To the extent that I'm not particularly great at the sentimentalism thing, I'm going to focus my 9/11 post on antipathy and bile. Specifically, antipathy and bile toward mainstream media outlets and the people who consume them. Al Qaeda is in disarray...

Seven years after September 11, 2001, al-Qaida as an organization is seen by many analysts to be in some disarray. One prominent observer of the network depicts it as having been reduced to a core of 200-300 operatives. Yet al-Qaida as an idea and as a franchise remains healthy and is still a threat... The 9/11 attacks were meant to draw the United States into the Middle East, opening an extended war of attrition. Al-Qaida's model for this was the jihadis' war against the USSR in Afghanistan. Those attacks succeeded in drawing the US in. However, the score card so far is largely against the Sunni jihadists.

... and yet somehow that realization hasn't penetrated very far into the public consciousness:

In the new survey, 35% say Al Qaeda is weaker today than before September 11, 2001, while 26% believe the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks is stronger. Twenty-nine percent (29%) think its strength is about the same now as it was then. See full demographic crosstabs.

Luckily, those mainstream media outlets will soon raise public awareness - presumably to a level somewhere above "objectively wrong" - by shifting terrorism reporters onto the Palin smear beat.

The good news is that much of the US public is merely misinformed. The rest of the world's beliefs about the WTC bombings are out and out batshit crazy. And the country that has the highest percentage of people blaming Jews for 9/11 - a whopping 43 percent - is naturally the one that's treaty-committed to cultural normalization. But what would Israel do with an oil-rich tract of land twice the size of the country, anyway?

References:
* Analysis: 7 years after 9/11, al-Qaida is in disarray [JPost]
* 54% Say U.S. Has Changed for the Worse Since 9/11 [Rasmussen Reports]
* Mainstream Media Diverting Terrorism Reporters Into Political Investigations [CT Blog]
* Poll: Majorities in only nine of 17 countries surveyed believe Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Mainstreaming Of Global Anti-Semitism, South Korea Edition
* The Paranoid Style in The Left's Anti-Palin Viciousness
* Arab and Muslim Conspiracy Theories - Iranian Holocaust Denial Edition