My daughter & I paid tribute in silence at Ground Zero in New York four years after 9/11 happened. The list of the names of the 2, 753 women and men who perished in September 11, 2001 was mostly the only physical reminder of that tragedy, even as that gruesome event is still very vivid in our minds today, many years after it happened.
As part of my “memory truth telling” responsibility to the younger generation, I am trying to recollect the events now because many of my students were still in pre-school when it happened.
When it happened, the entire world was glued to the television for days.
My best friend in New York at first thought she was looking at a film on television.
Another friend who lived in Brooklyn could see the smoke from downtown Manhattan for days.
New York City and the United States and even the world are now changed forever by that single event. The how and the extent of the changes continue to unravel up to today, many years after.
The word terrorism came to be defined in national legislations – wrongly or rightly.
Then, in 2003, Iraq was invaded for allegedly harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) led by the United States and the so called Coalition of the Willing.
As part of my “memory truth telling” responsibility to the younger generation, I am trying to recollect the events now because many of my students were still in pre-school when it happened.
When it happened, the entire world was glued to the television for days.
My best friend in New York at first thought she was looking at a film on television.
Another friend who lived in Brooklyn could see the smoke from downtown Manhattan for days.
New York City and the United States and even the world are now changed forever by that single event. The how and the extent of the changes continue to unravel up to today, many years after.
The word terrorism came to be defined in national legislations – wrongly or rightly.
Then, in 2003, Iraq was invaded for allegedly harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) led by the United States and the so called Coalition of the Willing.
One of the more popular indictments of the events that followed was captured in 2004 in Fahrenheit 9/11, a popular film documentary by Michael Moore.
This documentary became a must see for the world.
I saw this film in a premiere in Europe (Amsterdam) and we talked about the film for days in class as a course treatise on film representation.
The film documentary opens with a suggestion that election fraud was committed in the way the voting controversy in Florida was managed particularly when politician friends of George W. Bush in media pre-maturely declared him as winner as President of the United States.
Then, the next scenes were about 9/11 and that when it happened, President Bush did not display any shock or that the way he handled his shock was to continue reading a poem to school children for about seven minutes after told of a second airplane that hit the Twin Towers.
And that the US administration of George W. Bush evacuated about two dozens of Bin Laden’s relatives on a clandestine flight when planes were apparently grounded after the attacks and without subjecting them to any routine investigation thereby implicating that the US government had a history of friendship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Bin Laden family and Taliban.
This documentary became a must see for the world.
I saw this film in a premiere in Europe (Amsterdam) and we talked about the film for days in class as a course treatise on film representation.
The film documentary opens with a suggestion that election fraud was committed in the way the voting controversy in Florida was managed particularly when politician friends of George W. Bush in media pre-maturely declared him as winner as President of the United States.
Then, the next scenes were about 9/11 and that when it happened, President Bush did not display any shock or that the way he handled his shock was to continue reading a poem to school children for about seven minutes after told of a second airplane that hit the Twin Towers.
And that the US administration of George W. Bush evacuated about two dozens of Bin Laden’s relatives on a clandestine flight when planes were apparently grounded after the attacks and without subjecting them to any routine investigation thereby implicating that the US government had a history of friendship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Bin Laden family and Taliban.
The documentary is a treatise about the Iraq war - which Moore sees as based on a lie.
The documentary represents the Iraq war as the George W.Bush and his War on Terrorism agenda - as the iconic response to 9/11.
It is a film which sought to suggest that the decision to declare a war in Iraq involved conditioning the minds of every citizen in the world as can be seen, for example, in the way security system was handled after 9/11;
and how we saw that the campaign against terror effectively produced paranoia as can be seen in the different and new ways of behaving after 9/11 which on the surface could be construed as either hate for terrorism and violence or values on patriotism.
It is represented in the documentary that the world and the Americans were conditioned to feel fear to justify the war against terror.
The real life story of the mother who initially cheered and supported that Iraq war suddenly questioned the Iraq war when she lost her son in the senseless war.
The documentary represents the Iraq war as the George W.Bush and his War on Terrorism agenda - as the iconic response to 9/11.
It is a film which sought to suggest that the decision to declare a war in Iraq involved conditioning the minds of every citizen in the world as can be seen, for example, in the way security system was handled after 9/11;
and how we saw that the campaign against terror effectively produced paranoia as can be seen in the different and new ways of behaving after 9/11 which on the surface could be construed as either hate for terrorism and violence or values on patriotism.
It is represented in the documentary that the world and the Americans were conditioned to feel fear to justify the war against terror.
The real life story of the mother who initially cheered and supported that Iraq war suddenly questioned the Iraq war when she lost her son in the senseless war.
The documentary also attributes ulterior motives for the War in Afghanistan, as there is a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.
Moore in a gesture of gratitude to American servicemen who were serving in the war also finds out that the poor self selects themselves to enlist in a war and that only one member of the US Congress served in the Iraq war and so the film shows Moore giving armed services enrollment forms to members of the US Congress and urges the lawmakers that they enlist their children in the Iraq war.
Moore in a gesture of gratitude to American servicemen who were serving in the war also finds out that the poor self selects themselves to enlist in a war and that only one member of the US Congress served in the Iraq war and so the film shows Moore giving armed services enrollment forms to members of the US Congress and urges the lawmakers that they enlist their children in the Iraq war.
The documentary was dedicated to "countless thousands" of civilian victims of war as a result of United States official foreign military policy & activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Based on archived film footage, interviews with politicians, an accounting of funds wasted in a war that was based on the likelihood of the presence of weapons of mass destruction, this documentary is one way of representing the still largely unresolved 9/11 tragic event and its aftermath.
Based on archived film footage, interviews with politicians, an accounting of funds wasted in a war that was based on the likelihood of the presence of weapons of mass destruction, this documentary is one way of representing the still largely unresolved 9/11 tragic event and its aftermath.
Picture credit : David Ake, AP, Sept. 17, 2001 & with many thanks to Ellen Dionisio for the picture.
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