They Started It. We Must Finish It.

"Yet, after each of our wars, there has always been a great hue and cry to the effect that there will be no more wars, that disarmament is the sure road to health, happiness, and peace; and that by removing the fire department, we will remove fires. These ideas spring from wishful thinking and from the erroneous belief that wars result from logical processes. There is no logic in wars. They are produced by madmen. No man can say when future madmen will reappear. I do not say that there will be no more wars; I devoutly hope that there will not, but I do say that the chances of avoiding future wars will be greatly enhanced if we are ready." General George S. Patton

I remember walking into the office that day in a very good mood. I had returned from a deployment to the Mid East only a few months earlier. It was a good deployment in which I had volunteered to fly on combat missions over hostile airspace because I‘m just weird like that. Having logged the time and put away the gas mask, I was happy to be stateside again. Plus, September 11^th is my son’s birthday. I was eager to meet him after work that night at Ruby Tuesdays.

I poured myself a fresh cup of Starbucks that I had brewed in the office and sat down at the computer when my best friend Bob Lee emailed me. Bob had retired from active duty while I was deployed, and it’s always good to hear from him, but this email was different. It was short and said that a plane had hit the world trade center and that I should watch the news. Reaching for the remote, I hit the power button and looked on while news anchors speculated that perhaps a small private plane had hit one of the towers. I was thinking that for a small plane, it had left an awfully big hole in the building when I saw something behind the new anchor’s head cross the screen. It was another plane and it went right into the second tower. In that terrible instant, I knew we were at war and that things would never be the same again.

As coverage unfolded, I began getting emails from military friends and family members across the country. There were reports of a bomb going exploding at the State Department. An explosion at the Pentagon. Planes unaccounted for after they had been ordered to land. Fighter jets were being scrambled in response. Some family members who lived in Virginia and had previously lived in the Washington DC area were emailing me news updates as they got them. One of their emails which became seared in my memory contained the simple words, “We are so scared!” With those words, my horror turned to anger. I had spent a great deal of time deployed in any number of unpleasant places, within missile range of Saddam Hussein as well as that weird little gargoyle in North Korea, and any number of bad actors in other places precisely so that my family and friends wouldn’t have to worry about such an attack on our own soil. The hours spent “sucking rubber” in gas masks, sweating like Tim Gheitner during a tax audit, looking to the sky to make sure it was a friendly jet approaching and not one that had a bead on my general location was done to protect the homeland, and yet the terrorists were here anyway.

After receiving an email containing roughly the same sentiment from Bob, I sent a message to my headquarters that they could consider me a volunteer to deploy and get back in the fight, and that furthermore, Bob was willing to return to active duty. Our chief wrote back a one-word reply. “Warmongers,” he wrote, meaning of course that he appreciated our volunteering. They didn’t bring Bob back on active duty, but I did get a six-month deployment out of the deal, which I’ll probably never be able to say too much about. But I like to think I might have helped in some small way.

This morning, I was on the road by 4:30AM, from Columbus, OH on the way to Battle Creek, Michigan. On Sirius Satellite Radio, I was able to listen to cable news coverage of the day’s commemoration of the attacks. It’s surprising how raw and vivid the memories are eight years later. The images of people jumping to the their deaths rather than being burned alive in those towers. The terror the passengers went through as their planes were flown into buildings in horrific explosions. Surely there were children on those planes. How unspeakable the fear that gripped them before their deaths! There was a major that I worked with while deployed whose brother was a fire fighter who died that day when the towers collapsed. I’ve seen some great officers, but I never saw one work so hard as that major. I remember hearing one of the calls to 911 operators that day. It was from a lady inside the towers. “I’m going to die, aren’t I,” she said to the operator. The operator said no, and tried to calm the lady. But few seconds later, the lady screamed, “Oh my God, I’m burning!” The line went dead.

In the days immediately after the attack, we expected follow on attacks. Our defense posture on base was beefed up to an all time high. It wasn’t a question of if, but when the next wave of attacks would come. When called, our forces dealt decisively with the threat, removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from power. Stung by its inability to “connect the dots,” our intelligence service worked in earnest to expose the enemy’s plans for further attacks and disrupt them. We didn’t ever want to see our own citizens slaughtered again. We gained intelligence from wiretaps and other sources. We killed the enemy with manned and unmanned aircraft, with heavy weapons, small arms, and the overwhelming determination of free people defending their liberty. And we were successful. Not one attack has been unleashed on American soil since that awful day.

Our success has apparently also been our undoing. Just as wealth can breed laziness and sloth, success can breed complacence. Our enemies have not taken a holiday. They already hit us once when we were complacent, and they will do it again at the first opportunity. We have pledged to close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay even as our Justice Department prepares to prosecute CIA employees who gained information about pending attacks and saved thousands of lives. Our commanders in Afghanistan prepare to request more troops to secure victory in that region even as Speaker of the House Pelosi indicates her unwillingness to support the generals’ requests. Iran and North Korea build nuclear missile threats, and so we cut back our missile defense. Illogic is called logic, weakness is called strength, vulnerability is called virtuous, and appeasement is called security. This crew would make Neville Chamberlain blush.

Meanwhile, the CIA reports that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave unreliable information when normal methods of interrogation were used. It was only after he was subjected to water boarding that he began to tell everything he could think of. In fact, reports are that after the water boarding, they couldn’t shut him up. He eventually gave lectures to CIA personnel on terrorist strategy, methods, and attack plans. This information has allowed us to prevent another wholesale slaughter of Americans on American soil and THIS, we are told by our new president, is immoral.

We are told that the interrogators tortured Mohammed and that we are better than that. Well, in the first place, it isn’t torture. Being trapped high up in the World Trade Center having to decide if you want to die by fire or jump to your death,…THAT is torture. Boarding a plane on a crisp Fall day and watching in helpless terror as you are flown to a fiery death,…THAT is torture. Having water poured up your nose because you orchestrated those deaths and know of plans to murder more people is not torture. In fact, it’s patty-cake compared to what I would do. But our new president’s refined sensibilities will not permit such muscular self defense. Left to my own devices, this Cajun would just as soon shove a spear up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ass and feed his corpse to a Louisiana alligator. But no, we must do little more than threaten to withhold room service in order to gain life saving information. And when it doesn’t work and an entire city goes up in flames, we can put a sign over the rubble that says, “At least we didn’t water board them,” and sign it Barak Obama.

Today, the President spoke at a 9/11 observance at the Pentagon. “Mindful that the work of protecting America is never finished, we will do everything in our power to keep America safe,” the President said. Really? As usual, his words say one thing, but his actions show the opposite. A country music singer asks the question, “Have you forgotten?” Given the latest election results, I’d say a lot of us have. And I fear the next reminder could be worse than the last one. Some of us are waking up. Remember the major I wrote about whose brother was killed on 9/11? I recently saw him on national television, speaking out against our current policy of weakness and timidity. We are dismissed as mobs and idiots at tea parties and town meetings. Perhaps the ruling class in Washington should remember that it was just normal folks from “fly-over” country that commandeered that plane over Pennsylvania and prevented it from flying directly into the Capital Building in Washington DC. Those folks from the heartland who our president says, “…cling bitterly to their religion and their guns…“ saved the lives of the same Congress that now looks down its collective nose at us. Ordinary people, free people, met the challenge at the cost of their own lives. We the People can do extraordinary things. We should never forget this. We owe it to those we lost on 9/11 as well as our children and grandchildren who are depending on us.