Recently in War On Terror Category

Twenty eight years later I found myself with some friends from New Zealand sunning (and recovering from a hangover) in the grass in Battery Park with the towers looming behind us. The next day I hopped on a plane out of LaGuardia airport headed to Houston, TX on a business trip. The plane took a route that crossed New York Harbor and in the morning sun I admired the buildings that framed the downtown New York City skyline for me and millions of other people. It was the last time I would ever see the Twin Towers standing. The date was September 10,2001.

We all know what happened the next morning. The truth is that most people who remember what happened won't forget it. Unfortunately many people do seem to forget the circumstances that lead to 9/11/2001 in the first place.

The terrorists attacks were not an event detached from history. They were in fact the exclamation point on a long sentence spelled out over three decades by Islamic extremists hell bent on destroying western society. The United States, in our wisdom, power and righteousness should have put a period on that sentence somewhere at the start.

Unfortunately we did not. Some would say that we never saw 9/11 coming. To those people I say, "You should have opened your eyes."

1983 - Marine barracks car bombed in Beirut. 243 U.S. Marines dead.

1988 - Pan Am flight 103 blown up over Lockerbie Scotland. 259 dead.

1993 - World Trade Center bombed. Six dead, more than a thousand injured.

1993 - The battle of Mogadishu. In October U.S. Army Rangers battle forces of Somali warlord Farah Aidid. 18 U.S. troops dead, 75 wounded.

1996 - Explosion at Al-Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia. 19 U.S. troops dead.

1998 - U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed simultaneously. 258 dead, thousands wounded.

2000 - USS Cole bombed while in port in the country of Yemen. 17 American sailors dead, 39 wounded.

Prior to 2001 there was a pattern of actions against the United States that was directly attributable to the actions of Muslim extremist groups like Al Qaeda. Knowing that this threat existed the U.S. Government chose to pursue a policy that hinged on very limited response with a focus on criminal prosecutions. The fruits of that policy turned out to be rotten as we all know.

Here are a couple of quotes from a New York Times story from December 2000 titled Two Primary Figures Emerge in Bombing of the Cole.

"The Clinton administration has been careful not to assign blame for the bombing of the Cole to Mr. bin Laden or his organization, saying that the investigators have not found a smoking gun that directly links the bombing to either the Saudi millionaire or his militant Islamic network."

 "A former counterterrorism official in the Clinton administration said it was important not to assume the White House would endorse military action against Mr. bin Laden or the Taliban if direct evidence of firm links continues to mount."

The previous quotes and many more like them were the hallmarks of President Clinton's attitude toward Islamic terrorism during his administration. I served in the U.S. Army from 1993 - 1998 and I can say that the military was well aware of the dangers of Osama Bin Laden and networks like Al Qaeda. It's a simple fact that the U.S. military was never ordered to do anything about it save blindly launching a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan. The Clinton administration preferred that Justice Department lawyers handle the work that was meant for soldiers. And you see where that got us.

There are some who charge that the U.S. is less safe today than we were before 9/11/2001. They say that we're less safe because we went to Iraq and because we went to Afghanistan. The facts prove otherwise. We were not in Iraq or Afghanistan between 1993 and 2001. Yet the attacks against our people and interests continued. Now that our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are deployed forward, taking the battle to the enemy we are much safer.

The Al Qaeda network has been severely degraded. Terrorist attacks, while still a threat, are way down.

On October 21, 2001 an article in the NY Times stated, "More than a month after the September terror attacks, the United States and its close allies are still intercepting communications among Osama bin Laden's associates and are convinced more attacks are coming, intelligence officials in several countries say." Later in the article it is stated, "Now the United States and its allies find themselves in a similar quandary. They know something is coming but not when or where."

Seven years later Al Qaeda has been unable to follow up with an attack that everyone else though was a foregone conclusion. It hasn't happened because the U.S. went and stayed on offense. thank you to all of those who have served and sacrificed during this time.