102 Minutes / Fahrenheit 9/11
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posted by Mr. Webb | Tuesday, November 11, 2008
41 Comments:
Both the novel 102 Minutes and the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 are highly critical, almost to an unnecessary degree. The book and the movie don’t address the fact these the attacks on the World Trade Center were just that, attacks. They disregard the fact that no one saw them coming. Yes, the movie shows evidence that George W. Bush knew something about Osama bin Laden planning to hijack airplanes, but he didn’t know the attack would be at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001, or even on the World Trade Center. Likewise, the designers of the World Trade Center didn’t know if or where a plane would hit and the tower would burst into flames.
I was expecting the book to be more about the actual fight to survive inside the towers, but a large portion is information about how the destruction of the buildings was the fault of the designers and architects, the result of design flaws. The book almost seems to disregard the idea that these were terrorist attacks. There is really no way to prepare for this, no matter how strong the building is believed to be. It can survive as many tests as it is given, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will survive when something real happens. On pages 58-59 therein lies the fact that “the building itself would stand. On November 7, 1982, officials replicated a plane crash high in one of the towers, a ‘disaster’.” The tower survived this replica, but who was to know what floors a plane would crash into on September 11, 2001? Also, this one instance was a drill; it was controlled. The actual attacks were anything but controlled and the attackers didn’t plan exactly what floors to hit and at what angle. The authors do a very good job presenting all the facts about the building, but seem to forget that no one had control over the attacks.
The movie is completely critical of President Bush. The way Michael Moore depicts Bush reacting to the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers is almost ridiculous. Bush is conveyed as a complete idiot. Moore is speaking in the background at this point and says, “Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do, and no secret service rushing in to take him to safety, Mr. Bush just sat there and continued to read My Pet Goat.” President Bush probably should have done something right then about what was going on, but he’s only human. Just imagine hearing that the country you are in charge of is under the largest terrorist attack it has ever been. The President is supposed to be able to be calm under such stressful situations as this. I’m sure if Bush would have gotten up and ran out of the classroom, there wouldn’t be very positive thoughts about the situation. It was an attack, a surprise to everyone. How was he supposed to react to this news? It also mentions a security briefing he received on August 6, 2001 that said Osama was going to hijack planes, but it didn’t see he was going to crash into the Twin Towers and Pentagon. The attack shouldn’t have been a complete surprise to Bush, but they still were a surprise. He handled the situation appropriately, maybe not effectively, but appropriately.
As I am sure my classmates have experienced, both the documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the book “102 Minutes” were difficult to take in. The book was an excellent account of the tragedy and the play by play made it even more heart breaking to endure. One topic I find frequently mentioned in the book is the lessons-both preventative and misleading-from the 1993 basement truck bombing. Because of the steps taken after the bombing, the World Trade Centers became more prepared for an attack. However (this is where I questions Courtney’s view of a completely blindsided attack), the full extent of preparation was not reached due to lack of follow through in both security staff and evacuation plans as well as outright defiance of attack possibilities.
In “102 Minutes” the fire wardens of Port Authority are discussed and shown to be of little worth to the company. On page 26 it says that “The Port Authority had cut their numbers in 1997, eliminating positions in the ‘sky lobbies’-the 44th and 78th floors-that were not required by code after the installation of the new fire alarm system.” At the very least, the companies should have been more prepared for evacuation and terrorist attack. Especially if there was information about possible plane hijacking as well as a previous attack on that very building.
Also, in an article from the Washington Post entitled “Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice,” the warning of an increasing threat of attack is discussed as well as the attempts of government officials to get through to both Condoleezza Rice and President Bush. But as the article states, “they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn’t want to swat at flies.” I believe that the government had more warning than they let on, and that with the preparation and asset of a head start on an attack, the tragedy could have been less of a loss for the country.
I got the article online from the Washington Post. It was published October 1, 2006 and here’s the URL.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000282.html
In her post, Courtney W states that "the designers of the World Trade Center didn’t know if or where a plane would hit and the tower would burst into flames." While this is true, the main point of Dwyer and Flynn describing the structural flaws of the towers is the lack of attention to the safety of the thousands of people who would inevitably be in the tower should an attack ever occurr. It amazes me that the designers of the towers failed to utilize common sense and would rather sacrifice safety of humans than spare some square footage that might turn a profit for the towers' owners.
The idea that money to be made from the towers could ever be more valuable than the thousands of lives inside the towers is infuriating. The builders ignored basic safety codes and broke several rules about building high-rise structures simply because they could. All the city codes mentioned had a reason for their being law, either "gruesome elevator accidents in the 1970s and 1980s," or the deaths of one hundred forty-six who "died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire" or the collapse of "the 'fireproof' structure" of the Equitable Building. (159, 107-8). The engineers who designed and built the World Trade Center buildings had the same mentality as the engineers who constructed the so-called unsinkable Titanic. Though every person involved in the World Trade Center had to have known the dangers of a lack of safety features, they all assumed that their structure was undefeatable. Their cockiness led to the same fate as the Titanic.
Dwyer and Flynn emphasize the parallel experiences of the Titanic and the World Trade Center by equating the fire of the World Trade Center to the water and snow that the passengers of the Titanic experienced. After the first plane crashes into the side of the north tower, the former director of the World Trade Center, Alan Reiss, sees "a blizzard of burning confetti" instead of snow dropping around the disaster (15). Around the same time, Paul Engel peeks at the pool he almost chose to take a swim in and discovers that "It was on fire" (17). Water and fire are again combined to draw a parallel between the two seemingly separate elements. A different image of water surrounds the indecisiveness of people in the south tower as the "tides crisscrossed and swirled, as some people were returning to their desks and others deciding to go ahead and leave", none of these people entirely informed and all of them making blind decisions with no direction (91). The most effective use of water imagery emphasizes the reckless abandon of building engineers when designing safety for the towers; people will do anything to save their own lives and "As desperation rose, it was impossible not to remember that a drowning person will push a lifeguard under water if it means one more gulp of air" (137). The people trapped inside the buildings are essentially drowning in smoke and will do anything for one more breath of air, even if it compromises the life of another. The engineers did nothing in the way of planning for the desperation of victims stuck in the towers and a major flaw exists when the builders planned not to save the lives of the people, but to save the structural integrity of the towers. Older buildings were equipped with "heavy-duty stairwells [that] served as psychic life rafts", and the World Trade Center, being built without the safety of the heavy-duty stairs, became the equivalent of an ocean liner setting out across the sea without life rafts (108).
Money seems to be a prominent reason for the deaths and injuries of thousands of people on September 11 and in the war. The soldiers are only in Iraq because we needed to protect our oil. Thousands of soldiers have died to protect our oil. And Bush can’t even pay them fully for their efforts. One soldier died and his pay check was sent to his family, missing the pay for the last five days of the month of work he missed because he had died. “The whole war is just about money”, is pretty much the idea Michael Moore presents. The young men and women that join the military are usually the ones with no other choices; they can’t go to college because they live in poverty stricken areas and don’t have the money, so if they join the military, the government is taking care of them. The movie shows soldiers saying that they don’t know why we are still in Iraq. They don’t know because no one really does, but it seems that the war is all about the price of oil. If the war was really about terrorists, we should have gone for the man behind the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden, and he is in Afghanistan. We are in Iraq for seemingly one reason, to protect our oil prices. A reporter in the movie says, “if it wasn’t for the oil, nobody would be there.” Thousands of soldiers have died to protect our oil. Husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, neighbors, friends have all died because we want low prices on oil. Since when has oil become more important than human lives? Apparently since we waged war on Iraq.
Anne A mentions “the idea that money to be made from the towers could ever be more valuable than the thousands of lives inside the towers is infuriating.” The builders sacrificed room for escape routes in order to make more money because of the amount of real estate that was added. Just as the war for oil, money is more important than life. Has our society really come to this? In the builders’ defense, they probably figured there would never be an instance where there would “be a need for everyone to leave at the same time” (65). But, seriously? Why didn’t they take that into consideration? It seems like all anyone cares about is the money. We want to make more money and have cheap prices but look away from the fact that the loss of a person is the price for all this. This idea is definitely infuriating, especially because it involves our whole society. It is not only President Bush or other government officials that want money, it is the builders of the World Trade Center, too. And it expands past just this group to our whole country. We are sacrificing human lives for a little green piece of paper that has almost become the symbol of a fulfilled life.
The blame for the attacks on 9/11 has been placed on hundreds of different people over the years since the attacks but the reality is that no one saw this coming. In Moore's documentary, he accuses PresiDent Bush of knowing that bin Laden was planning on hijacking planes. But like Courtney said, how would he have any idea that this would happen on this date at this time? How can he be held accountable for not preventing these attacks when he didn't necessarily have anything to back up bin Laden's plans? Moore seemed to only interview people who ageed with him and his beliefs. I found the documentary entirely one sided and not very good source for information on the attacks. Moore seemed to place the blame entirely on President Bush. Like Courtney says, he is depicted as completely incompetent and quite frankly an "idiot." I am pretty sure that if you put any other man in the same position the results would be almost the same. It isn't fair that all of the blame is being loaded onto him regardless of whether or not his actions immediately following the attacks were right.
Everyone continues to talk about the warning signs of 9/11 and the threats that were recieved. The United States recieves threats on a daily basis and most of them aren't very credible. Yes, they probably should have been taken more seriously and steps should have been taken to be sure, but we cannot spend valuable time and money on every single threat that we recieve. That wouldn't be logical. Yes, it shouldn't have been taken so lightly but it is not like President Bush purposely didn't do anything about the threats. He had good intentions.
Anne said that it amazed her "how the designers of the towers failed to utilize common sense and would rather sacrifice safety of humans than spare some square footage that might turn a profit for the towers' owners." While this is true, we can pass the blame around forever but it isn't going to change what happened. The designers had no idea anything like this would ever happen. No one would like to think anything like this would ever happen.
It is unfair for people like Michael Moore to blame people for this inside our own country when unity and trust were needed. Bin Laden and his followers are solely responsible and that is something that can't be debated
When beginning to watch the film Ferenheight 9/11, I kept and open mind at first, thinking of what Michael Moore is known for and how biased and hard headed he is. Well he wasn’t exactly those things, he was worse.
First of all the 9/11 attacks occurred when tons of workers were in the buildings doing there everyday jobs, not thinking anything in the world might go wrong today. Moore focuses on President Bush, George W. Bush, and lets not forget, Mr. President Bush. This documentary is supposed to be focusing on the lost lives that day and how maybe, just maybe, they might have been saved but the only thing I learned was that Moore thought Bush was on vacation. The connotations of Bush being just a terrible person became so ridiculously redundant, I could predict the movie half way through.
One part of the movie did stick with me. The part when Michael Moore introduced (towards the end) a lady who had lost her son in a “Black Hawk down” incident. In
102 Minutes it does not merely focus on one depressing story of a woman loosing her son, it talks about all of the people in there in confusion, all of there backgrounds and stories they have outside of work, and there point of view. I understand her son died, which is a huge loss for any parent to go through, but she is not the only one. When reading the book, another character pops up every five minutes, giving you a hint of who this person really is and what they did in the situation of trying to get out, and that is the facts, truth, and the reason we should be studying nine eleven. Not to find what we could have done but what we can still do to remember those who were no different from us civilians living today, that is why 102 Minutes is an accurate but still heartfelt novel while Ferenheight 9/11 blames one person : President Bush. Was President Bush over there trying to get peoples children killed? No, he sent them over to do what they signed up for, to serve a country, to be a real soldier. And every single one of them over there were strong soldiers, I just had hoped I would be seeing there courageous deeds rather than Moore's view of "what they really do" over there. All those people/workers in the towers were true soldiers and 102 Minutes could not have done a better job showing readers that.
While bin Laden and his followers did hijack the planes and crash them into the Twin Towers, the tragedy itself amplified because of flaws in the building's design more than anything else. 102 Minutes repeats the structural genius of the towers over and over again, stressing the feeling of everyone inside that the towers would stand even though the plane crashed into them. It made sense for these people to believe this because Dwyer and Flynn state that "the wind load on an ordinary day was thirty times greater than the force of the airplane" (40). That reassures me that had there been a way for all of the people in the World Trade Centers that day been able to escape, far fewer lives would have been taken. It is possible that the only people who would not have survived would have been those directly in the gaping hole from the impact. The designers failed to put in plausible escape routes and "the agency never did the fireproofing tests", so when the towers were hit, there was no way people could be expected to escape and survive. So while it was bin Laden's fault that the towers were crashed into by commercial jets, the magnitude of the tragedy falls in the hands of the designers and their idiotic desire to profit by cutting corners during the construction of the towers.
Where the book places most of the blame on the tower's designers, Michael Moore places the blame entirely on President George W. Bush, but as stated earlier by both Courtney and Megan, the president had no substantial proof that bin Laden would have his followers, not bin Laden himself, hijack those specific planes on that specific day. Although the entire contents of the report were not mentioned in the film, one article in the New York Times speculates about the warnings contained inside of it. The way Moore and the New York Times describe the report and criticize the action taken by the FBI seem relatively unfair because of the prejudice involved in assuming that certain people are terrorists. The article suggests that "Scrutiny is expected to focus in part on communication breakdowns between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. that allowed two of the 19 hijackers to live openly in San Diego despite intelligence about their terrorist ties" (Lichtblau and Sanger). That is like saying, "How dare police officers go after a murderer when this man who is known to associate with gang members is living peacefully?" So intelligence suggested that the men had ties to terrorists; big deal. Perhaps the FBI and CIA did not entirely trust the "intelligence." We all know what intelligence can be like. Does anyone recall a certain freezing cold morning when a false bomb threat forced police officers to make an entire search of the school for absolutely nothing? Intelligence is not necessarily reliable in all situations. However, the FBI and CIA are not entirely blamed for the attacks; more blame goes to Bush. Moore goes so far as to criticize the president for spending time with Saudi Arabian politicians and nobles after the attacks. He describes an instance where representatives from the Saudi Arabian embassy were invited over for dinner at the White House. How prejudices can we be? First of all, bin Laden was not even from Saudi Arabia, he was from Afghanistan, a point stressed by Moore when fighting the attack on Iraq. What reason would the president have for immediately turning his back on anyone from even the same continent as one terrorist group? Only one. That could not possibly be justified to anyone who could understand that one bad person does not automatically make one race into villains and criminals. If the same concept were applied to the United States, every single one of us would be viewed as a terrible, awful person who should be put in jail and shunned by the rest of the world. We have certainly had our share of bad people. The film "proves" that Bush is friendly with potential terrorists by showing a bunch of clips of him shaking hands with mystery men in turbans. First of all, absolutely every politician shakes hands. I have yet to see a politician that pulls his or her hand away from the offer of another's and just waves at them instead. It does not matter if the person has leprosy; the politician will shake their hand. Second of all, mystery men in turbans are not dangerous in themselves. Moore seems to believe that under all of the turbans are some sort of deadly weapon that these people would be dumb enough to store next to their brains. My issue with the movie is not so much the idea that much of the war has to do with money and oil, because I do think that those two objects have everything to do with it, but rather with the way Moore plays into the fears of people by suggesting that prejudice against other civilizations and ways of life is the best way to prevent tragedy. It's not.
Lichtblau, Eric and David Sanger. "August '01 Brief is Said to Warn of Attack Plans." The New York Times 10 04 2004 08 12 2008 .
The way fear is played into both the movie and the book is spectacular. Annie says “the way Moore plays into the fear of people by suggesting the prejudice against other civilizations and ways of life is the best way to prevent tragedy. It’s not”. I would have to think that Annie is making a good point. The way American’s look at other people from different countries is totally judgmental. This reaction either comes from fear or hatred. Most of the time it’s fear. And the book and movie display this concept very well. The people are always afraid of what they do not know. When they do not know, assumptions are made. In the book, the people who first felt the shake of the towers like Gerry Gaeta hollered, “It’s a bomb, let’s get out of here” (16). He does not know what the shake was caused by, but by fear he instantly thinks the shake was caused by a bomb. He thinks the incident that happened in ’93 is happening again. This manipulates his actions. In the movie, Moore stresses the fact that the war inflicts so much fear to the country. Even small towns thought they were going to get bombed by terrorist. The question and worry of “what does a terrorist look like”, and “who could be a terrorist” is all up in the air. Many unlikely people were stopped by the air port security and F.B.I. agents showed up at a man’s home to ask about his conversations at the gym. The country went on high alert. This life of fear was not good for the American’s. As each day passed, more and more questions of wanting to know everything were devolving. The government was not going public with the information they had about the war. Any fear set on the shoulders causes wide-spread terror and terror causes chaos. Neither of which the country needs but after the attacks, terror as well as panic and chaos struck the United States.
On the topic of the war in Iraq, Courtney W says that the “young men and women that join the military are usually the ones with no other choices”. While it may be true that many people join the military because it pays for college, there is always another choice. Even though they may not have planned on going to Iraq by signing up for the Reserves or the National Guard, they know there is a possibility and they choose to risk it. Whether you agree with the war or not, we all must agree that the soldiers were not drafted and are not being forced to go against their will. They choose to go fight because they get paid for it. This seems like the reason for the war itself. President Bush continues this war because of the money he will make. Is this not just like the soldiers who sign up for the war to get their college tuitions paid for? In reality most people want money. It may not be a good thing, but Bush is not the only one who wages war for a few extra bucks. He obviously does it on a much larger scale, but we cannot think that he alone is to blame for sending soldiers to Iraq when so many are freely choosing to go just for the money.
I found it interesting that Fahrenheit 9/11 is mostly about the war in Iraq, while 102 Minutes only focuses on September 11th’s terrorist attacks. While the book all but excludes the government entirely, the movie hardly mentions the terrorist attacks. They are about very different events, but the documentary shows the effects of the events in the book. The New York Times says that Dwyer and Flynn “have recreated the moments in which we lost our capacity for that kind of surprise and given us a fitting tribute to the people caught up in one of the great dramas of our time”, while another New York Times article states that Michael Moore’s documentary is “synthetic rather than comprehensive, and is not always internally consistent”. The New York Times seems to have no trouble bashing Fahrenheit 9/11, but it is not a fair comparison. 102 Minutes is mainly the facts about September 11th. It is biased, but no where near to the extent that Fahrenheit 9/11is. It is not fair to criticize Michael Moore’s strong opinions when Dwyer and Flynn’s are much less apparent.
A major problem in the Twin Towers was lack of communication. The radios did not work very well in the towers, not to mention the constant hostilities between the Fire and Police Departments. This was an ongoing problem, and on the day of the attack, the “lack of coordination among the agencies, particularly between the Police and Fire Departments, would have other costs”(222). One command that was lost to many people was the command to evacuate the North Tower after the collapse of the South Tower. While the Police Department spread the word of the evacuation, many firefighters did not get the message at all. This problem was spelled out in Steve Modica’s thoughts: “We were doing nothing. Nothing. What’s the plan? Nobody had a plan” (222). Anyone who had a plan was not able to get the word out. Considering that these communication problems had been going on for a while, the departments should have been able to work out their differences. Many more lives could have been saved if the Police and Fire Departments would have communicated with each other.
Stewart, James B. “'102 Minutes': Inside the Towers”. ”. The New York Times. January 9, 2005. The New York Times. December 13, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/books/review/09STEWART.html
Scott, O. A. “Unruly Scorn Leaves Room for Restraint, but Not a Lot”. The New York Times. June 23, 2004. The New York Times. December 13, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/FAHRENHEIT-REF.html
Fear is played in the movie in more than just the idea that people are scared of the unknown. The movie also talks about the idea that government officials would raise and lower the terror threats between orange and red seemingly only to confuse the American people. Michael Moore says that people turned to them government to protect them, “but protect them from what?” The movie also shows clips of President Bush saying “we are no longer safe.” I would have to say I agree with Michael Moore in the fact that we got a little ridiculous with the terrorist alerts and everything. Does anyone really know the difference between a yellow or orange or red terror alert? Maybe some people do, but the majority of the American people don’t. One man that was interviewed in the movie was questioned by the FBI for talking about Bush at the gym. He said “I feel my rights have been trampled on” just because he said something bad about President Bush. We have the right to freedom of speech, and he didn’t threaten the President, so it really was not necessary for the FBI to knock on his door to see what he was saying. Imposing on people’s rights of freedom of speech is just crossing the line a little too much.
The book does not give the firefighters and police officers enough credit for what they did on September 11. It does give ample credit to the people inside the buildings that helped to save lives. The book says, “Only when people like De Martini and his crew took it upon themselves to attack those barriers . . . people could go free” (88). Obviously people like this were the real heroes of the situation, but the book hardly mentions firefighters and police officers except to talk about their communication flaws. True, they did do a lot of things wrong, but they were trying. Anyone that would risk their own life to save others is a hero, no matter how many things went wrong with their technology. Both the firefighters and the people inside the building deserve more recognition than they receive.
When the Fuji/Mizuho office workers evacuate the South Tower, one security guard tells them "All is well here . . . The building is secure", and changes all of their minds and they turn back to go upstairs, ultimately to most of the workers' doom (64). Every one of those workers would have gotten out of the towers and been safe but one man decides that he knows best and most of those workers go back to their offices, the very place where the second plane hit. The tone of that part of the book suggests that Dwyer and Flynn do, in fact, have critical opinions about the attacks, and they are not hidden that well at all.
Kristin said that "It is not fair to criticize Michael Moore’s strong opinions when Dwyer and Flynn’s are much less apparent." It is fair to criticize both of the piece's opinions, but the reason why Moore's are criticized more is that his are not all backed by fact, as Dwyer and Flynn's are. The people Dwyer and Flynn criticize are those who lack enough common sense to save people's lives, like the security guard in the South Tower and the fire fighters and police officers who refuse to let a feud go and communicate with one another. The two departments "could not agree on which one was in charge of the frequencies" of the radios, so the two agencies have no communication in the middle of the attacks (135). Because of the stubbornness of both of these groups, important messages were not relayed, like the message to evacuate the South Tower. People were misinformed and did not know to get out of the building and the security guards did not recommend that people get out. More people suffered than should have because of the stubborn nature of people.
In every person there is going to be stubbornness, pride, curiosity, and joy etc; all emotions that take over on their own. They just happen. Yes, sometime certain people want to act like know-it-alls. But, the security guards were not stubborn they just thought the building was secure. They were receiving messages that told them the accident was in the north tower and the people in the south tower were safe. They were told to “just stand by” (71) or “to wait for further notice” (70). But also some were being told “to just get out of the building, right now” (71). There were a whole lot of different opinions and people were being told so many different things. The people in the tower were relying on the words from the men and women downstairs. On top of the fear and panic in the people in the tower, the horrible connection from the radios didn’t help anymore. So, in the north tower people were mainly making decisions on their own. But for some people this is a hard thing so they relied on other to lead them in the right direction. The one man who told everyone to go back to their desk thought that this move was the best. He was under the impression that the building was secure. I mean, who would have guessed another plane was going to crash into the second building.
If there is any blame on the misconception of the events, and relaying different messages to the people in the tower, it is the police and firefighters that arrived on scene. Ever since the beginning of the two different departments, they have had a strong hatred of each other. I personally know this because my dad is a police officer and we just do not like too many firefighters. He tells me how the police call the firefighters “hose-draggers” and names of like that that mock them, cops tease firefighters by telling them “to go save a cat”. There is no trust or liking in each other between the two departments. The book even says, “They did not bicker; they simply did not communicate” (57). They stayed to themselves and ran their own rescue operations. They could have gotten together and worked together as one unit, but they didn’t. They could have been more efficient in their work and made more progress faster but they failed to communicate and establish this conclusion.
After watching the movie farenheight 9/ 11 I could understand why everyone seemed to be so disgusted. Michael Moore’s documentary was overly opinionated and judgmental. When certain parts of the film started to seem convincing, they were quickly shot back down when he had no evidence to back up his point. When Moore showed the few ignorant young soldiers that disagreed with the war, he failed to prove his purpose when he couldn’t manage to show even one weakness of a soldier that did agree. And as for President Bush, I almost felt sorry for him. Moore managed to take bits and pieces out of things that he had said making it seem like entire attack was Bush's fault. When Bush was reading a story to that kindergarten class, and heard the news of the attack, was he really just going to come up with a solution right that second? As Megan and Courtney pointed out, the film is completely one-sided and thus, how can it be true?
As for the book, Dwyer and Flynn create more of an objective tone, merely telling of what happened. It was very interesting to find out how clueless the people inside actually were. The family members who watched the crash on television would call frantically asking how everything was, while the people inside the tower assumed that the interruption was probably a small electrical explosion and continued to work. It seemed like the people simply observing were horrified, while the true victims had no idea. Additionally, the PAPD officers were also oblivious to the horrors occurring right above them. As two employees from World Trade center 2 called in for instruction, both received opposing advice. When asked what to do PAPD Officer Greg Brady replied, “I would wait till further notice . . . they have people that can’t het out of [overlap] floor”; however, when asked the same question PAPD Officer Steve Maggett responded, “Uh there was some kind of either accident or explosion in building 1. Everybody get out” (70). This explains how even the people that were expected to know updates were ignorant of the situation. As for the employees of the towers, they were relying on false assumptions to determine their safety. They automatically assumed that a PAPD Officer would know exactly how safe they were and ignored all fears worries. As for the few people that went with their human instinct to run from danger, they remained some of the few that survived.
Another thing I noticed while reading the book and watching the movie was that the stories seem much more real in Michael Moore’s documentary than in Dwyer and Flynn’s book. We have all heard the phrase, “seeing is believing”, and this is exactly the case with the events on September 11th.
In 102 Minutes, the people in the towers seem like characters in a story book. They seem to appear, say their lines, describe the dramatic scene, and disappear again. We all know that the events of 9/11 are very real, but the book fictionalizes them. It tells story after story, and to readers, that’s all they become—stories. There are stories of heroism, of friendship, of goodbyes—things that would normally exist in books about people in danger. While reading, it is hard to keep track of different characters and they all mesh together. Much like a story book, there is the climax of the planes hitting the buildings and the collapse of the buildings. We all know its coming, but the suspense builds with each second and each person. It creates a different world that captures readers. I found myself forgetting that it is all real. Books are meant to draw readers into a fantasy world, and even though the events of 9/11 are real, it is hard to come back to reality after reading the multiple stories in the book.
Fahrenheit 9/11 brings us back to reality. Movies are obviously much more visual. The scene right after the attack where papers are flying around provides us with just a glimpse of the damage. It is much easier to visualize the twin towers’ destruction with a visual picture. Also there is a woman crying about her son’s death in Iraq. More emotion is evoked through seeing someone crying, rather than reading about it. We have all heard stories of soldiers in Iraq. The movie provides us with interviews of soldiers wanting to come home. Rather than hearing that soldiers are homesick, we get to read the longing on their faces. The reality of the horror of war is much more real with visual pictures.
Reading vs. seeing has been a major part of our news for years. When the terrorist attacks occurred, many people around the world did not hear about it until the newspaper announced it. It seemed distant, and maybe even not as big of a deal as everyone made it out to be. Reading the headlines was horrible in itself, but the visual of the burning buildings was missing. The majority of the population just switched on the television and watched the action themselves. These people came to know the horrible truth right away. They watched as people jumped from the towers and as the buildings fell. They watched it as if it was right in front of them, which somehow made it more personal. Seeing the tragedy is much more horrific than reading about it, so the documentary is more realistic. Half of the population did not believe it until they saw the flames. Seeing the destruction of the towers in the book, on a television screen was much more real.
I found the book, 102 minutes, and the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 completely different. In Michael Moore's movie he uses complete opinions. As Brook said, he never backs up his opinions. How can a person tell what President Bush was even talking about when Moore puts in clips of his speech? The little clips of his speech could be him talking about something irrelevant. The fact that Bush goes on vacation all the time can be argued as well. How do we know in the video if it was one or two different golfing trips, just at different times of his trip. The fact is we don’t. I would like so see someone else in President Bush’s shoes when someone told him there was an attack on our soil. This does not happen on a regular basis. In fact watching the movie, an observer can see that he is reading, but he is clearly thinking of something different. It is natural for a person’s first instinct to be out of line and over the top. By letting the situation sit, a person can get a better understanding and make more conscience choices to what the next step will be.
The book is quite the opposite. Instead of getting an opinion of what happened, it takes you step by step and shows what normal everyday people were doing. Dwyer and Flynn use actual facts that can be proven which kept my attention while I was reading. Right from the beginning they mention how by “the morning of September 11, [the Port Authority] had completed [fireproofing] 30 floors of the 220 in the tower” (10). It would be interesting to see what the outcome might have been if the whole tower was actually fireproof. It also showed how people went on with the day as a normal day, and what the human instinct is when a disaster strikes. Seeing certain people like Eric Eisenberg stand out and take control of what people are doing is amazing and kept me intrigued throughout the story. By stating actual facts and telling the story by how the day went remains unbiased. It allows the reader to make their own opinions and not feel so compelled to believe a certain way.
To be perfectly honest, Fahrenheit 9/11 lost my interest after the first 30 minutes. The same opinion arose how it was President Bush’s fault and how bad of a president he was. It had nothing positive to say from the day he was inaugurated. Moore saying that no president has ever had so much of a crowd that was scared to have him as president stood out to me. It made me question why if he was so bad, why people voted for him a second time. Obviously something good came out of him. Every president will have a crowd that does not think he is a good guy. It’s the way our country is and every other country is. Not everyone can agree, especially when The United States is so big. No single person can be blamed for the attack. Bush is one person. It was a terrorist attack that was unfortunate, but the only way to fix it is to learn by the mistakes and move on. As Americans we feel the need to point fingers on another person to reassure other people. The movie to me was unintriguing and based completely on opinion. If Moore was able to to back up each fact with actual evidence, the documentary might not have seemed like a waste of time. Allowing a documentary to remain unbiased can allow the watcher to create their own opinion and not seem so pushed to believe a certain way.
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Alesha E and Brook W both have important points considering the communication over the whole event. Alesha says, “There is no trust or liking in each other between the [police and fire] departments.” And Brook W mentions that “even the people that were expected to know updates were ignorant of the situation.” While there is some truth to both of these statements, they are both very biased and ignore certain aspects.
Alesha’s dad is a police officer, and therefore she does have a sense of the background for the situation. My dad is a firefighter, so I asked him some important questions, and he was able to shed some light on the situation.
Communication between paramedics, police and fire departments (not to mention federal agencies) is a very local situation, and it varies from city to city. Years ago, the Incident Command System (ICS) was brought into play as a measure taken against forest fires. This system allows a single chain of command to be followed by all agencies to create a coordinated response. Here in Denver, the system works very effectively, at least in the manner that paramedics, police and fire departments generally work in a coordinated manner. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is the same in New York.
The problem is that the chain of command gets confused in emergencies. Each agency, the fire department, the paramedics, police department, FBI, has its own command system which works well within that individual agency. But the fire department’s system was found to be effective in all the agencies, and therefore in emergencies, the fire department is to take charge of situations and the chain of command. But this is merely an ideal situation. In reality, the chain of command is broken and confused. Even though the local fire department is supposed to take control, often federal agencies arrive and, unwilling to acknowledge the existing chain of command, will use their “federal jurisdiction” to gain control over the situation. In this manner, the chain of command is often broken, parties fight to gain control because many groups are unwilling to relinquish their authority and step under another agency’s command. In an ideal situation, all companies would unite under a single banner and work together. But there are egos and opinions which get in the way of the chain of command.
Besides personal egos, there is another important unobserved aspect in the situation. The September 11 attack was a HUGE incident. So one cannot simply say that the police and fire departments don’t get along, so they never bothered to communicate and as a result many people died. That is an ignorant statement. It is nearly impossible to begin to imagine how complex this situation was. First of all, so many agencies were involved in this incident, that the radio systems become impossible to use. So many people need to communicate, and so many people are trying, that it becomes an impossible mess of jumbled communications. Dwyer and Flynn seem to only bring up the fact that agencies never united under a single radio system. But this isn’t even a plausible scenario. If all the groups started using a single radio system on a single radio frequency, there would be no discernable messages whatsoever. These are all communication issues on the OUTSIDE of the situation. In other words, that’s not even to mention the difficulties firefighters had with their radios within the buildings. What little system of communications had been set up was confused so easily, especially when the first responders (the ones who had, despite the ego problems and such, managed to establish a chain of command) were killed when the towers collapsed, taking with them the little communication that was available.
911, and the emergency dispatch center may have been the only hope to provide a communications station which would relay the messages to all agencies and manage a system of command for the disaster. But the dispatch center was utterly swamped with people calling in their own personal emergencies, it became impossible for the dispatch center to maintain a single chain of command and system of communication between the numerous companies and agencies arriving on-scene.
Sorry, this is a really long post. Basically, I’m trying to say that it is not enough to state that there was NO communication between the fire department on the police department. That is biased and is putting much blame on the shoulders of the agencies. It is not enough to say that fire fighters and police men are stubborn and because of them, many people died. The fact of the matter is that the situation was unfathomably complex, more than the authors give credit to. In an ideal situation, these groups would cooperate and take measured efforts. But I guess in an ideal situation, the 9/11 attacks wouldn’t have ever happened either. Unfortunately, this is reality, and many complexities and aspects surrounding the situation have been ignored.
What Kristen T said is completely accurate. I myself remember waking up that morning and hearing the news coming from my radio, which was my alarm clock, and I groggily rolled over, hit the snooze, and thought to myself that they must be talking about some foreign country or another. I heard the words "world trade centers" and "New York City", but somehow it did not even register what was so important that the news reporter had to tell me that interrupted my morning music. That is until I walked out to see my dad standing in the living room with the TV on, and not in the hot tub, as his normal routine dictated. Then I saw what it was that he was looking at. That was when the horror of the whole thing hit me. When I saw two buildings burning standing in the middle of New York City.
However, as much as it was difficult to feel the reality of the emotion through the book, the authors did use some interesting strategies to convey the frantic moments inside the towers. For example, the authors use short, terse sentences to quicken the pace of the story as well as anaphora and parallel structures.
However, despite the use of these rhetorical strategies, I would agree that the emotion was almost completely lacking. Perhaps I am wrong, but I would have thought the calls would have been more desperate, the panic more raging, and the time much shorter.
The movie, on the other hand, portrayed very well the frustration and the flaws of that day, but definitely lacked in the analysis of the accident piece of it. But, at the same time this was the point. People have been so influenced by the media on the topic, that I think the director of the movie simply wanted to show another point of view.
First of all, I think it is very rude and disrespectful to toss aside a soldier's opinion as the "few ignorant young soldiers that disagree with the war." Living safe at home you have no idea what they’ve gone through. You couldn’t even imagine. I think you should be a little more respectful towards those who are dying right now while you sit at home safe and sound.
I would like to go back to what Anne A was saying about communication. This, for me, was the most interesting aspect of the book. Between radios, lack of planning, and internal and external communication, it seems to be that this is the most influential aspect of how the events of the tragedy unfolded. Before the second tower was even hit, people were being given different directions and their fates were sealed before nine’o’clock. But I appreciate what Alesha is saying when she admits that “I mean, who would have guessed another plane was going to crash into the second building.” The truth is that in that situation, it made the most sense to the officers to keep things as normal and regulated as possible while trying to secure World Trade Center 1. I probably would have done the same thing. And felt just as awful about it afterwards. It is very important, however, that certain things should have gone a lot smoother.
I’m really glad Eric mentioned how incredibly ridiculous an idea like flawless communication between forces would be. The book says that there were hundreds of police and firemen working on the scene. How exactly could communication in this situation be possible? The one frustrating aspect of the book was the ignored efforts of previous groups to run joint drills. According to the book on page 59, the last joint drill run for the towers was in 1982. I think that there should have been more preparation for protection on such an enormous land mark and global trade center. The Aviation Emergency Preparedness Working Group was specifically and purposefully trying to create a smoother evacuation and overall plan for an incident at the World Trade Center. However outlandish total communication is, I expected a more practiced local plan. But of course, this is from the outside looking in.
It is very interesting to me how very long the book was. I hadn’t thought about just how much information would go into every minute of the book. There’s a terrifyingly miniscule amount of people mentioned out of the hundreds of people who died. Reading this book put a whole new perspective on tragedy. I feel so fortunate to not be personally affected.
What I thought was so interesting about the communication throughout the events on 9/11 was that the people inside knew as much or less about the situation as we did. They were on the inside and the only way they could get any information on what was happening was the same way people all opver America were getting it, on teh television screen. They were there and still they didn't know what was going on. Throughout teh book, I cannot really recall a time when the operators and other people communicatiing with those trapped some 80 stories up in ther air, told them exactly what was going on. My mind keeps going back to the story where the man was speaking with his colleague watching the plane fly towards him as she watched it fly towards the biulding on the news. It jsut seems so unreal to me that they were in the situation themselves and knew nothing more about it then viewers did.
As for Michael Moore, I am defientely not a fan of his and really did not like the movie. He is unreasonably judging and blaming of the government and other officials. I have never seen an American act so anti American before. I'm not sure if any of you have been to his website but on teh very first page it shows a picture of al-Zaidi,a man from Iraq held in U.S. custody. He has a link to a page where you can sign a petition for his release yet he never mentions the chrages for which he is being held. HOw are we to know he is not in some way involved in the terrorism against America? It just seems to me that Moore is against everything the government decides.
I definetely agree with Kate when she says that the soldier's opinion should not be tossed aside. They are directly affected by the decisions the government makes and are more than entitled to not agree with them. They are the ones over in Iraq, away from home, fighting for all of us safe at home here. The soldiers probably know even more about the stiuation than the government so of course they are going to disagree with some of the decisions.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
On the topic of Michael Moore’s biased views, Megan B mentions that she has never “seen an American act so anti American before”. Michael Moore had some strong negative opinions about the President, but does this mean that he is anti-American? Many people don’t agree with Bush’s policies, but does that make them anti-American too? The reality is that there are many people who have the same opinions as Moore. Just because people voice negative opinions about Bush does not mean that they are against America. I will not get into our freedom of speech rights, but we all know that we have the right to believe whatever we want. Michael Moore is just another American who has different views than the president. The one thing he has that most don’t, is the power to publicize these views.
The right to believe whatever we want is what makes us American. We choose the President and if we don’t like him or her, we have the power to do something about it. This is exactly what Michael Moore does. Even if you don’t approve of his opinions, we all must agree that it is not “anti-American” to dislike the President. In truth, Michael Moore does much more than just dislike Bush, but he has every right to voice his opinions. The man in Fahrenheit 9/11 who gets questioned by the police for complaining about Bush, also has every right to voice his opinion. Moore may be “against everything the government decides” (Megan B), but that is not a crime. We live in a world where most people would rather just conform to society’s views than be opinionated and risk standing out. Though Michael Moore’s opinions are very harsh, he should not be condemned for not conforming to society. If the definition of “American” is agreeing with everything the President says and conforming to society, then why would anyone want to be an American?
I know this has been mentioned before, but I would like to once again bring up the topic of the World Trade Center’s safety code. The designers of the Twin Towers ignored many safety laws. One major law that was ignored, was the fireproofing of the buildings. As an after thought after construction, spray-on, fireproof liquid was applied to the exterior of the buildings. It did not work like it was supposed to. A New York Times article explains the efforts of the New York City Buildings Department to improve the code after the attack. It states that “office towers could have larger, sturdier and more numerous stairwells; full sprinkler systems; and better protected ductwork”. It also recommends that the World Trade Center Building Code Task Force should have “plans for fully evacuating office buildings under catastrophic circumstances, above and beyond the floor-by-floor evacuation plans required for fire safety”. One of the major problems in the evacuation of the buildings on September 11th was that the designers and Fire Safety never planned for a full building evacuation. The blame for the death of so many people could only be on the terrorists themselves, but the Building Code Task Force could have saved many more people if they would have had a better evacuation plan.
Dunlap, David W. “Agency Urges Tougher Code For Buildings”. The New York Times. February 15, 2003. The New York Times. December 16, 2008 < http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html>
I thought it was very interesting how, in the book, it described how truly careless and selfish the builders of the World Trade centers really were. They were so focused on the profit and spaciousness of the building to even notice what was going on around them. Dwyer and Flynn write, “In January 1912, the Equitable Building – thought to be a “fireproof” structure – collapsed during a fire. Six people died” (108). Later on the book described the Titanic and how many lives were lost due to the lack of escape routes. So, why after all of these tragedies, did the 1968 code eliminate the need for staircases and vestibules? It is probably due to their selfish attitudes. They would rather risk the safety of others for money. They made the 1968 code, expecting everything to go smoothly because they obviously weren’t ready for an emergency. Even the Empire State building, eight floors less than the World Trade center, has three times the number of stairwells. This does not seem right. I mean, isn’t history suppose to shape our future? The mistakes of the past should be used to prevent new ones; however, in this circumstance, it seems that they did the complete opposite. A new code was created, completely ignoring major safety precautions, and focusing on money, time, and space.
Hmm . . . seems kind of familiar. Aren’t money, time, and space the main focus of Americans these days? They forget the important things in life just to become rich, live in a huge house, and get everything done faster. So, if Americans can be to blame for the safety hazards in high-rise buildings and ships, they will probably be to blame for the same hazards in our schools, jobs, and even our homes. If Americans are too busy focusing on the profit they will receive, shouldn’t we start worrying about the design flaws in the buildings we attend to, or even our homes?
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Wow people have brought up so many different aspects of the book, the movie, and the entire 9/11 attacks. There is so much I would like to comment on that it would take days to type it all down.
Like Kate, Annie and Eric have mentioned the communication among the people in all of the buildings, the firemen, and the police officers in “102 Minutes” were terrible. But also on a scale, the communication that would have been needed to accomplish or to make things work at the World Trade Centers would be off the charts, only wished for but maybe not yet possible. I do believe that people should have tried to calm down and assess the situation, just for a little, before they started to take action. Sometimes if you just do and don’t think things won’t turn out right or it will take longer to accomplish. Now I completely understand no one is perfect and that things were very scrambled but someone should have tried to at least provide some calmness to the situation.
Also mentioned earlier by Amy there was very little emotion in the book and the conversations of people inside and out of the building. Now we all know that there was an unbelievable amount of emotion that took place but the authors who also write for the New York Times Newspaper were maybe trying to state the fact and not give emotion to the paper they wanted the event to speak for itself and allow people to take it in their own way. Another reason for maybe the lack of emotion was that people had so much running through their minds and were more worried about the safety of others and themselves to have much emotion. Almost like they were numb to the situation till it came and hit them in an after effect, for some people the shock or reorganization doesn’t hit till later. Just like for some of the students and Teachers that went through the Columbine shootings. At the time they were more worried about what was going on and how to get out than oh my god look what is happening. It hit as more an after fact.
As for what Megan said about “Fahrenheit 9/11” by Michael Moore I do agree that I did not like the movie at all but not exactly for the same reasons. I think that the movie mostly concentrated on the war which was an effect of the planes but not at all what the book was discussing which was what happened in the buildings and with the people in the buildings not the people in the war. So maybe Mr. Webb was going for a cause and effect thing but I personally didn’t think that they were related. I don’t agree with some of Moore’s statements but it did help show me that the American people are told as little as possible, which sometimes is good but can change many people’s opinions. He also did show me that people are very gullible and will believe anything if they are told the same thing twice.
Something that really angered me while reading this book was the selfishness of the builders of the World Trade Centers. The builders craved the money that would come out of creating these towers. A big profit was what they were striving for. Having a mind set on money so much that safety regulations are disregarded and revised in order to increase the profit is incredibly thoughtless and self-centered. The fact that the builders “cut back on the areas that had been devoted . . . to evacuation and exit” (107) just to increase their paycheck is beyond my comprehension. This is inexcusable. By no means is it okay to cut back on safety codes in order for someone to profit from it. If this is how America is treating the citizens, by thinking money is more valuable than a human life, then America needs to rethink their values.
American citizens are becoming more materialistic every day which is leading to unnecessary deaths, such as the many lost lives from the World Trade Center attacks. If the builders had added in more staircases and more routes that could have led to the safety of the employers, then amount of deaths would have decreased dramatically. The building codes should have been more thought through. But because of their selfishness and greed for money, which would only buy them temporary objects, led to and contributed to the deaths on September 11.
I agree with Olivia H that someone should have helped “calm down and assess the situation” but I think that those who were helping and directing during the attacks were doing the best they could. It’s not every day that something happens like this. How many times have we heard of two commercial planes crashing into the two tallest towers in New York? The men and women that were serving were handling the situation the best they could at the time. I would imagine that they would be in shock and very much frazzled. If you saw the buildings on fire with people jumping out of them in order to escape the smoke and flames, then you may feel a bit frantic. A situation like this is extremely stressful and your only goal at the time is to evacuate the buildings and to save the people who were trapped in the buildings. You have officers shouting out orders and firefighters giving out separate ones, civilians were probably running around, terrified and unable to comprehend what was going on. In a situation like this, I do not think you can get much calmer.
Based on the movie… it is very true how ignorant we really are. People put their children in the army without knowing the cause. If not even the senators would be willing to put their children in then that really shows how it is really going on out there. The economically devastated people are the ones who have to do the job for us. They are the ones who need the money and they work for a country that isn’t even helping them.
Even after given all that information it is still hard to see why we are all in this mess. Our country is going into all these other countries that have not even hurt the U.S.A. Our country is hurting the innocent people. Because the way people look they get thought of as terrorists when most of the time they are probably regular people. On planes people were not able to take breast milk or other harmless items, but yet they were able to take lighters and matches on them while in the plane. This all seems so ridiculous that it makes some of these things seem made up. Like when Bush would say that we are in danger, and later say we are not and again in repetition.
It really annoys me how Bush seems like such a lazy president, maybe he is not but that is the way he is portrayed. He spent months vacationing and saying he was still doing work. He was the first president to not be very liked, during the parade. If he won by cheating then I believe that maybe he was planning on something like this to happen. He got told about plans for an attack by plane, but he never reviewed it and took control to stop it. It’s all business; maybe that’s where it went wrong. There are so many conspiracy theories, and they can possibly be true. During the movie the towers were not shown and the theory to that would be the way the buildings fell. They fell in a way like they were purposely demolished.
In my opinion, it seems to me that people are missing both the point of the book and the documentary. Both the book and the documentary are meant to be informative. The book tries be informative more toward the events in the twin towers during the 9/11 tragedy and explaining further all the things that happened, while the movie talks more about cause and effect with 9/11, stressing the involvement of the government. The book to me is very factual in all that it says. It isn’t directly trying to point a finger at anyone but rather explain to the reader what happened and possibly even why this happened. The video tries to introduce to the reader a different incite. I feel that in her first blog, Courtney W lacks understanding toward both the video and the novel. She posted, “Both the novel 102 Minutes and the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 are highly critical, almost to an unnecessary degree.” This is very opinion based statement. However, she is not the only one Megan B states, “I have never seen an American act so anti American before.” It seems that people are taking the informtion provided way to personal and adding their own bias.
Amy S writes that “it was difficult to feel the reality of the emotion through the book.” I think seeing the number of deaths in the book provides its own emotion within the novel. The emotion is ultimaely in the reader. If we can find ourselves affected by this book, considering it’s about real people, then the emotion is deffinately there.
In my mind the book really helps the reader depict the confusion the people in each building felt and also the confusion of the people trying to help. The fact that the book provides bits of information as a type of background or just information toward the topic it’s discussing isn’t called bias but rather reality. It’s true the owners did choose profit rather than safety and like Rebecca stressed this is frustrating. It is also true that they didn’t cunduct all saftry tests for the building and didn’t even create a good evacuation plan. And it is true that there was a lack of communication within departments and between departments such as the firefighters and police men. From pages 69 through 71, the reader can follow the conversations of two different police men giving opposite advice concerning evacuation. I’m not trying to point a finger but unfortunetly this lack of comunication cost the American people the lives of loved ones. It would be ridiculous to simply say opps better luck next time when the people in charge of saftey in the towers very well could have improved methods since the 1993 bombing.
Concerning the documentary, I do agree that it is very opinionated but it showed a true side of Bush. Everything Mr. Moore included in his video did happen. Bush did sit there and read to children while the twin towers burned. He did ultimaely go on vacation during a crutial time. We may be able to justify him but seeing Moore’s side can also be justified. It’s all a matter of opinion and I can respect both and ultimately see both sides.
Throughout the entirety of this blog, the movie and the book, so many fingers are pointed; it’s hard to keep track of them all. Maybe as humans, this is what we do best—throw the blame around until it sticks. There is something wrong with this mindset, and I think we need to examine things without a predetermined sense of who is at fault.
To sum up the last few posts, many aspects of the book and especially the movie are one-sided, and that neither presents a true perspective of what happened. Am I right?
Gina E mentions that “the book provides bits of information as a type of background or just information toward the topic it’s discussing isn’t called bias but rather reality.” I have to argue with Gina here. The book pointedly blames architects, officials, public safety officers, and ultimately the government. I do not think that we can simply blame anyone for this. Again, Gina brings up the lack of communication and that “this lack of communication cost the American people the lives of loved ones.” As humans, we seem to be obsessed with finding fault, blaming whoever we can. Yes, people died, POSSIBLY as a result of lack of communication, but did we ever stop to think about how many lived? How many people lived because of firefighter action? No, we do not consider these things. Instead we say everything is the governments fault, or the architects fault, BLAH BLAH BLAH I’m sick of it.
The fact of the matter is that this was a coordinated attack. What if the architects DID follow the safety codes? Just because they may have had a few inches more in the staircase doesn’t mean everyone would have lived. And on the fireproofing—NO amount of fire proofing can compensate for that much jet fuel plowing into an enclosed space. So what if the builders had a flawed fire proofing system. Even the most intricate, well thought out system would be completely demolished if a 767 plowed through it. And so what if the designers had another set of stairs? That does not guarantee that it would not be demolished when a 400,000 lb. JET crashes into it. So what if the fire fighters were best buddies with the police officers, and so what if they did not communicate effectively. That does not mean the towers wouldn’t have COLLAPSED, killing those inside. So if we all want to play the blame game? Fine. Let’s say that it’s the military’s fault, and the air force. If they had done their job, they would have shot down the two airliners, none of this would have happened. Could YOU pull the trigger on a commercial airplane before you even knew what was happening? Or let’s say that it goes back to United Airlines. This whole mess is their fault. Yeah, let’s blame them. They could have communicated; they should have known their jets were being hijacked. Plausible? Or we could say it goes back even further than that. We could say that it’s the governments fault. They knew Bin Laden was planning to hijack planes. Let’s blame Bush. Maybe if he had read those vague useless reports, he could have magically known that terrorists would hijack Flight 77 and crash into the tower on the morning of September 11. Yeah, everything’s his fault, we all know that.
It goes on.
People die, there is NO amount of planning, building, training that can prevent people from dying. So it is not enough to say that this was so and so’s fault, blah blah blah . . . Blah. Blah.
Maybe we should try to learn from this situation. Hypothetically, what we can take away from it all is that we should do more to follow guidelines in high rise towers. In the future when we are building reckless symbols of our tremendous power, we will add some more indestructible safety features. Yeah, let’s do that. Then we can rebuild the titanic and throw ice at it, see if it sinks again.
Maybe we don’t NEED to build high rise towers. As long as we build symbols of power, there will be groups of people who try to destroy them. You’d think we would learn . . . Did you know that there are plans to rebuild the Twin Towers? Guess not.
SHIT HAPPENS
Boeing. http://www.boeing.com/commercial/767family/300f/300f_4.html
I love what Kate J said about the communication inside the towers. She is completely correct. Should there have been a better system for communication? Of course. Is hindsight always 20/20? Of course. However, Kate says, "But I appreciate what Alesha is saying when she admits that “I mean, who would have guessed another plane was going to crash into the second building.” The truth is that in that situation, it made the most sense to the officers to keep things as normal and regulated as possible while trying to secure World Trade Center 1." But I would like to raise the point of the "fire martials". How exactly was this system supposed to do anything. How were the owners of the building going to be sure that the people that were appointed as martials weren't going to break down, panic, and run? I mean okay. Nobody saw the planes coming. But what if there had been a simple fire? That IS something that could have been very likely and fathomable to happen. Much more so than planes hitting the buildings. What would have happened if the towers' electrical systems had gone bad and started a fire? The place was practically made of paper and as we have all seen in houses, walls and ceilings don't stand up to open flame very well. The entirety of either one of the towers could have been reduced to its steel skeleton. How would the evacuation have gone then? Would people be given the choice to leave? I think not. I think everyone would have been pulled by their ears out of that building. So why when there is a giant explosion does this same thing not happen?
As for the Michael Moore video, well, it is no secret that I am not a fan of President Bush. I will not try to pretend that I am. I also agree that his video is over the top. However, he does raise some questions that I think are worth considering. I mean, if you think about it, some of the things he said are possible. maybe the president did know something of these attacks. Unfortunately, my dad was totally a conspiracy theorist, so I am cursed with that side that I can not get rid of. I try to keep it from affecting me, but it is hard. So watching that video was difficult for me. What is reasonable to question and what is not? Unreasonable or not, I think that some of the things he said are worth some thought.
Eric M has some very opinionated thoughts. I do believe that people tend to point fingers and blame the fault on anything and everything except themselves, but i do also believe that sometimes someone needs to take the blame. It helps everyone else take peace in knowing that something or someone was stopped, so it should not happen again. Also, if you had someone die in the twin towers you would want to know who is responsible, you would want to know under any circumstance. Maybe that’s it. People want reason behind things they want to know the hows and whys. Without reason and logic then everything would just be random nothingless. This would cause mass chaos, like it did with the twin towers.
I also love when Eric says " You’d think we would learn . . ."I totally agree, not only does history repeat its self as the book kind of touched on when they were talking about the 1993 bombings- how it made the people who experience that act differently than others who may have not. After something big like the bombing has occurred you would think that they would have taken extra precautions to make sure that if it ever happened again that they would be 100% ready. But they didn’t do anything. I’m not saying that changing a few little things would have stopped the buildings from falling but I do think that it at least would have bought the fire fighters more time. If they could have saved a few hundred more lives than less people would have to suffer. Any number less is better.
I would also like to mention that tragic things have to happen. Natural disasters, diseases, and war have to happen. Without them we would have already over populated the world. Now I know that that is a pretty terrible thing to say but if you think about it things like that are inevitable and helpful. You can’t stop a tornado from coming or cancer from spreading, well not yet, but these things need to happen in order to keep the natural order of things. Honestly just like the dinosaurs if that meteor never hit would we be where we are today? Would we even be here?
natural disasters
I know that not everyone is a huge fan of President Bush, but how, in any way does he deserve all of the blame and mistreatment he has recived since 2001? He doesn't. He did what any other president would in that situation, the best he could do.
After reading the book and watching Fehrenheit 9/11 I remembered that people are never going to be perfect. Even if the World Trade center had been built more efficiently, people still would have died. Even if the fire-fighters and policeman were able to communicate better, they would still have a hard time finding all of the people stranded on each floor. And if we had a President more prepared for such a tragedy, I am sure he would have some flaws.
It seems to me that everyone has such high expectations. They expect everything to go smoothly and when something drastic happens,they expect it to be taken care of. When people were stranded on floors above the crash, some of them were not even worried, assuming that a firemen would soon be up to get them. Even family members that could see the disaster on television had high hopes that the building officers had cleared the majority of people out. And some World Trade Center employees walked all the way to the roof top automatically expecting that a helicopter would be there to save them. Although the working officers did the best they could, a lot of these fully reliant people didn't get saved. This also like the situation with President Bush. People expected him to have an answer right away, when he heard the news of the plane crash. They also expected him to make every right descision on how to stop terrorism. Well he is human, and definatly not perfect, so he is not going to do every thing right.
I think we need to give a little slack, I mean this was one of the biggest catastrophes that has ever hit America, and in no way was anyone prepared for it. Not even our President. Things got a little messy, and mistakes were made, but this was September 11, 2001; the day no one will ever forget. So, when the day comes and we get a perfect President, let me know.
Olivia H brings up an interesting thought. She states that "natural disasters, diseases, and war have to happen. Without them we would have already over populated the world." I do not agree. Of course people are going to catch diseases and natural disasters will occur. Neither is really avoidable, yet war is not necessary. Killing people, even if it is for your country or to help keep the population in check, is just not necessary. The people that we Americans are killing for our country are our 'enemy'. We think that we are taking down the 'bad guys' and are helping out the world, yet isn't this what the people across the ocean are thinking too, or similar thoughts to ours? People are people. I am fully aware that many are pro-war and would disagree with me and would love to argue, but I still do not approve of anyone being killed. War is what led to this attack, and the outcome was horrible. I am also aware that ending war altogether is basically impossible, but I believe that if wars stopped occurring, events and attacks like these would cease and we would not have to go through such tragedies. Yet, even though the many humans would love to stop the war, war and fighting against others will never stop. If there is no war, you can bet that someone is secretly planning something to disturb the peace. That's the way it works.
And what Brook W was saying about President Bush is something that i would have to agree with. Think about it. If you were in his situation, would you have done much better than he had? He was under lots of stress and probably in some kind of panic mode. If i were him, I would be freaking out. I mean, two planes just crashed into the two towers. Wouldn't you be in shock? When someone is put in a situation like this one, you may have made a few different changes than Bush had, but not much would have been different. So for everyone who is just bashing him and hating on him, give him a break. He's had to go through a ton while being President, and he did the best he could during the events.
Eric M brought up an interesting point. I understand that no matter what anyone did on September 11, not everyone in the twin towers would be able to live. The thing that bothers me, however, is that like Olivia H W said, “history repeat its self as the book kind of touched on when they were talking about the 1993 bombings.” So I understand that like Eric M said “Maybe we should try to learn from this situation,” but that ship has sailed and we had that chance. It isn’t so much playing the blame game because no one knew this would happen. The thing is we could have had a chance to save more lives if communication was better and if they had taken more percautions in the buildings construction. But notice I said IF. It is to late now but maybe now we can finally decide to learn from this because that’s all we can do besides lament the tragedy. Besides like Olivia said, “if you had someone die in the twin towers you would want to know who is responsible, you would want to know under any circumstance.” Like I said, one can’t just say oops my bad when lives where taken because of this.
I understand where Brook W and Rebecca N are coming from when it comes to Bush. However, when Rebecca N states, “He's [Bush] had to go through a ton while being President, and he did the best he could during the events,” I have to disagree. I work in a restaurant as a hostess. When things get busy sometimes I’m required to help the waiters and bus tables and take care of the people coming in and help get food out. It seems a little overwhelming at times but when things get busy help is needed so I get working and little by little things start getting done. But tell me this, what if I decided it was just to much while in the middle of a dinner rush? What if I just shut down and decided I wouldn’t help at all? Then people wouldn’t be seated, food wouldn’t get out, tables wouldn’t be bused, and all the waiters would be overwhelmed. Nothing would be fixed yet time wouldn’t stop either. People would still come through the door and the problems would just get bigger. In Fahrenheit 9/11 Bush decided he would continue to read to the children instead of finding a solution to the twin tower problem. When something like that happens, it’s hard to take in, but you can’t just press pause and do nothing. And YES, reading to children was doing nothing to fix the problem. As President, he should have taken charge because as he was taking a breather people in the twin towers where dieing. In an event like that of 9/11 time is always crutial and you can’t afford to waste it. So NO he did not do the best he could. If he didn’t think he was capable of running the country through the easy things and the hardships then why did he run for President? Afterall being President isn’t just a simple wall in the park, what did he expect? Now I’m not saying this could have been predicted and it wasn’t as if in his campagne he promised to be able to deal with the attack on the twin towers on 9/11 because ultimately he didn’t know. And I’m not saying that it was simple to take the attoritative position but it was needed and he didn’t step up to the plate, he just let everyone else take control. This was his problem too.
Yes both the book and the movie are supposed to be informative but, they do it in a critical, biased way. That is the way it comes out, in this way it gives a certain view that causes an affect in the end. The 9/11 attacks are a difficult subject to talk about and, by doing so, in the way both the movie and the book make it different.
I would disagree with Brook W. on Bush because that is not what any other president would do. He took all the wrong steps into solving the problem. President Bush did not help but he made proiblems worse, there are ways of fixing waht happened. A good president would look over all files and educate his or her self instead of passing and vacationing for monthes.
Like olivia, I think what Eric said was great. How many times do things like this need to happen before we will figure out better ways to prepare ourselves and even prevent the problem. After the first attacks, we should have had a plan. The building designers shouldn't have sacrificed the safety of the workers to gain more profits. It just shows how our country has become entirely fizated on the prospect of making more and more money. They figured that no one would really even be able to tell that the stairways were made smaller. They didn't plan for anything like this to happen. Maybe this time it will be big enough and devastating enough for someone to take some action and fix the problems that caused so many people to die.
Another thing that extremely bothered me about the book was in the last few pages when the authors talked about teh three fire fighters seen sitting down "taking a break." just moments before the tower collapsed. They said that the reason many people had given for so many fire fighters not make it out was that they were "busy helping citizens." They also criticized Mayor Gulianni because his estimations in the number of lives that the fire fighters saved was continually raising. Why is it such a crime for them to be taking a break? They should try climbing thousands of stairs in the smoke and heat. I don't think it was right for them to critize America for glorifying the fire fights and police officers. What they did was incredible. They saved thousands regardless of the "breaks" that they had to take. They put themselves at risk, and ultimately died for it.
So, of course some things that Michael Moore said are worth considering. There are always two sides to a story. His side makes a hard point of how Bush did everything wrong and that our government really does think about how the war is affecting our nation’s children, when they themselves wouldn’t dare putting their own children into battle. So, it fine to put other parents’ children into action, no, there is something seriously wrong with that. The fact that everyone is selfish and inconsiderate and so self centered, no one really looks around and cares about others. Sure the war was to help our country prove that we are stronger and to make a statement to the Middle East to leave us alone, we need to live in peace. But after so many years, the war is just putting our country into major debt and our sons and daughters are dying every day. It is ridiculous how long this war is taking. Iraq clearly doesn’t want our help anymore. I think we need to pull out.
Really, the attack on the twin towers opened the eyes of many people. It also made a point that we have our own issues, our own battle to face here in the united state. Problems such as the conflict between firefighters and police officers, problems with our technology, problems with selfish people, problems with greedy men and women wanting power. And because of all these problems, the twin towers were defectively built and secured as well as ran off some messed up ideas. Problems within our own country need to be taken care of first before we help other countries fix themselves.
Once everything is taken care of at home then everyone in the family can work together, not divided, to make a difference in other places around.
I love all the contrast in opinion, believe me, I love an argument, but for the last few hours of this blog, can we get OFF of President Bush? Some like him, some don’t. It’s not real hard to tell. That’s great. Get over it. You don’t need to talk about President Bush in EVERY one of your blogs. Believe me, we get the picture.
One thing this blog seems to be lacking is thoughts of the family’s of those who perished in the tragedy. I can’t even begin to imagine how horrific this would be for them. I was hoping to find some of the family members’ opinions online to get another point of view (because that’s all we’re discussing, different points of view), but in researching I found a disturbing article from 2005 about such victims. The title of this article is “Glenn Beck called hurricane survivors in New Orleans "scumbags," said he "hates" 9-11 families.” Excuse me? Do you have no compassion? It is a disgusting article if anyone wants to take a look the URL is: http://mediamatters.org/items/200509090003. One appalling quote is that “[He (the author)] didn't think [he] could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims.”
Does anyone honestly agree with this? I was disgusted and horrified with the lack of respect towards the victims. This same lack of respect is seen in previous blogs as well as in the novel itself. The way some people talk about the firemen, policemen, and apparently, victims is outrageous and ungrateful. They risked their lives and many, many died in efforts of saving those inside the tower. Those men and women were amazingly heroic and are the image of what a true American should be. Since it is too late to save those lives, lets focus on how to save ours today. As Gina says, the ship has very much sailed on learning from the ’93 bombing, we failed that class. Improvement is the only hope for a better future. I’m just thankful for the men and women who didn’t give up and worked hard to help other people. As Whitnee said in her reading, compassion is the only way to make life better.
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I would like to go along with what Alesha E has to say about the , “September 11th attack on the twin towers [and how it] opened the eyes of many people.” Not only did it open the eyes of they people, but it opened the eyes to our entire country. There are very few times when we have been attacked on our land by another country. And by few, I mean Pearl Harbor was pretty much the only big one. Our country is powerful and many other countries are intimidated by us, but the attack showed that we are not unbeatable. We have flaws and our land is not perfect. Bad things can happen anywhere. Just because we are a strong country does not mean we can not be attacked either. Yes we could have had completely fire proof buildings if the towers planned for them to be done sooner, but would that have prevented people from dying? A whole plane went into a building, The plane would crash right through those fire proof walls and sure enough, it did. Papers can light on fire causing a bigger fire, which it did. It was an attack. A horrible event, but the only thing we as Americans can do, is move on and learn from what has happened. Anything can happen at any moment in time, it just depends on what is meant to happen.
As for Kate J, I can relate to the “lack of respect people talk about the firemen, policemen, and apparently, victims.” As it has been mentioned by Eric M, people feel the need to point fingers at other people. It helps them overcome obstacles such as losing a person they love, and helps them feel better about the situation. When a problem goes wrong it is the initial reaction to point fingers. It’s what we all do best, no matter how bad someone denies it, it’s true. It’s the only way people feel comfortable at night and allows them to sleep, is knowing that it was not their fault. So, for the lack of respect for firemen, police officers, and even the victims it is only for the person to relate and interact with the September 11 attack, knowing in their head that they could have prevented it even though it was not their fault at all. As time goes by people can begin to forgive because they don’t need to point fingers anymore.
Michael Moore feels the need to express his opinions through his own opinions of what went wrong with the attack and how it was the president’s fault. He’s allowed to have his opinion even though it might have been more than what most people would like to hear. By informing the country in his documentary might help others feel better about the situation because they have a reason of why it happened and who’s fault it was. People are afraid of the unknown. The book does the same thing, except it takes you into the lives of individuals and blames the builders and people who worked there’s fault. Although this again is not true (No one would have ever guessed that an airplane would crash right into that particular building) maybe the authors felt more comfortable expressing their opinions in their own way.
By blaming other people, we feel more comfortable and safe knowing that an issue has an explanation, and knowing it wasn’t our own fault.
Not only do that, but we also expect everything to turn out okay. Like Brook W said, “They expect everything to go smoothly and when something drastic happens, they expect it to be taken care of.” Leaders inside had to take charge of what was going on inside. Otherwise most people would just sit there, like a lot of them did. The people that began to go down the stairs were the ones that were following someone that knew how to take control which most people cannot do.We feel the need to be taken care of and we expect fire fighters and police to take care of everything. This is not always the case. We need to learn to take care of ourself in situations like that, which again helped America open their eyes and realize that we have problems we need to work on. Like knowing what to do in a situation like September 11. The book and the movie show their own opinions which people can help relate to. If you hate Bush, then Michael Moore’s documentary is for you. If you think the building were unsafe, or you just want to read about how people react when in need, then 102 minutes is a good read.
Ok, obviously not everyone understands what I was trying to say in my last post. I still haven’t read anything but people throwing around blame. (mostly on George Bush, which is kind of funny, but besides the point) Several people have brought up one particularly interesting aspect, that maybe we as humans NEED to blame someone, as Olivia said; “if you had someone die in the twin towers you would want to know who is responsible, you would want to know under any circumstance.” So let me get this straight—Olivia is saying that if you have been hurt, it is both fair and just to find somebody to hate to make yourself feel better. That seems a little unfair, don’t you think? Let’s take a look at the people who were trapped in the building. So you’re going to show your appreciation for the men and women who tried to save those people by condemning their heroic and honest actions as “not enough” or “flawed.” I didn’t see any of YOU running into a falling tower in an attempt to save thousands of strangers.
Also, when I say maybe we should learn from our mistakes, I’m not trying to say we should start building high rise towers with more safety features and more “advanced” (complex is a better word) technology which will prevent these things from happening. No, what I was trying to say is that as long as we continue to build these arrogant symbols of power, we shouldn’t act surprised when someone comes along and destroys it. As I said before, maybe we don’t NEED to build high rise towers in the first place.
It seems to me that we as humans, and as a society have this mindset, this prevailing point of view, and no matter how we look at things, we always see what COULD have happened, what COULD have been done better. Rarely, if ever, do we look at the things that DID happen, and how huge of a difference they made, despite the odds. Rarely, if ever, do we see the events for what they were, and how the heroes transcend the limits of human capabilities to make a difference.
9/11 was a tragedy. Both the book and the documentary explain that in some fashion. The intensity of this tragedy can be captivated from the screams and cries we heard in the video from strangers and it can also be perceived in the book as the author presents to the reader the struggle both the rescuers and victims had to undergo. On page 218 the author writes, “Something’s fucked up beyond what we can handle, Smith would remember thinking.” In the video we get this same helplessness when we saw the people standing by watching the building burn crying and yelling for God. More than anything, I think this has been the hardest thing to deal with (at least for me when I was reading). Those who attempted to help and those watching couldn’t really do anything. So many people died and all we could do then and all we can do now is cry because it was so frustrating that this was out of our hands. I for one realized how curtail time really was in all of this. From the man who didn’t know that he was holding up the elevator with his back pack to the lady joking about having two cats and a horse to go home to, there proved minutes determining they’re life or death. The people who died happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s incredible that one simple decision such as lingering a little longer in a certain part of the building maybe discussing job affairs actually made a difference. Have you ever been one step away from walking into the path of bird droppings or being one inch away from hitting a car? The decisions you make every single second of your life impact it greatly and that’s scary. These people could have been one step away and even one decision away from saving they’re own lives. So maybe pointing fingers and saying if only just gives us more reasons to despair. And maybe those people’s decisions in an instant or prior to that day actually accounted for their death. Maybe there really was no way of preventing this. Even if the book tells us about the lack of communication and the inefficient regulations for buildings what matters is the story of 9/11. Could we really have done anything? Could there really have been precaution great enough to help us prepare? Or a voice loud enough to get everyone out safe? Or even sufficient communication to get everyone out safe? Or enough help from men and women? Or a good enough evacuation plan? Or a strong enough leader to help make a good decision? It seems like we were doomed no matter what—we where hopelessly helpless no matter what the documentary or book make us lament.
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