The World After 9/11 – Some Remembrances

vol 9.14.26

During the sadness and the horror we felt reliving the murder of our American friends, colleagues, and heroes lost twenty-five years ago, we can easily forget the attacks should have been prevented and forget the list of conspirators who mounted them. We tend to forget, during the first nine months of George Bush’s first term, the confirmation of his national security team was irresponsibly held up by his shameless, obstructionist enemies in Congress. They did this despite the continuous attacks on American targets leading up to and culminated with 9/11.

We tend to forget the attacks were mounted not just by the Saudi-born terrorists from the Sunny branch of Islam, but by their co-conspirators, the Iranian Shiite terrorists running Iran. In short, we might overlook the fact that the attacks were the joint operation by both branches of militant Islam.

Most of our punditry seems to have forgotten, the war that Trump is waging today began on 9/11. As the well-connected influencer, Joel Ross, puts it, “… the IRGC thugs don't care how bad Iran’s economy gets or how much stress the Iranian population must endure.”

These apocalyptic Shiites running Iran simply want to survive. And if they can do that, they will have survived a sacred holocaust of their own making and in so doing, will have defied the Great Satan and beaten America.

As we contemplate the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, it’s unclear why Trump hasn’t ordered all out attacks to eliminate the IRGC leadership. Could it be he still thinks he can make a deal with the IRGC when it’s widely known that is impossible? Does he now think he can wait until the Iranian economy completely collapses? And does he think that collapse will get them to make a deal?

The economic attack on Iran must also include relentless bombing of high-value targets including IRGC headquarters and homes.

In my book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, I remind Americans, lest we forget, nine days after 9/11, George W. Bush delivered to a joint session of Congress, some of the most enduring lines that will ever be spoken by a US president,

We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the twentieth century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism.
And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies . . .

. . . The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time, now depends on us. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. . . . The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

As expressed in various iterations—those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.