes mixed in there. But most of them are just dead people. Nothing wrong with dead people but there are an awful lot more than 3,000 of them in the world and nothing particularly special about these ones. 9/11 is really about remembering that there is evil in the world, that some people want to kill you and it's not because of something that you did. They just want to kill you and will if you let them.

I'm not saying that means that hunting down the evil people or trying to generalize them or anything else in particular is the right answer. But you have to remember that they are out there.

As far as your insinuation that not having recently lost as many people in wars changes the American perspective, this has no bearing in fact. Not one in 100,000 people living was able to comprehend 1914 (you'd have to be well over 100). If you go to WW2, you have some that remember. Yet even in Russia, where tens of millions died not so very long ago, a terrorist attack that claimed a paltry 380 lives was met with national mourning and outrage. But it's the same thing. It's not about the lives lost as much as the shocking understanding of the evil involved.

If you want to talk about a stomach for blood, only 380 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan but there is significant public pressure to pull out.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

For a long time, I questioned the use of the word “terrorism” in describing the 9/11 attacks– not because I felt the term needed to be something more sensitive like “man-caused disasters,” but I felt the definition didn’t match the event. Terrorism is “the use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.” In Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa declaring war against the United States, though he frames his grievances around ending American “occupation” of Muslim holy lands, it’s clear his call to Al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations goes beyond a mere political end: “We — with God’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.”

bin Laden had no authority to issue fatawa. God hasn't called on Muslims to kill Americans and plunder their possessions. Most Muslims ignored his declarations.

It was for this reason that I instead wanted to label the 9/11 hijackers more specifically; they were jihadists, conquerors. Their ultimate aim was not merely forcing an American policy change; their aim was the destruction of all American life. Our fear was just the icing on the cake.

They were't/aren't really jihadists since there is no cause for the lesser jihad.

Yet in the wake of 9/11, true terrorism has emerged, and its target has been the world of media, pop culture, and all public speech. Ranging from public shaming to reckless litigiousness to actual intimidation, violence, and murder, the extremist elements of the Muslim world have actively campaigned to suppress criticism of the ideology that birthed the mass murder committed ten years ago, and, sadly, many in the western world have capitulated to their hatred in slavish pursuit of “tolerance,” that most emasculating progressive virtue.

When did this happen? I haven't seen a lack of criticism of terrorists, especially among Muslims.

Largely unexamined through the 20th century, Islam and its theocratic culture dictates known as Sharia faced a fresh wave of scrutiny in the wake of 9/11, revealing much that does and should horrify those who believe in representative governance, individual rights, and the protection of minorities. Rape victims executed for charges of adultery, men sentenced to death by stoning because of homosexual relationships, honor killings for apostasy, draconian dress codes epitomized by the burqa– in the 21st century, these backwards and barbaric practices are the stuff of nightmares for the western world’s anti-Christian outrage machine, yet to point out their actual execution provokes a familiar litany of dismissive labels– bigot, Islamophobe, racist (?)– from those same individuals who froth at the mouth over the creeping fascism symbolized by Norman Rockwell.

I had to read this a few times because it's not making much sense. Sharia is not the source of the cited punishments. As far as Muslims are concerned, be critical of these practices, just don't equate them with what Islam dictates.

But western anti-Christians have good reason to excuse, dismiss, and defend the misogynistic, anti-democratic culture brought about by Islamic extremism; they obviously don’t want to end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who, after making a short film critical of Muslim treatment of women, was shot eight times, then stabbed in the heart with a knife pinned to a five-page manifesto for Egypt’s Takfir wal-Hijra. They don’t want to end up like the 100+ innocent individuals murdered after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammed or the dozens of innocent individuals murdered after Newsweek falsely reported that Guantanamo Bay guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet.

They don’t want to live like Salman Rushdie who, since 1989, has faced the threat of assassination for writing a work of fiction. Similarly, vocal critics of Islam such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the authors of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, or even Comedy Central and South Park, whose greatest sin against Islam has been portraying Mohammed inside a bear suit. And by refusing to defend the free speech of those who dare to criticize one of the world’s most prevalent religions, shaming those critics into silence rather than those who resort to intimidation and violence, they empower terrorism.

I'm afraid to exercise the full-spectrum of my First Amendment rights because, as a Palestinian-American Muslim, I can be labeled an enemy of the state by some faceless bureaucrat under the Patriot Act, stripped of the rest of my constitutional rights and detained indefinitely. That can even happen just by unknowingly practicing zakat with the "wrong" organization.

9/11 was an act of war, and we in the west fortunately have thousands of men and women willing to volunteer to take that war away from our soil, risking and sacrificing their lives overseas to stamp out jihad and those who would conquer and enslave America and its allies. It is our responsibility, as individuals involved in media and the arts, to boldly fight against the suppression of free speech and thought sought by Islamic extremists and their cowardly western enablers.

I'm still practicing jihad, thank God. The primary victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been innocent Muslims, not western free speech.

No idea should be free from scrutiny, no cause protected from heckling, no god insulated from derision. Let us honor the memory of those who died on 9/11 by never sacrificing our freedom of speech for fear of retribution.

Bill O'Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Sean Hannity, Pamela Geller, Robert Spenser, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and other profiteers of anti-Islam propaganda are alive and well. The media hasn't hesitated to get facts wrong, lump all Muslims as terrorists, and distort Islam to generate hatred and confusion. I'd say their free speech is being exercised quite freely, despite the panty-waist choices of others in the media.

Edited September 12, 2011 by Sofiyya

[Sofiyya 1,687]

I don't think I speak only for myself when I say that 9/11 wasn't about terror for most Americans so much as outrage. It was an attack on American soil that was celebrated openly throughout most of the Arab world.

That's not true.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

That's not true.

Of course not, but that doesn't change what many see as reality. In the absence of complex thinking, perception really is reality.