11 DE SETEMBRO

«Os atentados de 11 de setembro foram uma série de ataques contra alvos civis nos Estados Unidos em 11 de Setembro de 2001. Na manhã deste dia, quatro aviões comerciais foram seqüestrados, sendo que dois deles colidiram contra as torres do World Trade Center em Manhattan, Nova York. Um terceiro avião, o American Airlines Flight 77, foi direcionado pelos seqüestradores para uma colisão contra o Pentágono, no Condado de Arlington, Virgínia. Os destroços do quarto avião, United Airlines Flight 93, foram encontrados espalhados num campo próximo de Shanksville, Pensilvânia. A versão oficial apresentada pelo governo norte-americano reporta que os passageiros enfrentaram os supostos seqüestradores e que, durante este ataque, o avião caiu. Os atentados causaram a morte de 3234 pessoas e o desaparecimento de 24.»
Os ataques de 11 de Setembro, atrás referidos, foram um acto de guerra, mas não um acto de guerra praticado por um Estado, mas por uma entidade privada.
Actualmente considera-se que foram praticados pela Al Qaeda. Os autores materias dos ataques morreram durante os mesmos.
Se o conflito Israel-Palestina tivesse sido RESOLVIDO ATRAVÉS DE UM ACORDO DE PAZ DEFINITIVO, durante a presidência de Clinton nos Estados Unidos, estes ataques teriam ocorrido?
É, evidente, que não se sabe, mas haveria muito menos motivação ideológica para os fazer.
Sendo o objectivo destes ataques provocar um ambiente de terror, o conceito atentados terroristas, define-os, objectivamente.
Curiosamente, o Estado do Iraque nada teve a ver com estes atentados, mas os neocnservadores dirigidos por George W. Bush decidiram invadir e ocupar o Iraque.
Hoje, verifica-se que a invasão e ocupação do Iraque aumentou, consideravelmente, a motivação ideológica para este tipo de atentados, aumentou, muitíssimo, o ódio aos Estados Unidos entre pessoas que poderão vir a tornar-se novos terroristas.






O 11 DE SETEMBRO VISTO, HOJE, A PARTIR DE NOVA YORQUE

« By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: September 11, 2007
The planning in New York City for today’s commemoration of the 2001 terror attack had become a seemingly familiar standoff.


On one side was a vocal core of victims’ relatives threatening to hold their own event because the ceremony would, for the first time, take place not at ground zero but across the street, at Zuccotti Park. On the other, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, accused by the relatives of insensitivity, was holding firm that it was unsafe to allow mourners at what was now an active construction site.
The mayor and the families agreed to a compromise: the ceremony would be held at the park but relatives would still be allowed to descend to the pit where their loved ones perished.
When he took over as mayor in 2002, Mr. Bloomberg threw himself into fixing the many pressing problems wrought by the terror attack: shoring up the security of a city suddenly at the center of a bull’s-eye; closing the gaping hole in the midst of Lower Manhattan; bolstering a sinking economy suffering the loss of thousands of jobs.
But the mayor has also played an essential if more subtle role in nudging the city to gradually let go of its grief. It is a challenge the mayor has handled sometimes clumsily and sometimes with great sensitivity and eloquence, as he charted the path away from the concrete events of 2001. Now, as he works to imbue the city with optimism for the future, he even hints at a day when remembering may not mean reading the names of all the dead.
“You’re going to have to change to keep it relevant,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference yesterday when asked about the fact that one television network had originally planned not to broadcast the entire ceremony, which exceeds four hours. “I’ve never been a believer that doing the same thing every time is the best way to accomplish anything.”
Indeed, Mr. Bloomberg, who spurns dwelling on the past and prefers to keep his emotions to himself, has been pushing the city from the start to move beyond its tragedy. Early on, he championed building schools and housing at ground zero and suggested that the soaring memorial envisioned by his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, would turn it into “a cemetery” and drive residents and businesses away.
Mr. Giuliani is scheduled to take part in today’s ceremony, a move criticized by some because he is a candidate for the presidency.
Mr. Bloomberg, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told The New York Times just before the first anniversary of the attack: “I think the Jews do it right. They have a headstone unveiling a year after the funeral, and that’s sort of the time that you sort of stop the mourning process and start going forward. And the 9/11 ceremonies, what I’m trying to do is that in the morning we will look back, remember who they were and why they died. And in the evening come out of it looking forward and say, ‘O.K., we’re going to go forward.’ ”
In recent months, that campaign has become more urgent as Mr. Bloomberg has taken a more active role in accelerating development at the site, stepping in to break the logjams, muscling his way through the opposition with a conviction that his priorities — getting the project done, leaving a legacy for the future — and values are the right ones.
On Sept. 11, said Edward Skyler, a deputy mayor who, as campaign press secretary, had been with Mr. Bloomberg that day, the city “had been dealt an enormous emotional blow, but he didn’t want it to be a transformative blow for the worse.”
The attack “had clearly changed the city. but he didn’t want it to change the city’s fundamental can-do attitude,” Mr. Skyler said. “He has tried to find the right balance between remembering and rebuilding.”
That balance has been tricky at times. After alienating some of the victims’ relatives with his insistence that the names on the memorial be listed randomly, Mr. Bloomberg brokered a compromise that allows emergency responders, colleagues and relatives to be listed together.
After loudly criticizing the anemic fund-raising efforts for the memorial, he took over as chairman of the foundation and is nearing the goal of more than $300 million, he said yesterday.
And when, this year, contractors threatened to further delay the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building by walking off the job, Mr. Bloomberg convened a meeting at Gracie Mansion, eventually agreeing with the state that they should be paid more to complete the work.
Even today’s ceremony, taking place largely away from ground zero itself, is a result of that effort.
“He’s first and foremost a pragmatist, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a feeling individual,” said Christy Ferer, Mr. Bloomberg’s liaison to the victims’ families. Ms. Ferer, who lost her husband in the attack, said she had detected a growing admiration between the families and the mayor over the years, along with some lessening of interest in grieving at the site, as more of the families have opted for more personal commemorations, and as attendance at the ceremony has waned.
Some relatives have thought the same way all along. Nikki Stern, whose husband, Jim Potorti, died in the Marsh & McLennan offices, said she believed the idea of balancing remembering and rebuilding was logical, and something she had supported publicly as early as October 2001. "For me, I didn’t see anything else we could do but go forward," she said. "It doesn’t mean we don’t feel like laying down and dying. But we can’t." »

(In «The New York Times»)