Why We Fight

[igloo]

WHY WE FIGHT

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September 11, 2003 -- REMEMBER the smell?

The smell dominated lower Manhattan and south Brooklyn for weeks - sulphurous, nauseating, inescapable.

Remember the sky - the billowing black gash that cut through it all the way to Governors Island, a grotesque rip in the city's canvas?

And the unholy glow that marked Ground Zero itself, a seething underground furnace consuming everything combustible in the remains of two skyline-defining, now collapsed, office towers?

Such was the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the lingering visual and olfactory leavings of what had been done here - to us, to New York, to America, to the 2,792 who were murdered and to everyone who knew them or knew their loved ones.

Presently the black gash gave way to blue sky. The smell dissipated. The furnace cooled and the glow was no more.

Nine months after the planes compressed 220 floors into a pile of metal 80 feet high, the pit at Ground Zero was clear of debris. By that point, the U.S. military had liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, had rousted al Qaeda from its comfortable resting place and had either arrested or killed half of its secret army.

American technical know-how had cleaned up Ground Zero far more quickly than anyone expected. And the military know-how on display in the war in Afghanistan was revolutionary, world-changing.

Now, 14 months after that, it's hard to remember the sky as it was then. Photographs can recapture the images, but they can't replace the evidence of one's own eyes - evidence that was there, every day, staring every New Yorker in the face in that black gash, that orange glow.

And it's impossible, really, to recall a smell.

You can remember you smelled it. You can remember that it repelled you. But the smell itself is irretrievable.

So you begin to forget.

On this day, two years after the Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked - and America was spared the possible destruction of the U.S. Capitol or the White House by an unimaginably brave set of men aboard Flight 93 - there are signs that this nation is in grave danger of forgetting.

No, I am doing this nation a disservice - the 291 million people in the United States, who give every indication that they continue to support and understand the necessity and practicality of the efforts being made to protect them in the War on Terror.

Rather, I should say there are unmistakable signs that many in the nation's elite are forgetting.

What they want to talk about are the supposed infamies of this administration and this country in its conduct in the War on Terror. They want to talk about the evils of the USA Patriot Act when, as Heather Mac Donald, Richard Lowry and others have conclusively demonstrated, that act's opponents cannot name a single instance in which it has been used to curtail the civil liberties of anyone.

They forget that owing to some of the techniques made possible by the Patriot Act, three al Qaeda cells inside the United States have been broken up.

They want to talk about how the conduct of the United States in the War on Terror has isolated us diplomatically, when, in fact, we have worked successfully with more than 60 countries to impede the flow of terrorist funds - and last week convinced the European Union to place the Palestinian group Hamas on an official terror watch list.

They want to talk about how the United States has somehow overreacted in the War on Terror by expanding it to Iraq. They forget that we were attacked not just by a shadowy terrorist group called al Qaeda, but also by an anti-American and anti-Western ideology emanating from the Islamic world.

They forget that the foremost exponent of that anti-American and anti-Western ideology in the Islamic world was Saddam Hussein.

He is the progeny of militant Islam just as surely as Osama bin Laden is. Saddam is a secular militant Muslim, Osama a fundamentalist. But they share a common enemy and a common goal, and it is simply not true (as has been repeatedly claimed) that there is no evidence of ties between them. The evidence is there, detailed devastatingly by Stephen Hayes in the September 1/8 issue of The Weekly Standard.

What is not known is whether Saddam Hussein had foreknowledge of 9/11. But that is not the issue.

The question was and is whether Saddam represented a danger to the United States in a world in which terrorist attacks of all kinds have been growing increasingly bold and destructive.

They forget that the 9/11 attacks represented the continuing escalation of advanced terror attacks on the United States, not a one-time event. Al Qaeda had struck at America before, just not on our shores. Car bombings that ruptured two U.S. embassies in 1998 were followed by a boat bombing that ruptured the USS Cole in 2000. That in turn was followed by the airplane bombings of 9/11.

Cars, boats, planes. The terrorists were ratcheting it up, gaining in momentum and ambition. What could be next?

The answer was obvious. If a suicide bomber could be convinced to kill himself on a plane, or in a car, why not figure out a way to get him into Times Square with a nuclear device? Or with a vial of sarin? Or botulinum toxin? Or anthrax?

Why settle for thousands killed when you could kill hundreds of thousands?

That's where Saddam Hussein comes in. He possessed the world's largest known stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - a fact forgotten by those who seem to be taking pleasure rather than expressing worry that we have not yet found those weapons. They forget that this was an opinion held by almost every expert in the WMD world and by intelligence agencies worldwide.

All it takes is one man intent on suicide carrying one vial of evil stuff or one suitcase with a bomb in it - and 9/11 will be a day we'll be in danger of forgetting because there will be a far worse day we will have to mourn.

That's why we went to war in Iraq: To make sure 9/11 is the worst thing we will ever have to remember.

[igloo]

Bump....because everyone should read this

[eccentricmofo]

I do remember that smell. But like it says in the first few lines. I can remember vivid details yet not completely.

All those people that passionately downplay those attacks as well as bash and condemn what we are doing as a country... only if I had the chance to take them on a tour within the following immediate weeks after 9/11. All I'd need is one day and they would understand..

But there's always gonna be an asshole ya know...that has not a clue of what life really is about.

[igloo]

Originally posted by eccentricmofo

I do remember that smell. But like it says in the first few lines. I can remember vivid details yet not completely.

All those people that passionately downplay those attacks as well as bash and condemn what we are doing as a country... only if I had the chance to take them on a tour within the following immediate weeks after 9/11. All I'd need is one day and they would understand..

But there's always gonna be an asshole ya know...that has not a clue of what life really is about.

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