Six years ago America was attacked. It was not the first attack. It has not been the last attack carried out by al Qaida.

Some people just wish that it would all go away. It won’t go away on its own.

We have to understand the threat, not our projections, prejudices, or preconceptions.

The war has split open a major, pre-existing fault in not just America, but Western Civilization. The war did not cause the fault, and the end of the war will not eliminate the fault. But with the fault wide open, the full strength of civilization cannot be brought to bear on our enemy.

We are fighting both persons and ideology, but once a person gives up that ideology there is no need to fight them; as long as they hold on to that ideology, however, they must be opposed.

Tags: 9/11

Today is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. I cannot think of anything witty, wise, touching, or insightful, in part because as I type one child is practicing the viola and the other is practicing the piano. But I suppose that is a good sign — instead of apocalypse, there is normalcy at home. When the news came that New Orleans was flooded, I knew it was a natural, not al-Qaida disaster. I don’t worry when I watch a ball game that the stadium will go up in a gout of fire; I don’t worry during large, symbolic events that disaster lurks in the shadows. The fighting is distant, and the struggle now is chiefly fought by means other than death and destruction. Our hand is reaching out to help far more than it is clenched to strike. Yes, an enemy strikes at our allies, and our soldiers in far off lands, but at home there is a measure of safety for us but denied to our enemies. And we are winning the war by every measure – Islamic fascism is less strong, less popular, is losing ground world wide. The war is not over, and likely to be a generational struggle, but this war is the rarest of wars as it now looks to leave the world better off than when it started. The greatest danger to us is complacently, of stopping or turning our attention away too soon, because our enemy certainly hasn’t given up, and could unleash far worse than 4 airplanes.

Tags: 9/11

Conrad over at The Gweilo Diaries has cut back on the cheesecake posts and focused on what’s going on in the rest of the world this week to our benefit. Cheesecake is plentiful on the net; hard headed analysis is in short supply. His 9/11 Blame Game is a masterpiece all by itself, and captures my thinking (minus the swearing) perfectly.

The only thing I have to add is a look at the infamous August 6 PDB “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.” A couple of things strike me – the most obvious being how old the data in the PDB — all the threats are from the 1990s. But the very first one, at the top of the PDB, is:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

Did you catch that – in 1997 and 1998 Bin Laden was on our TV screens telling us that he would bring the fighting to America. So like Conrad says, if you want to see who was responsible for our lax response to al Qaida, go look in the mirror.

Tags: 9/11

I caught a few minutes of Dr. Rice’s testimony this morning (you can catch the blog version at Powerline thanks to Hindrocket). I thought the best part was when the camera gave us her view – the commission members on their ridiculously raised dais (I guess they don’t realize it makes them look like a whole row of Mr. Potters) and packed at the foot of the wood paneling the mob of photographers with their own ridiculously enormous camera lenses all pointed at her. 

I’m disappointed with the commission so far – rather than focus on policies and processes, they’ve focused on personalities and people. I don’t want blame assigned — we already know the terrorists are the ones to blame — I want ways and means on how to make us safer based upon the careful study of the 9-11 attack. The idea that we should always be able to successfully thwart attacks against us is flat wrong. Sadly, the hearings have become worse than a waste of time – they’ve become a diversion from the job at hand and a divisive partisan wrangle. Another illustration that a good idea can be ruined by lousy implementation.

Tags: 9/11