9/11

 

 

The initial shock of the day has worn off.

Twenty-five years later, the public is not so outraged but acclimated to the evil that killed nearly three thousand people in one day.

To wit:

Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks apublic opinion poll reveals a striking generational divide in what Canadiansknow about the world’s deadliest terror attacks, how deeply they feel its impact, how much they fear terrorism — and even on the question of whether terrorism can be justified.

The poll’s findings suggest personal memories of the shock and horror of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks change how people think about terrorism.

The nationwide poll of Canadian adults, conducted this week by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies and provided to Postmedia, found those under the age of 25 are by far the least likely to say they have good knowledge of the events of 9/11.

Among all respondents, 71 per cent said they have good knowledge of what happened on 9/11, while 17 per cent said they did not and 11 per cent said they didn’t know if they did or did not.

In the youngest cohort of adults, those between 18 and 24, only 47 per cent said they have good knowledge of 9/11, with 35 per cent saying they didn’t and 18 per cent saying they didn’t know. By contrast, those in the oldest cohort, aged 65 and up, 81 per cent said they have good knowledge and only 11 per cent said they didn’t. Across the age brackets, professed knowledge escalated with age.

Age changed how people answered all questions about terrorism.

“It’s a generational divide that’s really driving a lot of the responses on this subject,” said Jack Jedwab, president of the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies. “Which makes sense, since those in the youngest cohort weren’t born yet at that time (of 9/11).

 

But they ARE infuriated over bodies no one can seem to find.

Interesting. 

** 

Like so many people that morning, Chrétien thought, it must have been a small plane flown by a pilot who didn’t know what he was doing.

Calvert made his exit and Chrétien went to his ground-floor office to assess the situation. He and his aides sat and watched CNN, until he decided he was going to phone George Bush to express Canada’s sympathy and support.

His aides talked him out of it.

They convinced Chrétien there would be time for that tomorrow.

Right now, they said, the president is busy. Your call will only get in the way.

Chrétien agreed and, instead, tried to reach the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci. He’d been governor of Massachusetts when George Bush sent him to Ottawa. But that morning, Cellucci was on a plane heading back to Ottawa from Winnipeg.

The prime minister eventually got the deputy chief of mission on the phone and assured him that Canada was prepared to do whatever needed to be done.

The American diplomat was grateful.

When they hung up, Chrétien admitted that while the offer stood, there actually wasn’t much Canada could do.

Little did he know.

Reaching his cabinet wasn’t easy. They were spread out across the country, with some outside the country, in an era when email and smartphones weren’t plentiful.

Chrétien and his staff had mobile phones, clumsy early versions that, they often complained, didn’t work very well. So for the rest of the morning they stayed where they were, contacting the few people they could while watching on television as events unfolded in the States.

The one constant interruption was his Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) security detail. They kept trying to convince Chrétien to leave the residence and go to a safer place.

Chrétien refused.

They tried again a little while later.

He refused a second time, and then a third.

The Mounties pressed him whenever they could, genuinely concerned that he might not be safe. After all, no one knew if the terrorists were heading north of the border.

Or, worse, if they were already in Canada.

 

Read the whole thing.

** 

For Canadians, the legacy of 9/11 was this country’s dedication to the cause of a sovereign, democratic Afghan republic. The task the Canadian Forces took on was to join with 35 other NATO countries to open up enough space to make that happen. It became something of a Canadian habit, especially after being confronted by President Trump’s first-term belligerence, to take credit for having sent Canadian troops to America’s aid in pursuing al-Qaida in Afghanistan. But the Canadian Forces’ Operation Apollo lasted only until October, 2003, when Canada’s efforts shifted through Operation Athena, under ISAF, to build Afghan self-government and security.

More than 40,000 troops ended up mobilized in the largest Canadian deployment since the Korean War. A total of 158 Canadian military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, along with a diplomat, four aid workers, a government contractor, and a journalist. It was the Canadian Forces’ misfortune to be assigned to Kandahar, in the Pashtun heartland, where the Taliban had put down its deepest roots after Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence Agency first embedded the Talibs there in the early 1990s.

While the Taliban was quickly driven out of most of Afghanistan in the weeks and months following 9/11, what made the Taliban resurgence possible was the failure of an Iraq-distracted America to force the issue of Pakistan’s persistent aid and comfort to the Taliban in the form of safe havens and madrassas on the Pakistani side of the “Durand Line” border.

When the Taliban swept back into power and Afghanistan was plunged into chaos following Biden’s withdrawal, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan congratulated the Taliban for having finally broken “the chains of slavery.” It mustn’t be cause for much satisfaction in Islamabad and Rawalpindi that the Taliban soon turned tables, using Afghanistan as a safe haven to launch terror attacks in Pakistan.

By last October, Pakistani and Taliban forces had squared off against one another along the 2,600-kilometre disputed border, in ground skirmishes and airstrikes. By February, Islamabad declared an “open war” with the Taliban, and bombed several Afghan cities, including Kabul. Hundreds have been killed in the disturbances, which may or not be winding down.

Among the close observers of the Trump administration’s 2020 capitulation to the Taliban and the Biden administration’s squalid retreat at Hamid Karzai International Airport the following year was Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It turned out that American resolve was nothing like it had been advertised, and on February 24, 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine in a full-on war of conquest.

It turns out that “forever wars” will go on, but only if you decide to lose them.

 

 

For some people, it's all about them:

Ex-cabinet advisor Amira Elghawaby yesterday described 9/11 observances as marking “a difficult 25 years” for Muslims. The former Toronto Star columnist told reporters the decades following the terrorist attacks have seen “dangerous narratives about who we are.”

** 

A decade of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister was more hurtful than 9/11, a federal “inclusion” advisor wrote in a 2015 newspaper column. Amira Elghawaby in other commentaries complained middle-class Canadians never experienced inequity and advocated for Muslim prayer in public schools since “parents of these children pay taxes.”

 

 Useless b!#ch.

 

Also - it's like they can't help themselves:

A second Liberal MP yesterday sponsored a petition to end decades of free trade with Israel. The action by MP Pat Weiler (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast) followed a Department of Foreign Affairs announcement Tuesday that Canada would boycott Jewish imports from West Bank territories: “Suffering in Gaza has gone on too long.”