American Foxnews-Republican Christians emulate their martyr savior through victimhood, to which this monument testifies. No price is too high to ease the dissonance of humbled privilege.

Do the profits go towards anything? Like a charity or something? I know it's NYC but $25 seems steep. I guess rent is expensive.

The "first look" gallery is interesting. Apparently noteworthy is the fact that a firetruck hasn't healed itself even after all these years.

13 years on and Americans are still wetting themselves over a relatively minor incident.

Yeah, I think it's more than fair to say the terrorists won.

+1 Troll.
We would all have been much better served by brushing the attack off, relatively speaking. Should have cleaned up the site and moved on without all the exploitation.
It had to be treated as The Worst Thing Ever in order to justify a bunch of extralegal militarism and to get Republican policies enacted.

The deadliest terrorist attack in modern history? Minor? Really?

Addendum: I think I get your point. It certainly was exploited to give a lot of power and money to various parties by using the fear of the people. In that, certainly we lost... even if the terrorists didn't exactly win (America is certainly not out of Middle Eastern politics or life).

That said - apart from the corruption occurring in the aftermath... 9/11 is a legitimately horrible milestone in our nation's history.

Given that we inflicted a 9/11's worth of civilian casualties on Iraq every day for like three years*, "minor" seems kind of appropriate. It seemed like a big deal at the time because we're fat and complacent and try to keep our foreign policy as foreign as possible. But in perspective, it was a month's worth of shootings in the good ol' USA. Done all at once in a very mediagenic manner, to be sure.


*ballpark estimate, I'm not gonna quibble numbers if anyone wants to look them up.

I will quibble over the numbers.

The highest estimate available of deaths in the Iraq War:

1,033,000 (civilian and military, both sides of the conflict)

Length of the Iraq War:

7 years~ (2003-2011*)

Total casualties of 9/11:

2,977

Number of days in a 7 year timeframe:

2,555

Number of causalities expected if what you say was even remotely true:

7,606,235
--------------------------

I am not saying that America's reaction was right, and I am certainly not saying American lives are worth more. I am saying that the loss of life in a single day far outstrips anything during the Iraq War, and is worth remembering.

Correction: You stipulated the first three years of the war.

In that case the number of expected casualties should be 3,259,815.

Still a few million higher than highest estimated total death toll.

I stand corrected. That's the equivalent of a 9/11 every day for almost a year. Which I imagine would still be pretty desensitizing.

Well, yes... but still wrong.

See, I didn't change the casualty numbers to reflect just the first three years. That number is 654,965 according to most sources I could find. This puts your estimation even further into the realm of the ridiculous.

Ridiculous is my bread and butter. You're over thinking this. A million deaths (aka one statistic) divided by 2,997 deaths (one 9/11) makes 334.67 9/11s, so you could have a 9/11 almost every day for a year. It's one of those "every day enough donuts are cooked to circle the moon" analogies, with nothing to do with the length of the war or relative population size.

Except that the length of the war wasn’t a year, no matter how many ways you want to slice it. Now, if you condensed the entire 7 year conflict to a year, then you are correct and a 9/11 worth of dead people occurred every day.

I am not sure with universe you are from, but to my understanding of it time doesn't let fold it like that, even if it would let your soundbite sound really awesome.

GordonGuano is talking overall volume, not percentage.

Texting while driving kills 3,000 people a year but I don't see us launching any wars over that.

Who would you invade?

Psh. Details.

Though I suppose the obvious target would be iRaq.

Just to clarify, I down modded for the first sentence, not the second one. Name the country that wouldn't want to create a memorial for something like this and keep artifacts pertaining to it. It's hardly "wetting" one's self. I agree that the terrorists won -we are reminded of it every time we put up with insane security checks, every time we see how much taxpayer money gets dumped into "homeland security," and with every revelation about how the us government is spying on its own citizens. But that makes it all the more major of an incident. The damage to the US wasn't restricted to a few thousand people and a couple planes & buildings, it changed the culture here (and in the government) in a way that is worse and very difficult to change back.

That would be the "wetting themselves" to which I was referring.

Someone said something about having nothing to fear but fear itself. The best memorial would be to shrug your shoulders and move on.

I totally forgot about the 0 mods! :D

*Thinks about making a witty joke about the bush family but remembers about the NSA and does not*

$24/head seems a lot, but I doubt it will be enough to cover maintenance. This site will continue to be a money pit for the forseeable future. There'll be big crowds for a while, but this is designed as if it will mean as much to future generations, which it won't.
It's not nearly as significant as the Holocaust Museum, but it's presented as at least its equal.

I wouldn't actually put too much credence in that survey. It's the ADL. They probably asked people in poverty with no education. They probably didn't know about WW1 either. The fact that they polled people they are in conflict with certainly skews the overall results. The ADL has openly admitted that they will bend perception and go after people who might be perceived as being anti-Semitic simply to advance their cause. I'd also like to know what the same populace says about muslims, catholics, etc. You can read results the same for everybody, I'm sure.

That's actually sad. Museums/Memorial centers can only do so much. If schools don't talk about it, you're fucked.

To compare, if surveyed how many 55 year olds would be aware of the Armenian Genocide?

Half the victims have disappeared, it's only fair.

Have you tried to answer your own questions, or are you more interested in manipulating people by pretending it's a mystery?

No. I'm not trying to manipulate anything, but thanks for your input.