Of course you shouldn't forget them. But if you want to honor them, also don't forget people who resisted starting a war of aggression which ended up causing two orders of magnitude more lives lost, helped create ISIS and other things that continue to this day. Remembering the dead doesn't make them alive, and without also holding murderers that still run free accountable it has no sentimental value either in my books. If the American public as a whole had 1% of the energy they have for flowery language dedicated to the values they pay lip service to, George Bush, Dick Cheney and many others would be in jail. They used this for a war of aggression, and enriched themselves and their buddies. How is them still walking free not an insult to all these people who lost their lives in 9/11?

That people help each other in catastrophies, be that earthquakes or anything else, is human. The pattern of war and war profiteering at the cost of the public, of the very same average Joes and Janes that get to die, that's the thing the USA excels at. Just as a random example, look at healthcare: that does not strike me as something that is even possible in a society where caring for others and selfless sacrifice is a priority, much less the ideal.

> If you care about other people, that’s now a very dangerous idea. If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich, but you don’t care whether other people’s kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that.

-- Noam Chomsky

I'm not disrespecting the victims in my own heart, but you could say I'm somewhat unimpressed by the somber display of respect by many people who, with their (in)actions, betray the values that would give such respect weight.

There are a number of things here, but it’s a lot easier to Monday Morning quarterback decisions made 20 years later after seeing outcomes of the war. There are already a ton of case studies on the Intelligence communities’ failures, and military leaders and Master’s programs in public policy are learning from the mistakes.

The country had a full report on the failures that lead to it (https://www.9-11commission.gov/) and has done extensive work to prevent it. We are able to know about the mistakes they made because it was made public.

No matter how bad a president is perceived to be, I’m not sure we will see him or her jailed for their actions. It would be too partisan and divide the country. Every future candidate for president would be concerned that they will be charged and jailed once out of office, and it would weaken the candidate pool until someone got in who would be able to mount a resistance of the impending arrest after coming out of office. The checks and balances of the branches of government, and the American people, are responsible for limiting the President’s power in office.

Those who were responsible for the lives lost on 9/11 were held accountable. Our government brought them to justice.

Democracy is not perfect, but I’d argue it’s the best system humans have invented for governing, and I’d not rather live under any other system of government.

Your comment on healthcare is a different topic altogether, but we have some of the best care in the world. We have the top medical schools and training and research. Is it perfectly distributed? No. Frankly there isn’t enough to go around, and when you have competition, by definition 100% of the population can’t receive care from the top 5% of doctors. Billing and insurance are a mess, but I don’t think you’ll find anyone argue that. It’s awful that medical bills are a major driver of bankruptcy, but if you walk into any hospital in the country you will be provided care first, and billed later whether or not you can afford it.

But we know our problems. I don’t think any American says we’re perfect. The first step in addressing them is to identify them. In a democracy it is up to the people in the country to fix it, because the people are the government - it’s not some abstract body who comes in to save the day or a dictator who magically knows the optimal solution.

Authority in America is granted by the American people through our voting and who we elect to office. So that Chomsky quote is interesting, because we’re already organized, and we vote people into office who share our beliefs and serve us as constituents. So we don’t need to undermine authority, because we are the authority, and we can change over time as we vote people out of office.

America has provided more vaccines to the rest of the world than Russia, China, and all of Europe combined. We have countless non-profits that serve people at home and abroad. We very much care about others, and the support for the war in Afghanistan (and from those who wanted to maintain the force of 2500 troops to keep order there) was driven by the fact that we care about the women and children there who are now being oppressed under Taliban rule.

> it’s a lot easier to Monday Morning quarterback decisions made 20 years later

I'm not doing that. I was around and paying attention, and I remember Colin Powell sweating trying to sell this story about scary mobile weapons labs to the UN. And I also remember stuff like that one US news site that reported on an anti-Iraq-war demonstration by school children by captioning a photo of a few blonde kids with open mouths and furrowed brows (since they were likely chanting something) with "Hitlers children: Pro-Sadam demonstrators protest in Munich, Germany". Some people had such a hard-on for war, and it was obvious from day one. Even Christopher Hitchens ended up being a cheerleader for it, so deep was the depravity.

But it wasn't something nobody could have known better, which is why most people knew better. They were proven correct, too, and to call that quarterbacking now, because they were shouted down then, with phrases like anti-Americanism and Bush Derangement Syndrome is kinda rich. If nobody could have known, how come so many called it right away?

> War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

-- from the Judgement of the International Military Tribunal for Germany

It wasn't hard to see, it was just a lot of people had and have double standards.

> No matter how bad a president is perceived to be, I’m not sure we will see him or her jailed for their actions.

It's not about "perceiving a president", it's the simple act of a war of aggression on Iraq. And yes, it's unlikely, which is my whole point.

> Billing and insurance are a mess, but I don’t think you’ll find anyone argue that.

It's a profitable mess for some, hell for others. And to combine that with 9/11:

"Jon Stewart slams Congress over benefits for 9/11 first responders"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uYpDC3SRpM

If you have never seen it, watch it in full. In the face of that and what it stands for, many other things, and not least the war of aggression pitched to it which you agree is "unlikely" to ever have any justice shed upon it, a phrase like "Those who were responsible for the lives lost on 9/11 were held accountable." is just incorrect.

Those people had nothing to do with why 9/11 is remembered, which was the topic at hand.

They should certainly be remembered when we talk about how horrific the American response to 9/11 was, though.

Perhaps within the US. To the rest of the word it’s like talking about assassination of prince Ferdinand without mentioning the World War - what happened next made 9/11 insignificant by comparison.

But if they're not americans, can they still be considered innocent? ;o