9 Years. One day has impacted the world for 9 long, hard years.
It was the day that Osama Bin Laden and his gang of fruitcake followers took the world and shook it like a rag doll.
9 Years later there are those that still believe it was all a government plot, or that it was just a one-shot deal; it could never happen again.
To those people, the thousands of lives that were lost then and since, are meaningless faces on a screen, meaningless names on a wall or in a cemetery or a field of battle.
To those people the inconveniences of modern travel, the cost of our wars overseas, the cost of partnering with our allies to control ‘threats to our national security’, and the cost of housing captured terrorists is all a big waste of money and time. To them it is just a scare tactic to keep them from doing what they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. It is an impediment to their freedoms.
And in the limited viewfinder through which they see, they are correct.
What are the odds, they say, of another terror strike like 9/11? One in a million?
It’s amazing how often one in a million actually happens.
For some, the condition is called War Weariness. It’s a known phenomenon when a country at war gets tired of being in the state of war. They want to be able to go back to their normal lives and don’t want to be always in the ‘pressure cooker’ of war.
Actually, I’m truly amazed that anyone in this country can have the unmitigated gall to even state that we are at war.
Sure we have troops overseas, fighting like hell to keep us safe, to keep our families from feeling the devastation of losing their loved ones in a hail of bullets or a crumbling, burning building hundreds of feet in the air.
Sure we have a 3 ounce limit on fluids allowed on an airplane.
But the cold hard reality of war hasn’t struck home in this country, and it hasn’t happened for one reason. We’re not taking our defense of our homeland as seriously as we should or ordinarily would in a normal war.
In World War II, there were military checkpoints all through Europe in an effort to defend against foreign agents, invaders and saboteurs.
In the height of the Cold War, one did not discuss company business in open forums, let alone government or national business with people who weren’t expressly designated for those conversations.
Although we had the right to voice our political opinions, we had the better sense not to, as we would never give an opponent that kind of leverage to do us, our families, our neighbours, or our economies that kind of damage.
Today – today all we have is the twin refrains ‘I have my rights’ and ‘What are the odds?’
If you had to pass military checkpoints today, if you and your family only had rationed portions of food, energy and fuel, if you had to live under the kind of strict rules of communication that real wars demand, I can assure you of 2 things: 1) by now you’d have earned every right to feel a sense of War Weariness, and 2) you’d know why your views of the war today are not only out of place, they are a disgrace. They are a disgrace because although we are asking our troops, law enforcement, fire-fighters, and medical experts to keep us safe, we have those among us who mock, ridicule, insult, undermine, and passively or actively endanger them out of a sense of entitlement. It’s their ‘right’ to do so.
It’s their right to harass, insult, impede, and effectively threaten the mourning families of fallen military personnel at the cemetery during the funeral.
It’s their right – but that doesn’t make it right for them to do so, and they damned well know better.
To the pastor who wants to burn the Qu’ran – you’re old enough, and experienced enough to know better.
To the politicians who want to set timelines for withdrawals and draw-downs – do you honestly think the enemy sets timelines for when they plan to give up? You’re smart enough; you know better.
To the politicians and bureaucrats who allow themselves to be duped into ‘economies and efficiencies’ by cutting our human intelligence budgets because ‘our friends and allies’ have it covered; to you I have one question: When your child is planning on getting into trouble, do you hear about it from your office friends in time to stop it? They probably have kids in the same school, and their kids are honest, right?
They are our friends and allies, but we all know better than to rely on someone else to do something we know we need to do ourselves. It’s good for us if we are all involved so that we don’t let anything slip. That does mean, though, that we need to be involved; we need to be there too.
To the bureaucrats and politicians in this field, they have heard this for their entire careers but have refused to live by it, refused to implement it. To those men and women, in this day and age – you know better.
You know there are enemies of the state. You know there are child molesters in the streets. When between one out of three, and one out of four kids is sexually assaulted before they turn 18, and it is most often by someone they know very well, the excuse that it ‘couldn’t happen to my kid’ doesn’t fly. Similarly, when you know that many foreign nations’ have openly explained that they are actively attacking our electronic and communications infrastructure and our economic base by targeting utilities and private corporations for economic sabotage, you know better than to tell the public they are safe. You know better.
You have the right to say anything you want. You know better than to do it.
9 Years after 9/11 I look at the responses I see to quotes from our leaders about tolerance, respect, calm and deliberation and I see people frequently responding with whatever they feel they have the right to say, and often it is with flippancy and dismissive permissiveness that they feel they are entitled to attack those who have kept us safe.
I saw no military checkpoints. I saw no food and fuel rationing. I saw no massive increase in military equipment manufacture. I saw no emphasis by companies to restrict communication to restricted personnel lists. I saw nothing more than the Patriot Act and the 3oz rule. Sure the Patriot Act had some serious infringements on a private citizen’s rights and freedoms. But it’s not like the restrictiveness our own nation experienced in World War II.
There were no internship camps where all Muslims were forced to go.
The complaint about racial profiling? Do you remember what that even was? Are you seriously comparing today’s racial profiling techniques of law-enforcement with those of Hitler’s SS? You know better.
There were no anti-insurgency agencies generated since 9/11 to infiltrate and attack domestic groups in the same scale and scope as were in place in the days of the Hoover.
There was no fear of Agent Smith in his black suit, black loafers, crisp white shirt and dark glasses, his military style-brush cut, walking into your place of business or home to ask you some very serious and very unpleasant questions to determine if you were loyal or subversive.
I’m not advocating that we go that direction either. I am saying that the level of discussion has been raised to the degree of intrusion as if that were in fact what has been happening. It isn’t. It wasn’t. It hasn’t been. And we all know better.
We know better than to whine and wimper and throw fits about how hard done by we are by having to defend our nation. We know better.
It’s time, 9 years after 9/11 that we started to DO better. It's time we started to stop letting our feelings of entitlement dictate how we act and speak, and start recognizing that we may have the right to touch a hot stove burner, but we know better than to do it.
We have the right to burn the Qu'ran but only a complete insensitive idiot with no better sense than an ornery mule would be dumb enough to do it.
We have the right to protest military funerals, but we need to rise above that and stop the callous, disgusting and sabotaging self-agrandizement that allows us to do so.
We have the right to disagree with the former President or the current President on how they handle the issues of our national security and our economic policies; but we need to rise above simply calling them a 'nutsack.'
We need to not only know better, we need to do better.
Or we also know we're going to see more 1 in a million chances happen. And that won't make anyone feel better.
It was the day that Osama Bin Laden and his gang of fruitcake followers took the world and shook it like a rag doll.
9 Years later there are those that still believe it was all a government plot, or that it was just a one-shot deal; it could never happen again.
To those people, the thousands of lives that were lost then and since, are meaningless faces on a screen, meaningless names on a wall or in a cemetery or a field of battle.
To those people the inconveniences of modern travel, the cost of our wars overseas, the cost of partnering with our allies to control ‘threats to our national security’, and the cost of housing captured terrorists is all a big waste of money and time. To them it is just a scare tactic to keep them from doing what they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. It is an impediment to their freedoms.
And in the limited viewfinder through which they see, they are correct.
What are the odds, they say, of another terror strike like 9/11? One in a million?
It’s amazing how often one in a million actually happens.
For some, the condition is called War Weariness. It’s a known phenomenon when a country at war gets tired of being in the state of war. They want to be able to go back to their normal lives and don’t want to be always in the ‘pressure cooker’ of war.
Actually, I’m truly amazed that anyone in this country can have the unmitigated gall to even state that we are at war.
Sure we have troops overseas, fighting like hell to keep us safe, to keep our families from feeling the devastation of losing their loved ones in a hail of bullets or a crumbling, burning building hundreds of feet in the air.
Sure we have a 3 ounce limit on fluids allowed on an airplane.
But the cold hard reality of war hasn’t struck home in this country, and it hasn’t happened for one reason. We’re not taking our defense of our homeland as seriously as we should or ordinarily would in a normal war.
In World War II, there were military checkpoints all through Europe in an effort to defend against foreign agents, invaders and saboteurs.
In the height of the Cold War, one did not discuss company business in open forums, let alone government or national business with people who weren’t expressly designated for those conversations.
Although we had the right to voice our political opinions, we had the better sense not to, as we would never give an opponent that kind of leverage to do us, our families, our neighbours, or our economies that kind of damage.
Today – today all we have is the twin refrains ‘I have my rights’ and ‘What are the odds?’
If you had to pass military checkpoints today, if you and your family only had rationed portions of food, energy and fuel, if you had to live under the kind of strict rules of communication that real wars demand, I can assure you of 2 things: 1) by now you’d have earned every right to feel a sense of War Weariness, and 2) you’d know why your views of the war today are not only out of place, they are a disgrace. They are a disgrace because although we are asking our troops, law enforcement, fire-fighters, and medical experts to keep us safe, we have those among us who mock, ridicule, insult, undermine, and passively or actively endanger them out of a sense of entitlement. It’s their ‘right’ to do so.
It’s their right to harass, insult, impede, and effectively threaten the mourning families of fallen military personnel at the cemetery during the funeral.
It’s their right – but that doesn’t make it right for them to do so, and they damned well know better.
To the pastor who wants to burn the Qu’ran – you’re old enough, and experienced enough to know better.
To the politicians who want to set timelines for withdrawals and draw-downs – do you honestly think the enemy sets timelines for when they plan to give up? You’re smart enough; you know better.
To the politicians and bureaucrats who allow themselves to be duped into ‘economies and efficiencies’ by cutting our human intelligence budgets because ‘our friends and allies’ have it covered; to you I have one question: When your child is planning on getting into trouble, do you hear about it from your office friends in time to stop it? They probably have kids in the same school, and their kids are honest, right?
They are our friends and allies, but we all know better than to rely on someone else to do something we know we need to do ourselves. It’s good for us if we are all involved so that we don’t let anything slip. That does mean, though, that we need to be involved; we need to be there too.
To the bureaucrats and politicians in this field, they have heard this for their entire careers but have refused to live by it, refused to implement it. To those men and women, in this day and age – you know better.
You know there are enemies of the state. You know there are child molesters in the streets. When between one out of three, and one out of four kids is sexually assaulted before they turn 18, and it is most often by someone they know very well, the excuse that it ‘couldn’t happen to my kid’ doesn’t fly. Similarly, when you know that many foreign nations’ have openly explained that they are actively attacking our electronic and communications infrastructure and our economic base by targeting utilities and private corporations for economic sabotage, you know better than to tell the public they are safe. You know better.
You have the right to say anything you want. You know better than to do it.
9 Years after 9/11 I look at the responses I see to quotes from our leaders about tolerance, respect, calm and deliberation and I see people frequently responding with whatever they feel they have the right to say, and often it is with flippancy and dismissive permissiveness that they feel they are entitled to attack those who have kept us safe.
I saw no military checkpoints. I saw no food and fuel rationing. I saw no massive increase in military equipment manufacture. I saw no emphasis by companies to restrict communication to restricted personnel lists. I saw nothing more than the Patriot Act and the 3oz rule. Sure the Patriot Act had some serious infringements on a private citizen’s rights and freedoms. But it’s not like the restrictiveness our own nation experienced in World War II.
There were no internship camps where all Muslims were forced to go.
The complaint about racial profiling? Do you remember what that even was? Are you seriously comparing today’s racial profiling techniques of law-enforcement with those of Hitler’s SS? You know better.
There were no anti-insurgency agencies generated since 9/11 to infiltrate and attack domestic groups in the same scale and scope as were in place in the days of the Hoover.
There was no fear of Agent Smith in his black suit, black loafers, crisp white shirt and dark glasses, his military style-brush cut, walking into your place of business or home to ask you some very serious and very unpleasant questions to determine if you were loyal or subversive.
I’m not advocating that we go that direction either. I am saying that the level of discussion has been raised to the degree of intrusion as if that were in fact what has been happening. It isn’t. It wasn’t. It hasn’t been. And we all know better.
We know better than to whine and wimper and throw fits about how hard done by we are by having to defend our nation. We know better.
It’s time, 9 years after 9/11 that we started to DO better. It's time we started to stop letting our feelings of entitlement dictate how we act and speak, and start recognizing that we may have the right to touch a hot stove burner, but we know better than to do it.
We have the right to burn the Qu'ran but only a complete insensitive idiot with no better sense than an ornery mule would be dumb enough to do it.
We have the right to protest military funerals, but we need to rise above that and stop the callous, disgusting and sabotaging self-agrandizement that allows us to do so.
We have the right to disagree with the former President or the current President on how they handle the issues of our national security and our economic policies; but we need to rise above simply calling them a 'nutsack.'
We need to not only know better, we need to do better.
Or we also know we're going to see more 1 in a million chances happen. And that won't make anyone feel better.
