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Interlude
18 years ago
Good evening,
Allow me first to apologize for this interruption, I like many of you enjoy the every day life, the browsing of webpages, the pawing off to pornography, the playing of games, I enjoy it as much as any other guy.
But in the spirit of commemoration, where events such as the death of a man, or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday,
I thought we could mark this Patriots Day, September 11th, a day that is sadly no long remembered by many, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.
There are of course those who do not wish to hear me speak. I suspect even as I write this, comments will soon follow in the form of flames sent to my inbox.
Why? Becuase while a blog may be used in leiu of conversation, words always retain their power, words offer the means to the meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.
And the truth is, there's something terribly wrong with the world today, isn't there?
Right now my country is in a costly, and increasingly unpopular, war in the country of Iraq. A country whos leader promoted intolerance, oppresion, genocide, war, and where here we have the Freedom to think and speak as we see fit, in the reign of Saddam Hussein, there were censors, and men silencing anyone who thought differently than their supreme leader.
There are some people in the area known as the Mideast that wish to see the destruction of the USA, and Israel.
One man in particular, Osama Bin Laden, and 19 of his agents thought that so much, that they convinced themselfs it was their god-given right to kill.
And so, 6 years ago today, 19 men single-handidly murdered nearly 3,000 Americans and destroyed a national symbol, each shouting before they commited their horrible acts: "Allahu Akbar!" (God is the greatest).
How did this happen?
Who is to blame?
Well certianly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable.
Just who is responsible ranges from person to person, people such as Osama Bin Laden, George W. Bush, and others are chosen as the masterminds, with reponsibility shifting from the al-Qaeda extremist cell to the US Government in the eyes of the people.
Truth be told, if another attack on the scale of 9/11 happens...
If you're looking for someone to blame;
All you will have to do is look in the mirror.
I know why you don't want to fight the extremists who wish us dead, I know you're afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, death, destruction. Not to mention their arsenal: Suicide bombers, IED's, Bilogical weapons, Hijackings, possibly Atom Bombs.
There is a growing opposition to the wars.
The extremists have taken notice, Osama Bin Laden has himself called for the end of the Iraq war and the War on Terror.
People often belive the extremists, who say they're trying to protect their lands from the evil Western invaders, eqauting George W. Bush to Xerxes I, leader of the Persian empire, and giving Osama Bin Laden or other extremist leaders the image of Leonidis I, with the insurgents being the 300 Spartains.
The people who belive the extremists are seen all the time. They march in the streets, demanding withdrawl of troops, accusing their Government of lying, trying to crawl back into the peace they thought they knew in decades past, trying to turn their nation into a silent entity, isolated from the world, as the problems of other countries shouldn't be cared about right?
I post political themed journals to attempt to stop that silence.
This journal however, I post because I wish to remind my country of what it has forgotten.
The death's of 3,000 innocent people is unforgiveable.
We do not negotiate with terrorists, we put them in a cell, or in a hole.
More than 200 years ago, a group of great people wished to express to the world that Freedom is the right of every man, women, and child of every country on this Earth, but Freedom is not given by the gods, it must be earned and protected.
In today's world, we must fight to protect our Freedom, and help the Iraqi's to earn theirs.
My dad tells me that in America, everyone has the right to be wrong.
Now I will give you that right.
If you've seen nothing over the last 6 years, if the crimes of Osama Bin Laden and other extremists remain unknown to you, and if you belive that our own Government was responsible for the death's of nearly 3,000 people...
Then I suggest you allow September 11th to pass unmarked.
But if you see what I see, if you feel what I feel, and if you belive that the United States of America should show the bravery of those who died on United 93...
Then I ask you to support the War agianst Terror, and you don't have to pick up an AK-47, unless you are so inclined.
Write to your newspaper editors, and congressman, tell them why we need to stop the extremeists from attacking agian.
Call for reform in the United Nations, and the removal of corrupt dictators who call for the destruction of Freedom and Liberty.
One year from now, on November 2nd, go to your polling stations, vote for those who are willing to stand up and face the extremists...
And together, we will teach them a lesson that will never, ever, be forgot.
*tosses monoluge back to V for Vendetta*
MSNBC 9/11 replay footage tonight, 2200 (10PM EDT)
United 93 ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0im8Iun91g
This totally made my day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mft30CpAzQk
9/11/01 Never forget
Allow me first to apologize for this interruption, I like many of you enjoy the every day life, the browsing of webpages, the pawing off to pornography, the playing of games, I enjoy it as much as any other guy.
But in the spirit of commemoration, where events such as the death of a man, or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday,
I thought we could mark this Patriots Day, September 11th, a day that is sadly no long remembered by many, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.
There are of course those who do not wish to hear me speak. I suspect even as I write this, comments will soon follow in the form of flames sent to my inbox.
Why? Becuase while a blog may be used in leiu of conversation, words always retain their power, words offer the means to the meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.
And the truth is, there's something terribly wrong with the world today, isn't there?
Right now my country is in a costly, and increasingly unpopular, war in the country of Iraq. A country whos leader promoted intolerance, oppresion, genocide, war, and where here we have the Freedom to think and speak as we see fit, in the reign of Saddam Hussein, there were censors, and men silencing anyone who thought differently than their supreme leader.
There are some people in the area known as the Mideast that wish to see the destruction of the USA, and Israel.
One man in particular, Osama Bin Laden, and 19 of his agents thought that so much, that they convinced themselfs it was their god-given right to kill.
And so, 6 years ago today, 19 men single-handidly murdered nearly 3,000 Americans and destroyed a national symbol, each shouting before they commited their horrible acts: "Allahu Akbar!" (God is the greatest).
How did this happen?
Who is to blame?
Well certianly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable.
Just who is responsible ranges from person to person, people such as Osama Bin Laden, George W. Bush, and others are chosen as the masterminds, with reponsibility shifting from the al-Qaeda extremist cell to the US Government in the eyes of the people.
Truth be told, if another attack on the scale of 9/11 happens...
If you're looking for someone to blame;
All you will have to do is look in the mirror.
I know why you don't want to fight the extremists who wish us dead, I know you're afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, death, destruction. Not to mention their arsenal: Suicide bombers, IED's, Bilogical weapons, Hijackings, possibly Atom Bombs.
There is a growing opposition to the wars.
The extremists have taken notice, Osama Bin Laden has himself called for the end of the Iraq war and the War on Terror.
People often belive the extremists, who say they're trying to protect their lands from the evil Western invaders, eqauting George W. Bush to Xerxes I, leader of the Persian empire, and giving Osama Bin Laden or other extremist leaders the image of Leonidis I, with the insurgents being the 300 Spartains.
The people who belive the extremists are seen all the time. They march in the streets, demanding withdrawl of troops, accusing their Government of lying, trying to crawl back into the peace they thought they knew in decades past, trying to turn their nation into a silent entity, isolated from the world, as the problems of other countries shouldn't be cared about right?
I post political themed journals to attempt to stop that silence.
This journal however, I post because I wish to remind my country of what it has forgotten.
The death's of 3,000 innocent people is unforgiveable.
We do not negotiate with terrorists, we put them in a cell, or in a hole.
More than 200 years ago, a group of great people wished to express to the world that Freedom is the right of every man, women, and child of every country on this Earth, but Freedom is not given by the gods, it must be earned and protected.
In today's world, we must fight to protect our Freedom, and help the Iraqi's to earn theirs.
My dad tells me that in America, everyone has the right to be wrong.
Now I will give you that right.
If you've seen nothing over the last 6 years, if the crimes of Osama Bin Laden and other extremists remain unknown to you, and if you belive that our own Government was responsible for the death's of nearly 3,000 people...
Then I suggest you allow September 11th to pass unmarked.
But if you see what I see, if you feel what I feel, and if you belive that the United States of America should show the bravery of those who died on United 93...
Then I ask you to support the War agianst Terror, and you don't have to pick up an AK-47, unless you are so inclined.
Write to your newspaper editors, and congressman, tell them why we need to stop the extremeists from attacking agian.
Call for reform in the United Nations, and the removal of corrupt dictators who call for the destruction of Freedom and Liberty.
One year from now, on November 2nd, go to your polling stations, vote for those who are willing to stand up and face the extremists...
And together, we will teach them a lesson that will never, ever, be forgot.
*tosses monoluge back to V for Vendetta*
MSNBC 9/11 replay footage tonight, 2200 (10PM EDT)
United 93 ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0im8Iun91g
This totally made my day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mft30CpAzQk
9/11/01 Never forget
We have our own religious extremists here that want to pretty much do the same thing. Christian extremists who bomb abortion clinics, and who dream of the day that gays are executed for their "crimes." I suspect that if these people ever found out about furries, they would stop at nothing to cast us out. These people, like in the Middle East, also tought themselves as "doing God's work."
If you remember 9/11, you may also remember that a certain preacher basically said on TV that because we were sinful and didn't believe in God, we helped make this happen.
And it seems that people have taken that to heart. Nowadays, our Government is doing everything it can to outlaw gay marriage. (And of course, when it does get legalized, it's only a matter of time before the decision is reversed.) They've been forcing this "abstinence" bullshit down our throats. They're trying to outlaw abortion (which, in my view, is basically appeasing the terrorists like Eric Rudolph). The Air Force has made Evangelicalism practically mandatory. Women in the army are punished for reporting sexual abuse. And that document that was written 200 years ago: now a shadow of its former self
Hell, it seems many of these extremists are in our own government. The James Dobsons, the Rick Santorums, the Ashcrofts. Basically, many of the people who are fighting against the terrorists have turned out to be, in fact, terrorists themselves.
And when you look at the two sides, you realize people don't have much of a choice. Either they win, and their extremists make this place a Islamic theocracy, or "we" win, thus giving OUR extremists the okay to go ahead and make this place a Christian theocracy. Either way, people like us, bisexuals, gays, furries, free-thinkers, etc. are basically screwed.
Personally, I'm more worried right now about the terrorists who already are here. The ones, who, while condemning Muslims' supressing of cartoonists who make fun of Islam, are sending death-threats to cartoonists who make fun of Christianity in the same breath.
And to be honest, my faith in just about any religion that has a stake in Jerusalem: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, has pretty much been withered away to nothing...
I have to say I agree with the majority of your views.
As much as I disliek the Islamic extremists, I also do not like the Christian ones.
I didn't mention them in this journal, as they we're not the focus of it, but I do belive they should be punished as well for those crimes.
We don't hear about Christian extremists, as the US was founded on Christian belifs, but I know what they do and I am sickend by it.
In 1920, a schoolteacher was thrown in jail for teachign evolution in school because it went agianst the bible.
As much as I dislike the process of abortion, which I consider Satanic, I would never kill anyone for beliving in it.
As much as I dislike the Islamic faith, I would also not kill anyone that practices it, unless they had a desire to murder me.
I am a Christian, but I am not overly-religious. I go to church and pray to the Lord, but I never go out and beat up gays, or bomb abortion clinics, those that do are becoming the very thing that we have sworn to destroy.
I too am worried that the ultra-religious will take power, but fortuantly they're easy to single out.
Agian thanks for your input ^v^
Busy week...
I personally think that it would be too simple to think that these people died because of a single scapecoat, a single conspiracy or some dirty people out there who simply want to bring injustice to the world. One must look at a larger picture and think of the world like a big religious, political and economical game board. Which one of the players has the most steel, oil and uranium? What kind of power relations are there, who is the weakest neighbour, which state is most torn apart by inner conflicts? What are the weak points of our country and how can we use the current global trends to our advantage? How can we improve the market, what can we do to make our people happy with the state? There are numerous factors and loose cannonballs and it all boils down to something that is quite hard to fathom in a world obscured by mass media.
A war is the most common solution to an economical problem. There are always noble people willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of an ideology and what they believe is to be right. The state knows this; nothing unites people better than a common enemy. The only way to make thousands of people rally against other people is to tell them that they are doing this because of their country, because of freedom and because of all kinds of good things. This is a global techinque. When you can't afford to merely purchase soldiers with money, you buy them with an ideology.
I think that the first step to objectivism is to understand that we the average people are very much alike despite of our origins. We want to do what's good for us and what's good for our country. We all want freedom, safety and happiness no matter who we are and what our religion is. The biggest mistake we can make is to think that our soldiers are somehow different than the soldiers on the other side of the line.
We are fed with subtle propaganda all the time, but it's not an evil conspiracy. It's merely the way every state takes care of itself and its daily needs. It's a static background noise that gives us an uplifting feel of nationalism when we need it. It keeps us unanimous and active.
A state needs values we citizens can be proud of - to the extend that we close our eyes from time to time and willingly take action against those we believe to be our enemies. Freedom is one of these values. But what is freedom? What is freedom worth? Does it create jobs? Does it lower the crime rate? Does it make people healthy? Is it worth fighting for if it's just a slogan?
One of the reasons the US was attacked was because we're the superpower. Aside from the fear of us from the Cold War, many are jealous of our "Ill gotten prosperity." We're a target because of our economic and military power, and quite by accident we end up being hated by many, even if they don't understand why.
I honestly don't like war, and personally if there was another way, I would give anything to have my country not fighting over there right now.
But I see war as a necessary evil, like homework. Humans are bred to be compative, and prejudiced agianst others, like our ancestors in Africa, it's the survival of the fittest even today.
I wish to god there was another way, as War dosen't really solve anything, but how many people can be killed, but until then I have to put my trust in my military.
You are right in that our soldiers here and the insurgents are about the same, but one of the differences IMO is remorse.
US Soldiers don't want to kill the kid with the AK-47, but they know they'll probably have to if they wish to live. They feel really bad about it later, some are never the same.
The insurgents feel no remorse, and feel that the Americans are infedels that should be slaughterd.
TO quote my favorite song though "Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong."
If and when WWIII comes, it wil hopefully make mankind realise that petty problems and silly religions arn't excuses as to why I'm different than the kid in Baghdad. TO quote Carl Sagan, all the religions in the world conflict each other, they can't all be right.
I long for the day that the world will be united, not necessarly under the NWO, but in a state of freedom and peace.
Meanwhile, me and some friends are gonna build a utopia for furries, we're looking for residents ;>
Agian thanks for your input ^v^
First of all, I'd love to join you guys in your furry utopia, although I'm only a little bit furry myself. If I'm invited, I'll gladly join. =)
I hope you don't mind me bringing this up, but I still must disagree with you about the prosperity of your country. More than ten precent of American people live under the poverty treshold and a lot of people are forced to enlist because there is not other work available.
I find it kinda weird, because I come from a country that pays 80% of my rent and grants me 400 euros each month so I can receive high quality education at the university. Health care is free. I don't have to spend my earnings on insurances. I'm not a rich person at all, but I'm so used to being taken care of by my country that I kinda take these things for granted.
I also don't think that remorse is some sort of a racial quality. This misconception is just as bad as thinking that the colour of our skin determines how smart we are.
That's all part of the propaganda. Your local news channels show footage of enemy soldiers burning flags and shooting in the air and whatnot. Your state wants you to believe that the enemy soldiers are not emotionally on the same level as you are. Otherwise you would be harder to enlist.
The news channels in my country show other kind of footage. They show a civilian father running for his life, carrying his wounded son in his arms. The boy is unconcious and he has wet himself. These people have the right to feel angry and scared, just like you guys did after 9/11. I watched the document about the mass murder in Fallujah. There was a woman there, who had been praying when the U.S. soldiers showered the area with white phosphorus. Her skin melted away, only the prayer beads were left intact in her hand.
She didn't deserve to die like this and even though I don't live anywhere near this country I feel somewhat frustrated and angry. I can only imagine what her relatives must've felt... if they survived. Perhaps she was the mother of some soldier, who knows? That ought to give the soldier a pretty grim view about the U.S. troops.
War is good for you when it boosts your economy and happens elsewhere - preferably in a country where there aren't any cameras and journalists. But war doesn't solve anything. If we want to achieve world peace we need to stop worrying about the people who might be a potential threat to us. We need to worry about how we can feed these people, how we can bring them education and medicine. We need to love them more than we love ourselves. The thing that separates us from animals is that we possess the ability to be moral. Equipped with this phenomenal capacity I don't see why we should sink to the level of referring to the survival of the fittest. I want to believe that we can do better. =)
As you have been inspired by V for Vendetta, may i also remind you that the protagonist himself said he is an idea, and an idea cannot die.
Terrorism is an idea
You cannot win a war against an Idea. It is a message, not a tangible threat. We have gone into a war based of false intelligence, and the idea we can win a war on "terrorism".
Sorry mate, does not happen that way. terrorists are the biggest in the martyrdom complex, and as long as we try to fight against them, indeed they WILL appear to people as the "300" against a mighty conquerer.
Let me introduce a different line of thinking here. Freedom comes with a price. That price is that your safety cannot be guaranteed. Freedom is yet again another idealism, and you cannot kill it. But Ideas are never rose tinted in reality. Ideals have risks inherent.
Personally? I took 9/11 hard, knew someone who died in the towers, heard the 9/11 call from the man who was at top of tower two and was cut off with him screaming "Oh GOD!" when the tower collapsed.
But i have also seen people become rabidly anti-Muslim, rabidly "government protect us". This is not freedom, comrade, but base fear. Government is there to keep a sense of order, to help us out in a grand scale (make sure companies aren't screwing us, keep a cohesion in the country, and to defend us in time of War to an extent) people in this country, America, seem to forget that we are here to defend OURSELVES. Not in the knee jerk, reactionist ways that people like to characterize anyone who doesn't support government safety, but in a sensible manner of defending you and your neighbors. Yes AND YOUR NEIGHBORS.
So the "terrorists" aren't our problem, they are merely lost souls following a fire of an ideal, a fire we are fueling by our insistence that we are going to "free Iraq" and set up a democratic country, whether they want it or not.
Do i forgive the terrorists? Not in the slightest. But by giving into our fear and acting like animals (scared sheep) we give fuel to people like Osama bin Laden, (one of 52 children (even Freud would say "He has issues"), proof that their terror tactics work, that they can change our way of living by terrorizing us, making us less free by proxy.
So you want to fight a war on Ideals? Welcome to the 21st Century Crusades. Have fun!
Don't try to take us with you.
Wow that really was a good movie! XD
Firstly, thanks for your input.
I agree with your logic. We cannot truly win a war agianst terrorism.
The War on Terror though is mainly not about "Winning" a war, but more about making sure that the horrors of 9/11 never happen agian, and that IMO is a victory in it's own right.
There will always be people that dislike the US, and I'm willing to accept that, but the people that willingly murder our men and women we need to bring to justice, and sadly that means engaging in a military intervention.
Extremists only appear as Martyr's to themselfs and those with small or weakened minds. A true Martyr is someone who is persecuted and killed for no reason, like Jesus Christ, or the people who were murdered on 9/11 (I saw that video of the call on YouTube, gave me chills.)
The extremists however are not Martyrs, they kill themselfs and others for a reason that their victims have nothing to do with, agian making their victims Martyrs.
The 300 slaughtered the Persians because they were trying to protect their lands, and there people will draw the paralell between them and the insurgents.
The problem with that connection though is this. The 300 did not strike the Persians at their camps, but merely stopped them from reaching Sparta. The extremists struck the US on our own soil.
King Leonidis did not want to slaughter the empire, but merely to force Xerxes to give up his campaign.
Osama Bin Laden has called for the US to give up it's campagins too, but this is so they can move in and kill the other infedels to fill their mad dream of ruling the world. (Bin Laden said himself that al-Qaeda is in Iraq.)
I'm sort of confused what you mean by us in the US having to defend ourselfs. I do agree though that the Anti-Muslim attitude is uncalled for, I myself have friends that are Muslim, and they dennouce the tactics of Osama Bin Laden and others.
Democracitc governments are usually less lenient towards terrorism.
Welcome is a little late there ;> As far as the Extremists are concerned, they've been fighting the latest chapter in the Crusades since the end of WWII.
Keep in mind that they too are fighting a war agianst an idea.
But they will stop at nothing, even if it means starting WWIII, to make sure that the idea they despise is destroyed.
Oh you have SL too hm? ^v^
Agian thanks for your input ^v^
Let me use myself as an example for that: I possess a pistol and a shotgun. Pistol for personal self defense, and shotgun is for home defense. And arms are not neccesarily firearms. If you choose to defend yourself with knifes, a stick, Really Big Hands With Knowledge of Jujitsu ™, then that is your choice in Arms. The point of that is I do not really on anyone for my safety, because I know it is not a given. I have to protect it myself. the choice of freedom, understanding that safety is not a given, which was the point i was trying to make earlier.
Ok, let me see if i can organize my thought further to try to explain my views without being antagonistic (i have a bit of a passionate temper, and it...does get the better of me at times ^_^)
you said:
The problem with that connection though is this. The 300 did not strike the Persians at their camps, but merely stopped them from reaching Sparta. The extremists struck the US on our own soil.
And if you look at my LJ, i muse on this (http://ivanotter.livejournal.com, the post about 1 or two back from where i duplicated my first response to you). We in essence did it first, by coming in and supporting a flegling country in the area (Israel in this case) and meddling. Do i have an isolationist bent? when it comes to the very volatile middle east, absolutely. They are not a culture that should be reckoned with lightly, a culture that is in many ways, prone to a very violent response. They were spawned form nomads living in a desert, survival was the key creation of thier culture. Our culture was founded on becoming a free state. That is two TOTALLY different philosophies. Trying to inject our philosophy into that area by supporting Israel leads to newtown law: every action has an equal or opposite REaction. They reacted. (and, please, dont call me anti-zionist. I get that so much as a knee jerk reaction it just irritates me. I believe Israel should be able to hold its own without the backing of a superpower). your mention of them fighting this little thing since after WW2, is an example to that point.
you said: Osama Bin Laden has called for the US to give up it's campagins too, but this is so they can move in and kill the other infedels to fill their mad dream of ruling the world. (Bin Laden said himself that al-Qaeda is in Iraq.)
I do not have every transcript of what the leader of the al-Qaeda has said, so i cannot verify if he has said they are in Iraq. I believe they are NOW, I most sincerely do not believe they were when we invaded. And that is what we did. History will look on it as America invading a country. Which upsets me.
you said:
The extremists however are not Martyrs, they kill themselfs and others for a reason that their victims have nothing to do with, agian making their victims Martyrs.
Martyr: One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles.
Never forget, in the core of all of this, it is about religion. Fundamentalist Islamics (not to be confused with regular, even if conservative, Muslims) are fighting a Jihad:
1. a holy war undertaken as a sacred duty by Muslims.
2. any vigorous, emotional crusade for an idea or principle.
to them this IS a holy war, and to people who are sitting on the fence between supporting them or not, they can create martyrs ofthemselves and bring them to their side of thinking. Sad thing is, we are helping them. The MAJORITY of people in Iraq do not want us there anymore. they want us GONE, and the longer we stay there, the more we will breed resentment, hate, and give fuel to the terrorists, who will continue guerrilla tactics against us, because again, they are fighting for an Ideal. We don't understand the psychology behind it becuase it is not an enemy we ahve faced before. closest thing to it was Vietnam conflict.
We succeeded quite admirably in Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Why? We had a strong focus, we had a goal. We did it, and we got OUT. We did not lollygag and try to rebuild a country. America has no IDEA how to do that, heck, we are having troubles in our own. People always ask "Why did we not kill Saddam then" because WE WEREN't SUPPOSED TO. all we were there for was to push Iraq back out of Kuwait and to prevent them from doing that again. Job done.
We are in a deep mess here. Again under the guise of "war on Terror"
you said:
There will always be people that dislike the US, and I'm willing to accept that, but the people that willingly murder our men and women we need to bring to justice, and sadly that means engaging in a military intervention.
Against what enemy? How do we fight a war against an ideal? thats what i am trying to say. There is no way to stop terrorism. Preventative measures are the only thing, and they are never completely reliable (hence 9/11). But that does not give us the right to cut down on fundamental liberty, and attack countries unjustly in the name of a "war on Terror". Afganistan? I could see becuase we had DIRECT LINKS to the people who cuased 9/11. Yet we still failed there, Osama is still alive.
The War on Terror though is mainly not about "Winning" a war, but more about making sure that the horrors of 9/11 never happen again, and that IMO is a victory in it's own right.
A war needs to have a goal, and this one does not have one. Or it has a goal that is so unlikely, so unreasonable, its a farce.
Mark my words: Something like 9/11 will happen again. It will be horrible, and it is also inevitable as long as we keep stirring up a hornets nest in the Middle East. PROACTIVE instead of REACTIVE is the only way to mitigate things like this, and we are totally on the REACTIVE side a this point.