A Fitting Memorial For 9/11

Today is September 11, the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left almost 3,000 Americans dead.

I see no reason to commemorate it, beyond the half-mast flag you see here.

Many Americans seem content to put 9/11 behind them. They'd rather not remember.Others will light candles and issue tributes in the most lachrymose prose imaginable.

Both attitudes make me want to scream.

The best memorial to the victims of 9/11 would be victory and retribution over the enemies who dared to attack us...and what's more, I believe in my heart of hearts that if they could speak to us from beyond the shadows, most of my fellow countrymen who were murdered on that day would agree with me.

9/11 should never have happened, and it only occurred because of the perception of weakness by our enemies that came from our failure to meet their escalation of aggression against America at home and abroad with meaningful retribution, starting with the original World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

Personally, I don't see it as a stretch to date the roots of 9/11 even earlier, with the takeover of our embassy and the hostage taking of our diplomats in 1979 by Iran.

I remember reading an account of Winston Churchill touring a bombed out area during the height of the Blitz just after it had been hit and having people literally pull themselves out of the rubble of their homes, not to ask for help or succor but to tell Sir Winston `give it to them back.'

We felt that way as a country after the attacks of the World Trade Center. But unfortunately, President Bush failed to harness that energy, or put the country on a war footing. He did not call on his fellow Americans for any kind of sacrifice or direct involvement, whether that meant gas rationing, increased surveillance or a draft.

Instead, 9/11 was presented to the American people as a `terrorist strike' pulled off by a handful of evil doers and not as an act of war pulled off by the shock troops of the Islamist fascist states and resurgent caliphate Islam on America and the West. The unity and outrage of Americans was not harnessed for victory. Instead, we were told to calm down, go shopping and let the government handle it.

As a consequence, we just now beginning to confront the major objectives in this war, the Islamist states that finance, harbor and nurture jihad terrorism both abroad and here at home. Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Jemayah Islamiah, the Taliban, Hamas - they all need money, havens and bases to function.

We've been told that `this is a new kind of war' without borders or real enemies. That is, in a word, horse manure. Anyone who pays any attention at all knows exactly where the support network of jihad is located. And exactly where to find our enemies. As Mark Steyn memorably put it, they are hiding in plain sight.

We have, so far, not been willing to directly confront the Islamist nations that use groups like these as terrorist proxies and jihad shock troops. Until we do, we will be no closer to victory in this war than we are today.

And yet, some significant progress has been made.

We're not quite the sitting ducks we were on 9/11. The Bush Administration and our security services have seen to it that we have lived out the last six years without a major terrorist attack on America , even as their attempts as security and the surveillance of domestic terrorists have been undermined and thwarted by some of the clueless elites in the media and on Capitol Hill, and they deserve a great deal of credit and appreciation for that.

We have at least begun to scratch the surface of the jihad networks operating in America and to start to secure our borders.

And if Iraq and Afghanistan have done nothing else, they have served two purposes: to kill large numbers and consume major resources of the enemy and to add a battle hardened edge to the best and most deadly military on the face of the earth.

Increasing numbers of people now understand exactly who our enemies are and they are beginning to demand victory, and leadership that will take the fight directly to the enemy.

And that's really the heart of the matter.

To win this war, we will have to become more focused, more ruthless and more willing to do what it takes to defeat an enemy with whom there is no negotiating.

We need to remember whom we are, and that our freedom and our civilization is worth defending. We need to embrace the legacies of General Patton, Stonewall Jackson and William T. Sherman and defeat and humiliate our enemies, discredit their poisonous ideology . And if that means their total destruction , so be it. Let them be the ones to mourn the day they ever attacked us. Let them light candles and toll bells.

The last time the US was attacked on it's soil in this fashion was at Pearl Harbor.

It's pretty much a tourist attraction today, meant as a monument to the men who died there.

In fact, it's more than that. It's a monument to the Americans who defeated the enemies of freedom, the monsters that attempted to enslave them and their Republic.

It's a monument to victory.

And that's the commemoration of 9/11 I want to see.