Saturday, September 11, 2010
9/11 - Shame, Honor and Remembrance
I realize that 9/11 is a day that embarrasses many of my fellow Americans.
I understand that. It embarrasses me.
Many of us have trouble explaining exactly why it embarrasses us. But embarrassment is a function of the emotion of shame, and shame is a highly fitting emotion to feel today. It is like a foul stench in the air.
Nine years ago today, we experienced the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left almost 3,000 Americans dead.It was by far the worst and most successful attack by a foreign enemy on our shores.
We've essentially done very little about it.
Oh, we put some jihadi subcontractors in jail, even killed others, but we've yet to actually look at the root causes behind why we were attacked or dealt with the real perpetrators, the nations that fund, harbor and nurture jihad against the West. We won't even allow them to be sued in court for monetary damages. We won't even prosecute our enemies who have been taken in battle after killing our warriors.
Instead, we've come full circle, to where the president of the United States actually supports erecting a huge mosque overlooking Ground Zero essentially funded by the same people that funded the 9/11 attacks...with an imam in charge who says the US was an 'accessory' to the atrocity perpetrated on our soil and who wants to implement sharia law in our Republic. And to add insult to injury, this same imam, echoed by our president threatens us that if he's not allowed to build the Ground Zero Mosque, the ‘radicals’ will know America is an Islamophobic country and take revenge.
Think about that for a second. On the one hand, we are shamed because we have yet to avenge 9/11 by defeating the people that murdered 3,000 innocent Americans. And on the other hand, we are told that we should be ashamed for not just getting over it and acquiescing to a triumphant symbol of victory being erected on the spot where it happened!
From the beginning, we've been told that `this is a new kind of war' without borders or real enemies. But anyone who is paying 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.But we have allowed ourselves to be lulled into not seeing, and even told that seeing the truth for what it is somehow shameful.
The ghosts of the dead at Ground Zero rest uneasy, and that's the real source of our shame and unease.
Our ancestors understood that defending freedom requires victory over the enemies that would destroy it. If we are to survive, we will need to remember that lesson from our history and revisit it.
As I write this, the evening before 9/11, I have no doubt that we will remember it and act on it.
And when that happens, when we remember whom we are and that our freedom and our civilization is worth defending, we will put the ghosts of 9/11 to rest, and it will be a day like December 7th or June 6th or VE Day, a time to remember our sacrifice proudly.
And then, we can build something at Ground Zero that will be a monument to the Americans who defeated the enemies of freedom, the monsters that attempted to enslave them and their Republic.
Like Pearl Harbor, it will be a memorial, but more importantly, it will be a monument to victory.
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7 comments:
Recently Newsweek had a healine that suggested that Americans barely understand their enemy of Al Qaeda. I would assert that the average American understand Al Qaeda far better than the editors, reporters, and staff of Newsweek.
What I think most people don't understand and the media refuses to understand is just how powerful this enemy actually is. The states who support this Islamic terrorist enemy pose a far greater threat to the United States than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan ever did or ever could have.
"...but we failed to actually look at the root causes behind why we were attacked or dealt with the real perpetrators." The problem with this is many in the US believe the "root causes" behind the reasons we were attacked is our foreign policy that oppresses Muslims. Furthermore they believe the real "perpetrators" are American governemnt officials and multi national coroporations who have acted to oppress Muslims and steal resources from them. I would estimate the number of Americans who feel this way to be somewhere between 30 to 50% of the populace. The number of foreigners who believe this is likely much higher.
Please understand I'm NOT suggesting that I agree with this narrative. What I am suggesting is that until we deal with the information narrative of this war, we will not be able to mount an effective response.
Once we've dealt with this we must realize that this enemy is far more dangerous to us than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan ever were or ever could have been. In addition to this, we must realize the strict limits of military powerful. While the US still remains powerful, for now, it is not as powerful relative to its enemies as it once was.
Finally while this enemy is more powerful than the ones our nation faced in WW2, it is not the same enemy. As such, different strategies will need to be used to defeat it than the ones that were used to win WW2. We shoudl begin by, 1.)placing an indefinite moratorium on immigration from Muslim nations, 2.)develop all of our own oil and gas reserves, especially focusing on land based reserves and shallow water reserves, 3.)utilize coal to oil technologies, 4.) build more refineries, and 5.)secure our borders.
I agree that our civilization is worth defending and even expanding. Following these five non military steps will give us greater utility towards this goal than any thing we are currently doing.
Recently Newsweek had a healine that suggested that Americans barely understand their enemy of Al Qaeda. I would assert that the average American understand Al Qaeda far better than the editors, reporters, and staff of Newsweek.
What I think most people don't understand and the media refuses to understand is just how powerful this enemy actually is. The states who support this Islamic terrorist enemy pose a far greater threat to the United States than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan ever did or ever could have.
"...but we failed to actually look at the root causes behind why we were attacked or dealt with the real perpetrators." The problem with this is many in the US believe the "root causes" behind the reasons we were attacked is our foreign policy that oppresses Muslims. Furthermore they believe the real "perpetrators" are American governemnt officials and multi national coroporations who have acted to oppress Muslims and steal resources from them. I would estimate the number of Americans who feel this way to be somewhere between 30 to 50% of the populace. The number of foreigners who believe this is likely much higher.
Please understand I'm NOT suggesting that I agree with this narrative. What I am suggesting is that until we deal with the information narrative of this war, we will not be able to mount an effective response.
Once we've dealt with this we must realize that this enemy is far more dangerous to us than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan ever were or ever could have been. In addition to this, we must realize the strict limits of military powerful. While the US still remains powerful, for now, it is not as powerful relative to its enemies as it once was.
Finally while this enemy is more powerful than the ones our nation faced in WW2, it is not the same enemy. As such, different strategies will need to be used to defeat it than the ones that were used to win WW2. We shoudl begin by, 1.)placing an indefinite moratorium on immigration from Muslim nations, 2.)develop all of our own oil and gas reserves, especially focusing on land based reserves and shallow water reserves, 3.)utilize coal to oil technologies, 4.) build more refineries, and 5.)secure our borders.
I agree that our civilization is worth defending and even expanding. Following these five non military steps will give us greater utility towards this goal than any thing we are currently doing.
Rob,
Thanks for reminding me that I'm not crazy. That everyone else is crazy. Stark raving mad. I had one Facebook "friend" comment on my anti-mosque post, "So what?"
Having seen the sky raining people 9 years ago, I'm against the victory mosque. But a lot of people hit the snooze button and went back to sleep. They think "So what?" Here is my remembrance posted on Facebook:
9 years ago today, almost to the minute...standing on the walkway between 1 World Financial Center and 1 World Trace Center, briefcase in my right hand, cup of coffee that likely saved my life in my left hand, wondering what the hell was going on…Security guard yelled, “Get off the bridge.” Ran towards him into 1 World Financial Center… Thought it was a bomb…Ran downstairs next to the messenger center…Saw the sky raining people...Called my bosses’ admin...told her voice-mail to get everyone the hell out of there…
Happy New Year
-Mark
One of the realitites of the past wars that America has won is that we were nto afraid to name the enemy and condemn them. The problem here is that the world has become so poltiically correct that we ar afraid to call out those that wish to destroy us for fear of being called racist/islamophobic. The question is why do we allow the radical islamists to create the political reality? We did nto allow the Germans, Japanese do define who were are and what we needed to do during WW2 and there is no reason that we should allow our enemies today to define us and the fight we have to fight.
I think an answer can eb found in Mitchell Bard's book The Arab Lobby. It is absurd to think that we would have allowed a pro-Nazi group to lobby our officials on the persecution of WW2 and we need to ask why we allow pro-islamists like Saudi arabia to lobby our officials today.
Freedom fighter I know you wrote a review of this book but if you don't mind here is mine:
http://libertysspirit.blogspot.com/2010/09/arab-lobby.html
Terrorism is now a global problem, and the symptoms are identical almost everywhere. The new war declared by those who who wish ill to everything which is not Islam is at it's peak now. There is a great movie "The unthinkable" which I used as the title for my recent blog article regarding the use of democracy to hurt people who believe in it.
There is a very big downside to democracy and that is that it does not work when people who don't believe in it wish to use it's benefits, and thats exactly what we face - the use of our own morality, our own sense of respect to one another, by those who respect nothing at all...
You got this exactly right. We should be feeling shame.
Excellent post!
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