of course they were celebrating the end of the war.

the end of the war was solely brought around by the nuking of two cities.

but they were not celebrating that.

so lets bring this around again.

the people who celebrated on 9-11. were celebrating for the same reason as that man. it was either the beginning or end of a war. depending on how optimistic you were. they had just their pearl harbour. a strategically perfect attack (a statistical failure but that's not for now). now whether you viewed it as an end of beginning depended on how you felt at the time.

many would have seen it as a knockout blow. if the attack had been completed (there were more planes) and if it had been statistically perfect (it only killed something like 95% of potential victims) then by all means it could have been the end. if al qaeda had managed to wipe out 200,000 people that day which was a possibility then who knows how we may have reacted. certainly differently.

and if you view it as a start of a war. celebrating the start of a war is not unheard of. after the declaration of the first world war there are stories of huge queues for the sign up.

i think it's just about time we put 9-11 and all images in relation in context of history.