It has been 8 years since I woke to news of the most horrific attack out nation has ever faced. Being on the west coast, events were already under way and unfolding that fateful morning as my radio went off to wake me up for work.
Hearing news of the attack instead of the usual music I turned on the TV to CNN, the channel I considered trustworthy at the time.
Initially considered an accident, when the second plane hit the second tower, I instinctively knew that we had just witnessed the beginning of war. War against the American people and western civilization.
There was little doubt that it was radical Jihadists behind the attack and in the early confusion that follows any such sneak attack, many were considered as possibly the perpetrators, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and any myriad of other known terrorist leaders.
This wasn’t the first attack against our culture or within our nation by these radicals, but it was the most successful for the terrorists as news of another airplane hitting the Pentagon broke and news filtered out of another highjacked plane crashing in Pennsylvania.
Our nation had been under attack for three decades when this attack hit and I witnessed something I hadn’t seen since a young boy, long before my enlisting in the U.S. Army and deploying to Viet Nam in 1969, Americans coming together expressing outrage and demanding accountability for the attacks.
Democrat, Republican and Independents all rallied behind President George W. Bush demanding a counter-attack, but against whom? Such demands lead to the infamous statement from Bush,
“When I take action, I’m not gonna fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”
Nearly a month later, October 7, 2001, President Bush launched the attack in Afghanistan to seek Osama bin Laden, whose terrorist group Al Qaeda was determined to be responsible for the attacks and to unseat the Taliban who were protecting bin Laden and refusing to turn him over.
Within a couple weeks, the anti-war contingent in America who opposed fighting back, began their very public demonization of Bush and the effort to prevent any more such attacks as the New York Times ran the article A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam.
By March of 2003, with the Taliban routed and bin Laden running and hiding out and after months of futile efforts by President Bush, a new theater in combating terror was opened as Iraq was invaded to unseat Saddam Hussein, who several intelligence agencies had determined posed a potential threat should he link up to Al Qaeda and share technology or WMD’s believed to still exist in his regime.
The anti-war cretins found an old familiar voice as the Democrat Party nominated an aging protester left over from the Viet Nam era, John ‘F’in Kerry to run for president.
Kerry, with no regard for anything except personal power, set about repeating his treasonous activities of 1971 as he labeled President Bush a liar, deserter and a coward, with the willing help of a complicit media, undermining the efforts to combat terror and demoralizing our Troops in harm’s way.
Forgotten, or ignored by Kerry and that irresponsible media, as they repeated his chant of “Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time” is that is was none other than Kerry who, in a 1997 Senate Floor Speech, was calling for an attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to depose him.
If not for the efforts of a small group of brave and courageous Combat tested and Decorated Veterans, Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, Kerry might have seized the presidency as he and the Democrat Party whipped the country into an anti-Bush, anti-war fervor like we have never seen before with their lies, innuendos, fabrications and yes, undermining the efforts to combat terrorists, all for cheap political gain.
Their efforts re-divided the country worse than it has ever been as they seized first control of both house of congress in the 2006 elections and the presidency in 2008, demonizing President Bush and Republicans every step of the way, presenting us with the least experienced and least qualified president we have ever had in our entire history.
It was with great disbelief that I listened this morning to Barack Obama as he quoted President George W. Bush’s often stated words, words they have demonized and scoffed at in the years since that fateful September morning 8 years ago,
“Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still. In defense of our nation we will never waver; in pursuit of al Qaeda and its extremist allies, we will never falter.”
It was with even more disbelief that I listened as he followed that with,
“Most of all, on a day when others sought to sap our confidence, let us renew our common purpose. Let us remember how we came together as one nation, as one people, as Americans, united not only in our grief, but in our resolve to stand with one another, to stand up for the country we all love,” after the years of efforts he and his party spent dividing the country as never before.
Where was that never faltering spirit in the past few years? Where was the call for unity when the country and our Troops needed it most?
As politicians use this fateful day as a backdrop for their political posturing and grandiose speeches, there seems to be much truth in a new phrase, 9/11: Elephants Remember, Jackasses Forget.
Have You Forgotten?
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