Fourteen years later, thanks a heap, Osama bin Laden. With a small number of supporters, $400,000-$500,000, and 19 suicidal hijackers, most of them Saudis, you pulled off a geopolitical magic trick of the first order. Think of it aswizardry from the theater of darkness. In the process, you did “change everything” or at least enough of everything to matter. Or rather, you goaded us into doing what you had neither the resources nor the ability to do. So let’s give credit where it’s due. Psychologically speaking, the 9/11 attacks represented precision targeting of a kind American leaders would only dream of in the years to follow. I have no idea how, but you clearly understood us so much better than we understood you or, for that matter, ourselves. You knew just which buttons of ours to push so that we would essentially carry out the rest of your plan for you. While you sat back and waited in Abbottabad, we followed the blueprints for your dreams and desires as if you had planned it and, in the process, made the world a significantly different (and significantly grimmer) place.
.. We were instantly the world’s greatest victim and greatest survivor, and it was taken for granted that the world’s most fulfilling sense of revenge would be ours. 9/11 came to be seen as an assault on everything innocent and good and triumphant about us, the ultimate they-hate-our-freedoms moment and, Osama, it worked.
.. It occurred to me that the unexpected vulnerability of Americans living in a land largely protected from the chaos so much of the world experiences might open us up to the pain of others in a new way. Dream on.
.. Don’t you still find it eerie that, amid the wreckage of the Pentagon, the initial orders our secretary of defense gave his aides were to come up with plans for striking Iraq, even though he was already convinced that Al Qaeda had launched the attack? (“‘Go massive,’ an aide’s notes quote him as saying. ‘Sweep it all up. Things related and not.’”)
.. Fourteen years later, how probable was it that the country then universally considered the planet’s “sole superpower,” openly challenged only by tiny numbers of jihadist extremists, with a military better funded than the next 10to 13 forces combined (most of whom were allies anyway), and whose technological skills were, as they say, to die for would win no wars, defeat no enemies, and successfully complete no occupations?
Don’t Fly During Ramadan
“I’m running it through the x-ray again,” he snapped. “Because I can. And I’m going to do it again, and again, until I decide I’m done”. He then asked the TSA agents whether they had patted me down. They said they had, and he just said, “Well, try again”, and left the room. Again I was told to stand with my legs apart and my hands extended horizontally while they patted me down all over before stepping outside.
.. I barely noticed the irony of the situation – that the TSA and NYPD were clearing me for takeoff, but JetBlue had decided to ground me. At this point, I could think of nothing else but how to inform my family, who were expecting me to be on the other side of the country, that I wouldn’t be meeting them for dinner after all.
.. He then asked, “What is your religion?”
“I’m Hindu.”
“How religious are you? Would you describe yourself as ‘somewhat religious’ or ‘very religious’?”
I was speechless from the idea of being forced to talk about my the extent of religious beliefs to a complete stranger. “Somewhat religious”, I responded.
“How many times a day do you pray?” he asked. This time, my surprise must have registered on my face, because he quickly added, “I’m not trying to offend you; I just don’t know anything about Hinduism. For example, I know that people are fasting for Ramadan right now, but I don’t have any idea what Hindus actually do on a daily basis.”
.. After he wrote it down, I asked him if I could have something to drink. “I’ve been here talking for three hours at this point,” I explained. “My mouth is like sandpaper”. He refused, saying
“We’ll just be a few minutes, and then you’ll be able to go.”
.. By this time, I hadn’t had any food or water in almost eighteen hours. I could feel the energy draining from me, both physically and mentally, and my head was starting to spin. I went to the door and explained the situation the officer. “At the very least, I really need something to drink.”
“Is this a medical emergency? Are you going to pass out? Do we need to call an ambulance?” he asked, skeptically. His tone was almost mocking, conveying more scorn than actual concern or interest.
.. “You’ll have to understand, when a person of your… background walks into here, travelling alone, and sets off our alarms, people start to get a bit nervous.
.. In the end, JetBlue did refund my flight, but they cancelled my entire round-trip ticket. Because I had to rebook on another airline that same day, it ended up costing me about $700 more for the entire trip.
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, Builds Clock, Is Cuffed for Bomb Hoax, Then Gets Invited to White House
To me this also highlights the failing of a broad trend in education over the past decade or so: zero-tolerance policies. Such policies are applied to a range of topics/issues, from language to clothing to weapons to drugs/medications, etc. These issues are serious and real, but zero-tolerance far too often means “zero judgment.” Such policies free teachers & administrators to act first and think later (if at all), rather than thoughtfully examining the context of the issue. They teach students that judgment and reason are not to be valued, and that “fairness” means applying the same rigid answer to all situations. Life is rarely black and white, right or wrong; yet such policies falsely teach our children to view the world that way.
.. If they’d truly thought this was a bomb, they would have evacuated the school. Clearly no one thought it was. They said thought he had a hoax bomb, which he would have, had he said “this is a bomb.”
.. So according the police spokesperson, “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.” Exactly what kind of “broader explanation” were they looking for?
.. Looking at the picture of the “clock”, you can understand the teacher’s concern. It should not have gotten to the point that Ahmed was detained by the police, but you can understand the school getting them involved.
Why It Matters Whether an Attack on Palestinians Is ‘Terrorism’
Definitions of the campaign vary. One 2013 tally found nearly 800 cases of suspected price-tag attacks, and 276 arrests, in an 18-month span. In 2014, Israeli security officials blamed a group of about 100 hardliners for most of the attacks.
.. The question of what to call the attacks could be important for another reason, too: money. The Israeli government compensates victims of terrorism and their families. Typically, that has been a right afforded to Israelis who are killed or injured by Palestinian attacks. But in some more recent cases, the government has opted to grant Palestinians compensation as well, as NPR’s Daniel Estrin noted last year.
After Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted and killed by three Israeli men, his family was paid.