If you thought 2020 sucked, welcome to 2021. Not only are we observing the 20th anniversary of the greatest attack on America, we also just turned Afghanistan over to terrorists.
Reading the timeline each year is a sobering experience, but it pales in comparison to the haunting images from that day. I watched it all live, as it happened and I was numb to it. It didn’t sink in because I was trying to formulate a plan to react. Now, the images haunt me, and I fear they always will.
It’s a belittling experience when one of your children, born after the war began, sees dad with tears and I feel helpless in my act of self-pity. I’m supposed to be his rock and there I am, sobbing because of some video on TV that is foreign to him. It only has any meaning to him at all, because I’ve told him about that day and the toll. For him and his generation, the world has always been this way; they’ll never understand how much we sacrificed.
We live in a military community, so there’s a basic level of respect for what we happened, but I see what’s going on in the world. Our President didn’t even address the nation live. He taped his statement.
There were 2996 immediate deaths on September 11th, 2001. There were people who cheered that day, celebrating an attack on America. I will never forget them. I will never forgive them. Two decades later, I see members of our government trivialize the events of that day, desecrating the dead with their comments. Twenty years and America forgets its dead, abandoning its mission.
Regardless of which way the political winds blow, I remain a patriot. But in a greater sense, I will also always honor those from other nations who stood with us on that day and throughout the ensuing decades of conflict. After all, there were victims from 90 countries on 9/11. A sick ideology attacked the world and despite our efforts, it lives on, dug in like a tick.
The crisis remains. Every year we lose more and more to that fateful day. Victims and rescuers alike suffer life threatening medical conditions due to the exposure to toxins during the attacks and continue to succumb to these lingering wounds. As a country, we must stand by them.
And then, there’s the war that has yet to end. In the ensuing 20 years we’ve definitely taken the fight to the enemy and even cut their head off a time or two. The names change, but they remain enemies of freedom. We must secure our future, here and abroad. Afghanistan is over..for now, but the struggle goes on.
Even now, the world is faced with the continued threat of Islamic fundamentalism that targets our ideals in both word and deed. We must oppose them in every case, lest our efforts thus far, be in vain.
Never Forgive, Never Forget
