After a divorce or a breakup or a death to someone close to you, a professional therapist will almost always suggest that you try and recall the good things about that person, then move on. Obviously you will never forget and often be reminded of the individual who at one time was very close and special to you. But now that person is gone and they are never coming back to you. The bond is broken forever. Despite the immediate and sometimes agonizing pain, the loss means one thing and one thing only: it's time to reinvent your life.
Today is 9/11, the tenth anniversary of an event that we will never nor should we ever forget, when a Mickey Mouse organization called Al Qaeda comprised primarily of murderous Islamic extremists got very, very lucky, and managed to pull off the mass murder of the century. Since that time the country and much of the world has been tossed into economic turmoil, travel by airplane has become difficult and full of security hassle, many American lives have been lost on the fields of battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've tolerantly learned to live with degrees of fear defined by color coded bar charts, and we've tried in every politically correct way possible to understand why Muslim Radicals might hate us so much. We've even come close on occasion to apologizing for just plain being us. Well, I'm not apologizing. I don't say "I'm sorry" to bullies and homicidal maniacs.
Other things have happened in the past ten years. Good things.
Osama, the Al Qaeda chief thug, is dead. A man who lived by the gun and died by the gun. Another thug, Saddam Hussein has been tried and hanged. We now have active counter-terrorism organizations operating both inside and outside the U.S. and in turn, we are better able to protect and defend ourselves. The internet has exploded with social media sights like Twitter and Facebook spreading messages of freedom and democracy to citizens of Egypt, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, making it just a little more difficult in this day and age for a Mafia style thug like Saddam to rule over a country of frightened people. No we didn't uncover weapons of mass destruction in his country prior to entering into the second Iraq War, but that never disguised the fact that they did in fact possess them and had used them before in the form of poison gas on innocent Kurds and had been in the process of acquiring light water for their nuclear processing plants which were being reconstructed.
But it's ten years since 9/11.
Nearly 3,000 innocent people lost their lives on that day, and we shall never forget a single one of them. While it pains my soul to try and imagine the unspeakable sorrow and horrors each of these people went through on that sunny Monday morning, these days I prefer to think about the passengers of Flight 93 bound for San Francisco who decided to re-take their hijacked plane even though it was almost certainly going to mean sacrificing their lives in the process. But somehow they knew that given the choice of being a victim or a defender, they all chose defender. They are heros and saints.
So what shall we do over the course of the next ten years?
Move on. Remember what occurred all those years ago on September 11, 2001 and move on with reconstructing your life.
No more apologies for who or what we are as Americans. We have our faults but we are a strong people whose spirit will always be one of defending the right to be free.
Be tolerant. There will be many more people of the Muslim faith moving to America who are as far removed from the murderers of 9/11 as you and I are from Charlie Manson. They just want a fair shake at living the American Dream. So part of moving on is to move on with people you might have formerly harbored a distrust for.
Be vigilant. There as many domestic terrorists at work in the United States as there are foreign terrorists who want to kill Westerners, Christians, Jews and people of color. Yup, they want to kill little children too. Let's force them out of their rat holes and put these haters behind bars.
Work harder. No one single U.S. President can bear the unspeakable burden of creating jobs for us. As Americans we've always found a way to not only to make a living, but to create new industries. Lets stop complaining, stop collecting unemployment and other "entitlements" and get the hell back to work. Now!
Fight back. It's not only probable that another terrorist attack will occur in the US, it's inevitable. And when it does, we find out the party responsible, and we don't hold back. This time we retaliate with a "police action" not with one arm tied behind our backs, but with everything we've got. We take terror to the terrorists and eliminate every single one of them in as swift a manner as possible. We send a message to the world that we will not be bullied anymore.
Most of all, we must live and re-invent ourselves as free people who love not only our country but the entire world and beyond.
Let's take today to remember the past. Let's never forget! But then let's also pick ourselves back up, dust ourselves off, and move on with life.
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Very well put; I couldn't agree more.
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