WTC 911 2020 - 19 years on.

[Pickman's model]

"Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) is an arms fair held every two years in London Docklands, which is attended by both arms company representatives and military delegations from around the world."

at the fiesta of life Fiesta for Life in the Docklands 2001 - UK Indymedia

 

[Idris2002]

I think it's simplistic to say they've won because 'the war' is ongoing - they have lost things they considered to be invaluable (safe havens, sympathetic/blind-eye states, funding, any kind of long standing, senior leadership) and have been pushed out of a number of temporal territories with astonishing losses of fighters and commanders.

They now spend far more time managing/attempting to manage their own security than they do prosecuting their wars. That is very different to how they were operating in the summer of 2001.

We haven't won - we're still conducting counter IS/others ops in Iraq and Syria, we've been supporting the French op in Mali for years with airlift, helicopters, and UAV's, we're sending a very crunchy battlegroup to the UN operation in Mali because of IS's success in the Sahel - but they've not won either: safe havens are hard to find, they are beset with enemies, the fear and effect of penetration agents has had, and continues to have, a toxic and paralysing impact on morale and effectiveness, and any leaders that appear have a terrifyingly short life expectancy which causes huge organisational and political churn, paralysis and infighting.

They never got the result they really wanted - full polarisation along sectarian lines, with Muslim communities in Western countries being fully marginalised and excluded (though it did feel like a close run thing on that front, on more than one occasion).

Also, they never really recruited the best and brightest - people I know who did prisoner education in the Maze told me that the "Provo intellectual" thing was very much a reality. Where's the Al-Q intellectuals?

 

[SheilaNaGig]

I sort of remember it making all of the other terrorism seemed irrelevant. There were quite a few bombings in the 90s but this one was just something else altogether

9/11 was certainly a huge deal, and I remember gallows humour about “trust the Yanks to go bigger” but for me it didn’t make other stuff fade out.

In many ways, it brought everything else into stark relief. It’s all part of the same story in the end. Empire building, fall of empire and everything that happens in between.

 

[freakydave]

9/11 was certainly a huge deal, and I remember gallows humour about “trust the Yanks to go bigger” but for me it didn’t make other stuff fade out.

In many ways, it brought everything else into stark relief. It’s all part of the same story in the end. Empire building, fall of empire and everything’s that’s happens in between.

Totally agree about 'stark relief'. I was quite into that anti-branding kind of movement that was big in the 90s and hadn't really thought that seriously about the amount of war and colonialism that we were living in before the attacks.

 

[Jay Park]

seems so. oklahoma city a great distance from the eastern seaboard of new england tho.

wouldn’t like to walk it

 

[Jay Park]

Wasn't a cargo flight, was a passenger one, crashed in Queens killing 260 people on board and 5 on the ground. November 2001.

news was 24/7 Bin Laden by that point and the intrusion into Afghanistan came a touch later. We had this imprinted on our consciousness for about a year afterwards and then again with Iraq. Militarising us as best they could. I’d forgotten about that crash, too.