Today is 9/11 again.
Three years ago today, Americans were forced to confront the reality that the world has changed. While we were rationalizing, apologizing, analyzing, and excusing terrorist attacks for decades, the Islamic fascists who would like to see all of us dead had been very busy advancing their objectives.
How is it that so many of our countrymen seem to have forgotten? The stirring words that have described 9/11 sound empty now, they've been said so many times. The attacks were brutal, catastrophic, tragic, and all the grim adjectives in between. The word we don't hear often enough is "evil." The attacks were pure evil, perpetrated against innocents by mass murderers who took delight in destroying so many of us.
Never forget the cold deliberation and the fiendish glee of our enemies on that day. Never forget that the battle against Islamic fascists is still in its infancy. Never forget that, unless we kill them first, we are dead at their hands.
Those who rail against "Bush's war" have forgotten this hard fact. Afghanistan and Iraq are merely the first two of many battlefields the U.S. must face in the years ahead, if we are to survive as a nation and a people.
Yes, there is a terrible cost. So many of our brave men and women have died in this conflict. Yet I thank God this country still produces young people of the character and courage it takes to face death as they protect their families and homeland.
We Americans, lost in our lives of leisure and plenty, are noted for our short attention spans and quickly fading memories.
But today is the third anniversary of 9/11. Never forget that the fight is better waged in Fallujah than in Philadelphia.
