Bajoran Worker

On 9/11, I was a high school freshman at a school in New Jersey, trying to make friends with my new classmates, when the attacks happened. They turned the TVs on, and we watched in silence when the towers fell, many of us wondering whether our family members were okay or not.

We could have processed this event so much better, as a nation, and now the young people who need to learn about it—I fear they can’t fully understand it without understanding how Americans *felt* in its aftermath. It’s very hard to convey those feeling of fear, sadness, and rage that dominated us.

On 9/11, I was a high school freshman at a school in New Jersey, trying to make friends with my new classmates, when the attacks happened. They turned the TVs on, and we watched in silence when the towers fell, many of us wondering whether our family members were okay or not.

I’ll never forget seeing my older brother in the corridor after they let us out, both of us not knowing whether our father, who worked downtown, and sometimes inside the buildings, was okay. 9/11, every anniversary of it, evokes this kind of primal fear, that we aren’t safe anymore.

Reminder that the concept of unconditional surrender comes from the WWII era. The Allies demanded this kind of surrender from both Nazis and the Japanese; it may have prolonged the war in Japan. But anyway, it’s not something that can just be repeated in any random war.

for anyone who doesn’t know, unconditional surrender is the language the American public and government used during WW2 to demand a surrender (and I realize this is repetitive and literal) with no conditions from Germany and Japan.

we should be highly skeptical of the use of this language by the Trump administration. Quite frankly, the comparison is not apt, and it has no place here—whatever you may think of this war. It’s language Trump has heard somewhere, and he feels it makes him sound strong, but what he is suggesting…

for anyone who doesn’t know, unconditional surrender is the language the American public and government used during WW2 to demand a surrender (and I realize this is repetitive and literal) with no conditions from Germany and Japan.

No conditions means the state that accepts such a surrender must entirely accept the authority of the winning party. In practice this meant the complete destruction of the German state, and the total capitulation of the Japanese govt to the terms of the Potsdam agreement,