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September 11th, A Day of Remembrance, Reflection & Resolve

September 11th, A Day of Remembrance, Reflection & Resolve
September 11, 2012
By Josh First

September 11th is an American day of national remembrance and reflection. We remember the attacks on our defenseless civilians by Muslim terrorists, who used our freedoms against us on this day.

We reflect on American heroism, an innate trait seen most graphically on Flight 93, now memorialized at the crash site in Somerset County, Pennsylvania (which I had the honor to help create, leading the first two years of real estate protection there with the National Park Service, Somerset County, the local townships, the Families of Flight 93, PBS Coals, CONSOL Energy, the Mellon Foundation, and others, not to mention the many supportive landowners).

Should the American character of inclusiveness be continued in a way that invites these kinds of attacks? An inclusiveness at any and all costs?

Based on his experience in both world wars, British leader Winston Churchill quipped after World War II that the Americans wouldn’t show up to a fight until it was almost too late to win it. Will our generation of Americans languish in our non-judgmentalism, uber-inclusiveness, and moral relativism until it is too late?

The “too late” will be when Iran obtains nuclear bombs, which is in the end-process of happening with an American and European acquiescence that is exactly how the West dealt with Hitler before 1940. Pacifists call this avoidable prelude to widespread death “peace,” but what do they call it after the bombs start going off? They call it someone else’s failure.

Many people believe that those Iranian bombs will be directed at Israel only, but Iran fears and hates America more than Israel. To Iran’s Muslim leaders and most of its citizens, America is the epicenter of everything they oppose. It’s a clash of civilizations that they intend to settle with nuclear bombs and that we currently intend to resolve through endless discussion.

America’s porous borders and inability to fight back against Islamic supremacism at home or abroad mean that at least one Iranian bomb will find its way into a large American city. The devastation and economic fallout will be unimaginable. What if two or three bombs are snuck in, and detonated? Is it “peace” to ignore these questions, and is it “warmongering” to ask them?

The oft-quoted historian George Santayana said “Those who forget history are destined to repeat it,” which in the context of September 11th means that Americans who are forgetting what happened that day, and why, will be surprised the next time we experience a huge domestic attack. The problem is that the next attack will be with a nuclear bomb, maybe several, America may not be able to recover from the damage, and we don’t have to be surprised; we can take steps to stop it from happening.

So on September 11th, the modern equivalent of remembering the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, let us not just recall the pain that we felt, but rather also resolve that it won’t happen again. Let us take the small and big steps necessary to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, the personal ones, the professional ones, and the political ones.

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