In many ways, September 11, 2001 unified the people of this country like never before. People huddled together on street corners waving American flags. The Red Cross had to turn away potential donors because it couldn't store all the blood. The Fundraiser for America drew huge celebrities (Tom Petty singing "Won't Back Down" was the highlight for me) and raised a lot of money. Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals all agreed that something must be done and that we would never forget.
President Bush said he would go after the terrorists and the countries that harbored them. Everyone agreed. He stated, you either stand with us or you stand with the terrorists - and nearly everyone stood with us. The Patriot Act passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, and the intelligence community was overhauled, allowing our government to fight terrorism in an unprecedented way.
And because of the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, the enhanced interrogation, the wiretapping, and all of the other intelligence and security measures we don't hear about, there has not been another terrorist attack on US soil in 8 years. God Bless President Bush for that.
But success has made far too many of us complacent. Some start to think that all these measures are unnecessary (or worse - counterproductive to our proper role in global society). Liberals want to do away with pretty much everything President Bush has done (ironically, President Obama did too until he got into power). This course of action would be highly dangerous and would almost certainly result in another attack.
And that is why we must never forget 9/11. The world is still far too dangerous. We cannot go back to a pre-9/11 mindset. We cannot be lulled into a false sense of security. We must always be vigilant, we must always work to prevent the next attack and we must keep up the practices that have made us safe for the last eight years. In football parlance, we can't afford to move to a prevent defense.
May God continue to bless America and keep us safe, and may we always remember September 11th.
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1 comment:
Very good post. I never would have imagined 8 years ago that our country would become so bitterly divided, and that people who were so anxious to go in there and get the people responsible would, just a few short years after, be trying to give those same people our Constitutional rights.
While I think it's okay that people don't spend the whole of every September 11 thinking about that day or watching news coverage of memorials on TV, I really wish more people would take time to remember how united we were back then, and to remember exactly WHY we were. Because THAT is what seems to have been forgotten.
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