Posted on 09/11/2009 9:07:39 AM PDT by NewMediaJournal
Every commemoration of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 reveals our confusion. Eight years after 9-11, we are still asking ourselves too many questions, and in those questions are embedded the reasons the war has gone on so long.
Who is this enemy and why do they want to harm us, many ask. If you can’t define the enemy, you cannot defeat him.
Where are we this year in the confrontation with the forces that caused us harm and want to defeat us? Are we making progress in the war against the “terror forces;” are we far from victory; how much more sacrifice will it cost us to get to the other side?
Rarely over the past eight years have we received good clear answers. Our debate was hopelessly disabled by large segments of our own political establishment, which advocated exaggerated apology; our public perception was outmaneuvered by the Jihadist propaganda worldwide. For years any clear identification of the enemy, its ideology, its strategies and how to counter them has been lacking.
(Excerpt) Read more at newmediajournal.us ...
“Since 9/11, the US dislodged two tyrannies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Historians will judge the validity of toppling Saddam’s regime at that time, or also the strategy of not resuming the pressure against Assad and the Ayatollahs all the way once we began the Iraq campaign. This was the history of the two first years of the ‘war.’”
It’s good to be reimded of this, today.
Sadly, it’s all been a stalemate since then. :(
If anyone is still asking who the enemy is, and why they want to harm us, they are too stupid to survive. And they probably won’t.
Our strategies have been controlled by the politicians. Sound familiar? It should. We did the same thing in Viet Nam. Our military leaders need to talk to the Commander in Chief and say “Look....either we fight this war or pull out. We will no longer put our young men and women in harms way for political reasons.”
You can’t defeat an ideology if you don’t have a better one to displace it with.
We have a better one, but we’re afraid to say so.
You have to defeat them on the battlefield, again and again, until you finally defeat them in the human heart.
Eight years ago, nearly 3,000 American civilians were killed by a well-orchestrated and elaborately planned series of terror attacks designed to not only cause grievous loss of life, but to permanently cripple our economic system. Among the dead were 343 firefighters and paramedics and sixty police officers.
Eight years later, how many of us remember how we felt (not what we thought, but how we felt) on 9-11?
If not, why not? (Do you think those that came before us could not, in 1949, remember how they felt in the wake of Pearl Harbor?)
How many of us can still summon those feelings? Again, if not, why not?
The enemy that did this to us still exists, and has not changed. It is still well funded. It still enjoys tremendous popular support in its corner of the world. Most importantly to us, it still seeks to kill us by the tens of thousands.
If there is one thing about this enemy that we need to understand, it is that. This enemy intends to kill us, and to do so in large numbers. It cannot be persuaded, and it will not be deterred.
Meanwhile, here in America where the killing and dying occurred, we appear to have changed. In some corners, it didn’t take long. Within days, elements of the Democrat Party had already put partisan political interest ahead of the interests and security of the nation. (Not that many of us didn’t expect that.)
Over these past eight years, many Americans have “moved on.” To them, 9-11 has become only a distant memory, with the accent on “distant.”
How far has this gone? Not only did the current President appoint to high office a man who publicly declared his belief that the 9-11 attacks were an “inside job” and not the work of terrorists, but few in his party or the national media appeared to see it as noteworthy, much less objectionable. That President also seeks to move from Guantanamo (and likely into the American court system the cases of) the terror suspects we hold there.
But enough about this President. What about the American people?
If that enemy is still out there and remains unrepentant, should we just let bygones be bygones? Should we consider the enemy and their proxies to be reasonable and honorable people that can be trusted to live up to what they promise during a negotiation (especially when one considers their religion tells them about lying to infidels)?
Enough of that, too. Americans have, beginning with Yalta (when FDR gave Eastern Europe to Stalin and the Soviets) been almost continuously naïve and stupid in negotiating with foreign powers. Millions of innocents have paid for that stupidity with their lives. That, like the current President, we can discuss other days in other threads.
How often do we pause to honor those who perished, and those who served so heroically, on that fateful day? How often do we thank the firefighters, paramedics and police officer that, should a similar event happen today, would without question or hesitation, put themselves in harm’s way to save us? (If there is an enduring legacy of 9-11, it is how the heroic actions of the firefighters, paramedics, and police officers who responded limited the loss of life to a number far less than it otherwise might have been.)
What about all the things we told ourselves we would do in the wake of 9-11? Have we better prepared ourselves for disaster (natural or otherwise)? Have we repaired, or taken steps to improve, our relationships with those we hold dear?
Might this be a good day to not only consider, but rededicate ourselves to, what we told ourselves we would do in the wake of 9-11?
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