h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sep 11?

More like sad twist of fate...

What coincidence?

In planning any event, be it a child’s party, a business conference or a terrorist attack, the four core aspects to consider are:

1. Purpose
2. Time
3. Manner
4. Place

The purpose of the attacks was to retaliate against US imperialism. Given the invincibility of the US military, any attempt at a grand-scale attack would fail. Hence the choice of a small scale attack using civilian equipment. The purpose and the manner determined, the time and the place remained. Since only a small-scale attack was possible, the targets and timing would have to be symbolic rather than strategic in the usual sense. So here’s the symbolism:

World Trade Center = US economic might
Pentagon = US military might
White House = US political might

September 11th = Crimes of US Imperialism – explained in the h2g2 feature on "September 11th 1973 – The day democracy died in Chile"

“ Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for the Washington power elite, who could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power – an elected Marxist in power, one who honoured the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorising and brainwashing the population.
After sabotaging Allende’s electoral endeavour in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left on stone unturned in their attempt to destabilise the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to undermining the economy and building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military, under General Pinochet, overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.
Thus it was that they closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sound of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centres opened for business, dogs trained to sexually molest female prisoners were set loose; the subversive books were thrown to the bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that “In Chile women wear dresses!”; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their chequebooks. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more had disappeared, tens of thousands tortured.
The FBI accommodated the new government by trying to track down Chilean leftists in the United States, while Secretary of State Henry Kissinger assured Pinochet that “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here … We wish your government well.” ”

William Blum, Rogue State, Zed Books, 2002

For books by William Blum on US military and CIA interventions etc, including sample chapters and essays, see:

[Unsuitable link removed by Moderator]

The website for William Blum's book from which the quote is taken for the earlier posting is

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, at:

http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm

and if you're wondering, the "&#8221" and so on represent punctuation marks gone wrong - serves me right for copying from Word!

Of course September 11th was a coincidence in date to any other event.
(By the way, you are really reaching with the Chile connection - what do radical muslims care about marxist Chileans?
September 11th has a meaning in the middle east, some important event in Egypt I believe.
That would make more sense as a connection than the overthrow of Allende.)
September 11th has no significant meaning.
A Tuesday is what was important - that was the day of the week that had the fewest passengers on the trans-continental flights. The less passengers present = the easier to hijack.
And the plan wasn't meant to be activated until the 20th hijacker was in the country and properly trained.
But the monkey wrench in their plans was the arrest in Minnesota of the 20th hijacker - and the remaining 19 were afraid he might reveal their plans, so they pushed up the date the attack was to happen.
The facts are simple and boring.
I know conspiracy theories are exciting and sexy.
But that isn't what happened here.
These were lowlife individuals with no legitimate cause and no association to "past glories" of revolutionary events.
They were ignorant of everything that is important in the world and to life.
That is how they should be remembered.
They deserve their deaths.
But it is ashame they had to wreak so much destruction and death in pursuit of their insane, twisted visions of "virtue" (as they call it.)
Anyone who tries to justify their actions, or engages in any type of moral relativism on their behalf, is as diseased in the head as those pathetic hijackers were.
When we execute the 20th hijacker, and exterminate the members of the oranizations throughout the world who are involved in terrorism in any measure we will make this a better world than we found it.

I take your point about the relevance of the date - the Tuesday point and other logistical features are things I've not heard before - thank you.

But I am concerned by your statements that "These were lowlife individuals with no legitimate cause and no association to "past glories" of revolutionary events.
They were ignorant of everything that is important in the world and to life."

Labelling people instead of seeking to understand them is extremely dangerous because it does not get to the core of the problem; thus any solution attempted is likely to be less robust than it should. I'd encourage you to recognise that at the very deepest level all people are the same - we all wish to be happy and to avoid suffering. I do, you do, the terrorists do/did. This being the case, we must surely ask why a person who wished to create for himself or those he loves happiness and freedom from suffering would kill himself to achieve it. Of course the attackers had a cause. A cause whose legitimacy they accepted to the extent that they were prepared to kill themselves. Don't you think it's crucial that we try to understand that cause?

You also said "They deserve their deaths." I think you'll find that the hijackers who actually committed the crimes chose theirs.

Killing people who do harm is not the way to make the world a better place - creating the conditions whereby people do not wish to do harm is. Let's understand what those conditions are and get started on setting them up.