As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 quickly approaches, what were the major issues going in the days before the 9/11 attacks? Below are some exerts taken from various newspapers from September 10, 2001. It is amazing how much changed in just one day. No one remembers what happened on the 10th and no one cares about the controversies and debates taking place on that day because of what happened on 9/11.
And that is the lesson here. Life was going on as usual when those planes hit the World Trade Centers and American came under attack by Islamic terrorists - "faceless cowards" as President Bush called them on that day. The attacks on 9/11 changed our conversations, our attitudes, and our loyalties. We no longer viewed things through political lens, but through American lenses. We no longer thought about me, but about us. And in all, most of what was important to us on 9/10 we discovered were trivial.
I fear that we are back at that point. In spite of the spiritual surge that immediately followed the attack, things are back to normal. We are distracted by things that don't really matter. After all, such things keep us entertained, distracted, and make us feel important. Though we may never go back to a pre-9/11 world we are in many ways already there.
We have learned a lot of lessons since that day. But for the many other lessons we could have learned, we've simply ignored.
New York Times - Religious Strife in Nigeria Leaves Bodies in the Streets
Frightened Muslims and Christians huddled together for safety at a police training ground in this northern Nigerian city today after three days of clashes between the two groups left smoke rising in the sky and charred bodies in the streets.
Blackened homes and hundreds upon hundreds of burned cars, some still smoldering, lined the road into this hilltop city, a peaceful community of four million people until tensions between Muslims and Christians exploded Friday evening after Muslim prayers.
Heavy police patrols and troops called out by President Olusegun Obasanjo were taking control today. The police sealed the borders of Plateau State, of which Jos is the capital, to keep violence from spreading.
CNN Sports Illustrated - Jordan will return to the NBA 'for the love of the game'
Michael Jordan still loves this game. And he's about to prove it.
In a half-hour conversation on the curb outside Hoops the Gym on Monday, Jordan all but confirmed that he'll be coming out of retirement again.
Jordan told our little group, which also included reporters from The Associated Press and the Chicago Sun-Times, that his knees felt fine and, barring any flare-up of the tendinitis he's battled recently, he's coming back.
Jordan said he was moving up on his performance scale. He said he was a 7 1/2, maybe an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. "I'm winning games," he said with a smile.
Jordan added that there's a mechanism in place for a news conference to announce his return in Washington, D.C., sometime in the next 10 days.
TIME Magazine - Does Israel Have A Right To Assassinate Leaders Of The Palestinian Intifadeh?
In wars throughout history armies do kill enemy soldiers. This is an unfortunate but universal fact of life. Was Abu Ali Mustafa an enemy soldier or just a political or an ideological figure? I don't know. I think that in this horrible battle Israel is entitled to defend itself, though not by hurting or killing innocent civilians, not by killing politicians, ideologists or even dreadful inciters and agitators. With a heavy heart, I justify the killing of Palestinian fighters, uniformed or not, but of no one else. The term assassination is a very misleading one. Killing unarmed civilians is assassination; killing fighting Palestinians or active terrorists is self-defense, and I justify it.
The criticism of what Israel is doing is too comprehensive and undiscriminating, as criticism often is. Israel deserves very serious criticism when it kills civilians. Israel does not deserve criticism when in a state of war it kills fighting enemies. In principle, when a country is attacked, it can choose among three ways: it can indiscriminately kill the "others," it can turn its other cheek to its enemies, or it can fight back against those who carry weapons. I prefer not to fight at all, but if there is a war I definitely prefer the last way.
TIME Magazine - Bush's Fuzzy Science?
It made for big news when President Bush confidently declared on prime-time television last month that private research had produced a trove of more than 60 stem-cell lines. Most experts had assumed that there were as yet only a dozen or so such colonies of the cells that might become weapons against a range of debilitating diseases, from Alzheimer's to juvenile diabetes to Parkinson's. The vastly larger number was enough, Bush said, to "explore the promise and potential of stem-cell research"--and, not incidentally, enough to give him room for a politically palatable compromise on the question of federal funding. But last week came another surprise, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a catalog of the existing 64 stem-cell lines that are eligible for government money--a surprise, this time, to the researchers around the globe who were reportedly producing them.
Startled scientists from Mumbai, India, to Goteborg, Sweden, to San Diego cautioned that many of their embryonic stem-cell colonies were not yet--and may never be--worthy of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson's claim that they are robust and viable for research. Goteborg University, for instance, was credited with the world's largest cache--19 lines--even though its researchers had told Thompson the week before that only three had progressed beyond the earliest, most tentative stages. Goteborg fertility expert Lars Hamberger told the Washington Post that he and his colleagues thought the White House either had made a "mistake" or had decided to "stretch things" to suit its need for a larger number. And while the tiny San Diego biotech firm CyThera Inc. was credited with the largest number of lines in this country, CEO Michael Ross concedes that "we're not there with any of our nine yet." What the company has, Ross says, are "derivations" that may or may not develop into stem cells capable of transforming themselves into endlessly replenishing muscle, brain or other tissue.
TIME Magazine - CONDI RICE: The Charm Of Face Time
Condoleezza Rice has a reputation for toughness, and in the first seven months of the Administration she has lived up to it. Originally pegged as a peacemaker between hard-liners and moderates, Rice turned out to be the driving force behind the Administration's early "my-way-or-the-highway" tone on such issues as Russia, North Korea and the Kyoto protocol on climate change. A diplomat meeting with her last spring complained that for the U.S. to drop Kyoto would set the fight against global warming back 10 years. Rice thought that was one more reason not to delay the treaty's inevitable end. And she told him so.
>Rice's personal story of hard work helps explain her tenacity. She grew up under segregation in Birmingham, Ala., willed her way to college at age 15 and eventually became a Soviet expert in the White House of Bush I--finding time along the way to become an accomplished pianist, ice skater and sports buff. Her hard-line positions have surprised even seasoned alumni of Republican administrations. J. Stapleton Roy, Bush Sr.'s ambassador to China, says Rice is "prone to the naive view that we are strong and they are weak and we should ruthlessly exploit that." Rice, like her boss, has a rebellious streak.
TIME Magazine - Odd Man Out
Colin Powell has the gift of presence. When he walks into a room, people sit up, straighten their ties, hold their breath in anticipation. And he dazzles them with his effortless command. The moment he set foot in the State Department last January, he was met with rapturous applause. When he paid a call in Beijing three months after a U.S. spy plane was forced to land on Hainan island, he coaxed a joke out of somber President Jiang Zemin and left the leadership beaming that he "respected" China. They returned the compliment with a long-awaited $2 billion order for Boeing 737s. When Powell met George W. Bush in 1997 at a Texas charity fund raiser, the new Governor stepped forward and saluted: "General, Texas is reporting for duty."
So it comes as one of the biggest surprises in the emerging Bush II era that Colin Powell, the man many thought would walk into the presidency himself a few years ago, is leaving such shallow footprints. By the cruel calculus of Washington, you are only as powerful as people think you are. Powell's megastar wattage looks curiously dimmed, as if someone has turned his light way down. People who like the Administration's foreign policy credit it to Bush, not Powell. People who don't, wonder where he is. Leaders abroad are not certain he is the definitive voice of America. A former Secretary of State says Powell seems absent from the big issues of the day. Another former top diplomat, when asked to provide an adjective for the phrase "Colin Powell is a 'blank' Secretary of State," says, "Yes, he is." A senior official in the Bush Administration who has worked with Powell for three Presidents in three agencies registers much the same reaction: "I've been struck by how not struck I am by him." A friendly foreign official notes, "It's not useful to sit as silent partner when you have his stature." What people noticed most at the U.N. Conference on Racism that opened last week in Durban, South Africa, was Powell's absence.
NY Daily News - Fox Challenges Bush to Reach Immigration Pact
WASHINGTON - Mexican President Vicente Fox surprised President Bush yesterday by challenging him to protect the rights of illegal workers from Mexico by the end of the year.
"We want to continue making progress toward the establishment of an agreement on migration which will be of mutual benefit to us and which will recognize, above all, the value of migrants as human beings and as workers whose hard work is a daily contribution to the prosperity of this great nation," Fox said as he arrived at the White House.
"For this reason, we must and we can reach an agreement on migration before the end of this very year." Fox had said just days earlier that a deal on immigration could take four to six years. His statement puts Bush on the spot because many conservative Republicans oppose granting amnesty to illegal aliens. One U.S. official conceded it was hard to tell whether Bush was prepared for Fox's challenge, while others tried to dance around the issue.
New York Times - DEFENDING BUDGET, BUSH AIDES TAKE FIGHT TO CONGRESS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5— President Bush's budget director and defense secretary mounted a vigorous defense of the Bush budget today in separate appearances on Capitol Hill, insisting that the administration and Congress could protect the Social Security surplus and still increase military and education spending.
But Democrats intensified their attacks against Mr. Bush, blaming his $1.35 trillion tax cut for the shrinking federal surplus and asking him to submit a budget that would protect Social Security funds.
''This is a result of the Bush budget and the Bush tax cut,'' said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, of the dwindling surplus. ''Certainly, they're the architects of our current economic condition, and I think we have to turn to them for leadership now as we find our way out of the box that has been created.''
New York Times - Saying Too Many Are Losing Jobs, Bush Pushes His Policies
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7— President Bush said today that ''too many people are losing their jobs,'' and he cast the surge in the unemployment rate as reason for Congress to advance his economic agenda by expanding trade agreements and reducing energy costs while holding down government spending.
''The slowdown is real, and it's affecting too many lives, and we're concerned about it,'' Mr. Bush said. ''Any American out of work is too many Americans out of work.''
His hastily arranged appearance outside the Oval Office this afternoon reflected growing concern among his aides and officials of his party that the deteriorating economic and budget outlook could dearly cost the White House and Congressional Republicans politically.
For a complete list of what was in the LA Times on 9/10/01, click here.
For more:
Blogizomai - As It Happened & As It Was: Remembering 9/11
Blogizomai - W: The 9/11 Interview
Blogizomai - Remember 9/11: 102 Minutes That Changed America
Blogizomai - The First Responders: CSB 9/11 Documentary
Blogizomai - Graham: The Unwavering Love of God
Blogizomai - September 11th Remembered - 2007
Blogizomai - "Justice Has Been Done": President Obama Announces the Death of Osama bin Laden
Blogizomai - The Beginning of the End: Obama Announces the End of Operation Iraqi Freedom
Blogizomai - To Build or Not to Build, That is Not the Question: Where is the Gospel in the Ground Zero Debate?
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