Eight Years Later

As the eighth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks takes place, it’s important to understand why the struggle started at ground zero in New York City and extended to Afghanistan and Iraq still takes place. First of all, your military is not losing in Afghanistan. Anyone who says that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Who controls the high ground in this country? We do. Who moves at night and hides in the shadows? They do. We’re simply not winning to as high a degree as before. That’s it. If you really think war is as seamless and thought out as the massive invasions everyone watched live on TV in both Afghanistan and Iraq, you have to grasp the full spectrum of what we deal with now. In Afghanistan, an enemy that would at one time come out and fight us like men, now hide from us and rely on suicide attacks and IED’s to do their damage. Any time they meet us in a combat situation outside those two realms, they lose. Plain and simple. Our work isn’t winning the actual fight; it’s denying them the two aforementioned comfort zones. So don’t think for a minute we’re running and hiding from these cowards, it’s exactly the opposite.

The events of 9/11 made us painfully and intimately aware of the struggles and dangers of the places we had deemed “the third world”. Mass acts of violence that don’t discriminate against civilians and military targets, or women and children, terrified us. Though attacks against civilians had become commonplace in flashpoints like Chechnya, Syria and Afghanistan, never had it been seen in the grandiosity of 9/11. What was more painfully obvious in the following days, was the fact that had we done more in the years leading up to 9/11, the attacks that cost nearly 3,000 civilian lives and almost 6,000 military lives in the subsequent military operations, could have been avoided completely. Had we only paid more attention. It was on that day that America essentially fractured and united at the same time. United in mourning and the common goal of recovery, while bringing those responsible to justice. Fractured in how to go about bringing the culprits to justice and the severity of the American response. I’ve always said and continue to maintain that President Bush’s response was the best possible answer. Years from now, when the real history is written of these events, people will appreciate the restraint it took that man to not hit our enemies with the fury of God’s own thunder. It’s how everyone felt, warmonger and peace activist alike. The response was calculated and deadly efficient. Only the mismanagement of the war in Afghanistan the following years put us where we are now. That initial action was spot on.

For as much as 9/11 is now about America at war, we must never forget the human price that was paid and continues to be paid. The real tragedy of the day isn’t found in planes hitting buildings, but the chairs at dinner tables that remain forever empty. It’s children who lost parents, parents who lost children and lives pointlessly shattered in ways most of us can’t begin to imagine. It’s people running into buildings as unspeakable death and destruction took place around them, so they could do something, anything to help people they didn’t know, or would never see again. It’s about people with nothing in common flying flags in front of their homes in a show of pride and solidarity. Most importantly, it’s about coming together in the darkest hours of our young nation to show that good triumphs over evil, as long as decent people refuse to remain silent in the face of what they know to be wrong. As much as we disagree on certain things, when it came down to it we put all that aside, and as a nation pulled together. Without that, 9/11 would have been successful in destroying us; with it the acts only strengthened our resolve to refuse to live in fear, or live in a world where fear is used to silence the innocent.

Today we mourn, not for what was, but for all that could have been.

Until next time,

-DM