9/11 revisited

A friend of mine recently watched a video that showed the horrors of 9/11. It incensed him so much that he sent a rant about President Bush and our government. This was my response...

We all feel passionately about 9/11. I knew folks that were in the buildings and had been up on the 75th floor of One World Trade Center 3 weeks before.

I'm sorry you think that the current administration didn't do everything it could before this event. As often happens in this kind of situation, the data was there, but no one was able to connect all the dots.

On the ground, Mayor Giuliani's people did yeomen's work. the many heroes of 9/11 are too numerous to mention. Everyone is ready to blame our President for something that had been in the works for many years by some very smart people.

We tends to discount the intelligence of al-Queda. They have very good strategists as we continue to see. Let's not think because these people live in Arab lands, they have no intelligence. Many of them were trained in our own universities, including Harvard and Yale.

Looking back, there had been many failures throughout the 90's and 00's that allowed this to happen. Many happened during the previous administration. (see World Trade Center 1993, USS Cole, Kenyan Embassy, et al).

The bigger question is what to do after this happened. As our president rightly said, "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

We went into Afghanistan where men were being trained, We went after their leader, Osama bin Laden and we went after those who harbor them, the Afghan and Iraqi government. Because of this diligence, we have not had another attack on our shores. Because of the additional vigilance, events like today's are stopped, despite people who seek to expose what our government is trying to do (e.g., the New York times). Have they made mistakes? You better believe it. But has there ever in history been a war where both side don't make mistakes? We are fighting the fight that needs to be fought. It has many many fronts, the most obvious in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. But the Islamofascists are also in Darfour, Indonesia and many other places. This is a world war of unprecedented diversity. We fight an evil that convinces people that killing innocents is what God wants. Hiding among civilians will hurt their enemy in world opinion, and if you die committing murder, you go to heaven. This will be a very long battle and our president and government need support, not back biting. Anyone can look back and see what we should have done differently, but you can't turn back time. You deal with it in the present. We have the ability, now we need the spirit and prayer to defeat evil.

We have a hard road ahead of us. I worry for my kids, 13 and 19. But I trust that we as a country will fight with all our might to stop these people and these beliefs. No matter who is the President, he will be facing an enemy no President has had to deal with in the past. Let's pray that President Bush and his successors have the strength and moral fortitude to stand up to this evil wherever it resides.