September 11th: A Day That Will Live In Infamy

THE LINK BELOW is a video shot on September 11th from an apartment window facing the Twin Towers. The couple who shot it lived on the 36th floor so they had an overview of the whole event. They didn't release the video to the public until last year. It's long, but it's an intimate reliving of that day, with sounds of the couples' reaction to events, and the sound of the television news going in the background. The video is entitled simply:

What We Saw

You can also see it here: What We Saw. And here is a compilation of different shots of the attack and the aftermath: World Trade Center.

Watching the video brought the day back vividly. From my perspective today, 9/11 was a day of awakening for me. Until then, I had no interest in terrorism. I didn't think it was important. I didn't understand what caused it, and if you had asked me to guess at the time, I probably would have thought terrorists were simply fanatics creating random acts of violence for random reasons — to force a government to release prisoners, to get airtime for their cause, to scare people, or whatever.

But 9/11 was so much worse than previous acts of terrorism, and so much closer to home, it woke me up. The attack on the WTC was obviously a well-organized project by a large group of people, using effective long-term planning, all for the purpose of inflicting a huge number of casualties. And my question was, for what?

It was so shocking, I was strongly motivated to understand where it came from, who these people were, and why they were doing this.

What I've learned since then has often surprised me. I had no idea Islamists were such a large group, or so well-funded, or had such an all-compassing goal.

But along with discovering the scope of the problem, I've also discovered that ordinary citizens like me could do something to help defeat it.

I feel I've personally repeated what Americans collectively went through in WWII. When the war in Europe and Japan started, most Americans didn't want to get involved. They wanted to go about their business and they hoped the problem would just go away. But when Pearl Harbor was bombed, everything changed. They realized how significant the problem was, and they fully understood their more trivial concerns would have to be put aside.

The same change of mind has happened to many of us in the West in response to 9/11 and the change of mind has only deepened with subsequent events, like the terrorists' response to the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

In an article by Newt Gingrich he said people are fixated on the debate about whether we should pull out of Iraq or not. But that debate misses the point. Iraq is only one part of the war we're in. The scope of the real conflict is much bigger than Iraq. Generally speaking, people don't want to acknowledge that uncomfortable fact because of what it means, in the same way they did before America entered WWII.

We'd all like the war to end and everybody to just get along, but a large group of unified people are still committed to destroying us, regardless of what we do in Iraq or anywhere else. Even if we stay in Iraq and finish the job, Gingrich wrote,

As long as Northwest Pakistan is a sanctuary, the Taliban can never be defeated.

As long as we have failed to create a better economy in which growing and processing drugs is no longer the best way to earn a living, Afghanistan will never be safe.

As long as Iran is allowed to ship weapons into Iraq, we will never fully bring stability to Iraq.

As long as Syria is allowed to serve as a transit point for foreign terrorists coming into Iraq, we will never fully defeat the insurgent forces.

As long as Saudi sources finance the spread of Wahhabism across the planet and the Wahhabists continue to advocate Jihad and martyrdom, the flow of new terrorist recruits willing to die will continue.

As long as the current dictatorship runs Iran and works every day to create nuclear weapons and to sustain terrorists groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the professional state-sponsored terrorists of the Iranian Guard units, our civilization will not be safe.

This is unpleasant to hear. But maybe we don't have to hear it. Maybe it's just hysterical handwringing. Maybe the "hawks" are exaggerating the issue because they want to make money fighting wars. I wish that was the case. But unfortunately, this is a real threat. The Islamic terrorists are real, they are committed, they are obviously willing to create mass casualties, and their numbers have been growing since long before 9/11. They're gaining recruits — for reasons that have nothing to do with our military actions and everything to do with the innocence of a large portion of our population.

As Gingrich put it:

The great tragedy of the six years since 9/11 is that we have not had a national debate about the scale of our opponents, the depth of their hatred for our way of life and the very real threat that they will acquire nuclear and biological weapons. With the former, they may kill hundreds of thousands of Americans in our cities. With the latter, millions of Americans could die in a deliberate attack.

Although national security is naturally important to Americans, the consequences of winning the war against terrorism is much broader than greater security. The people living now in the countries that support terrorism (Islamic countries in the Middle East) are oppressed. I'm not talking about the terrorists themselves. I mean the rest of the population, most of whom are forced to live under the boot of their government whether they like it or not. And those governments are notoriously economically underdeveloped. And, most importantly, they have the worst human rights (especially women's rights) records in the world.

In order to stop terrorism, something must be done about those countries and the way they operate. The end result will be more freedom and prosperity for more people, AND greater national security for the United States.

I think Gingrich was right about something else: Once the full scope of the problem is understood, Americans will be prepared to do what is necessary to win the war against terrorism.

That widespread understanding hasn't occurred yet, but you can do something about it. I hope you watch the film, What We Saw, share it with your friends, and renew your commitment to defeating terrorism.