May this anniversary be one of hope - hope for a year with less hate, a year where we look back on shared tragedy and realize that we also share a future, and that we all must share a planet.

Amen, A.L.

As cruel as it may sound, that awful day may well have saved America from a slow death by the non-violent, under-the-radar creeping Islamization that 9/11 helped to force back above the radar, even if only intermittently. Daniel Pipes has noted on many occasions that terrorism, especially large-scale terrorism, is counterproductive for non-terrorist Islamic supremacists with an eye toward Islamizing American society, because it puts the lie to the "religion of peace" claim, stiffens Americans' resolve, and thus makes the efforts of CAIR et al to further the supremacist agenda that much less effective.

Put another way, pursuing terrorist attacks on our soil might play well to al Qaeda's "base", but is the height of stupidity in strategic terms. While this sounds great for us at first, remember that it also leaves us in the unenviable position of hoping they keep pursuing the terrorist strategy, even if that means they might occasionally get lucky and succeed at it. The day our enemies abandon terrorism will not necessarily be the day we win the global counter-jihad, not if our enemies merely devote their energies entirely toward lawful, peaceful and otherwise seemingly mundane forms of da'wa in the West (all with at least implicit cooperation from our own far Left, of course). Indeed, that might actually make the fight a lot harder.

Nice sentiment - but wrong. Dead wrong.

I'll stop hating when every one of the neck-chopping sons of bitches is ashes and smoke, and their most unhallowed place is a glowing hole in the ground. Then maybe there will be peace.

It's us or them. Strangely enough, I prefer us.

Why Can't We Live Together

Tell me why, tell me why, tell me why.
Why can't we live together?
Tell me why, tell me why.
Why can't we live together?

Everybody wants to live together.
Why can't we be together?

No more war, no more war, no more war...
Just a little peace.
No more war, no more war.
All we want is some peace in this world.

Everybody wants to live together.
Why can't we be together?

...

Everybody's got to be together.
Everybody wants to be together.

...

Gotta live together...
Together.

We got over Pearl Harbor. I remember reading old Life magazines etc from during the war. I was bothered at the hysteria and how everybody in print approved of it. Like, Life had a poster contest, for who could make the best support-the-troops poster. The winner was by a war widow, and the caption was KILL MORE JAPS. I don't remember now whether it was the one showing the evil japanese soldier carrying a naked presumably-unconscious woman on his back, holding her by one ankle.

A union had tried to go on strike and soldiers were called in with bayonets to stop them. They showed a full-page photo of the wound in the butt a union leader had gotten, along with a snarky caption about how it was just what he deserved and how he admitted in the hospital it was just what he deserved. He shouldn't have hurt the war effort when we needed to kill more japs.

But we did get over Pearl Harbor. Maybe it took Hiroshima for us to do that. Maybe that was the only way, and that's the best justification for Hiroshima -- that without it our occupation would inevitably have been cruel beyond excuse.

Maybe we can't get over 9/11 until we nuke somebody.

J Thomas:

Maybe you're right. Also, maybe we won't take the reality of our mastery of physical law and its consequences into our hearts and souls unless and until it is unambiguously demonstrated. A couple of big bangs in a faraway place don't count, for this purpose.

That reality is that the twentieth century was the first one in which the human race could commit collective suicide. We can't destroy all life on Earth - yet - but we can certainly put an end to ourselves, as we have done to many species and are busily doing to many more. "Who can destroy a thing controls that thing."

I have seen it said in several places that it would have been a good thing for humanity to have had a good rousing atomic war in the late 50s, when such an event would have been survivable. Now, a spasm war between the nuclear powers would not - Russia still has tens of thousands of warheads, which they are once again starting to rattle.

Similarly, militant Islam will not give up until they are shown that we have not only the power, but the will, to end their threat. Unfortunately for them and for the psychology of the West, the only way to show them that is to do it.

"AND THE SMOKE OF THEIR BURNING GOES UP UNTO HEAVEN."

On the other hand....

Sometimes people try to hold onto their rage. I've done it myself. I remember people telling me "Sure, that was a bad thing, but don't you think it's time to just get over it now?" And I'd be going NOOOOOOOO!

I remember a usenet group where a rather-rich system adminstrator with no social skills had gotten involved with some woman from the group. He took her to the opera, he took her to expensive restaurants, he bought her hundreds of dollars worth of toiletries and hundreds of dollars worth of flowers and he obsessed over her, and after a little while she got so uncomfortable around him that she told him she didn't want to see him any more. He blew up. He started flaming her on usenet. He obsessed over the details of every date. How much money he spent on her. How he'd wanted to put her through college. How much she'd wronged him. Lots of intimate details. Probably the most embarrassing was about squeezing her blackheads in the bathtub, and how she screamed when he did the ones on her labia. Though the description about all the sexual positions they tried were getting there. Through all that she kept a dignified silence. She'd only intended a one-night-stand. Every now and then somebody would suggest it was time to get over it and he'd go NOOOOOOOO!

I'm sure if somebody suggested that 9/11 was very bad but it's time to get over it, a whole lot of people would say he was depraved and insensitive, after they calmed down enough to do more than go NOOOOOOOOOO! NEVVVAAARRRRR!

But -- maybe it's time to get over it.

I remember a cantrip that Larry Niven quoted, that's been useful to me sometimes. "I'm going to have to get over this someday. Why not now?"