Seven years ago, today
September 11, 2008
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Seven years ago today, nineteen Islamic men commandeered four large passenger aircraft. Two of them were flown into the tallest towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. One was flown into the Pentagon. And one was retaken by its passengers, who rallied and overcame their hijackers…only to crash in a field in Pennsylvania. Roughly three thousand people died on a September Tuesday back in 2001.
This was a shattering act of Terrorism…and should have been proof positive that all those many violent things we see on the news, which transpire almost daily in many other parts of the world, can and will happen here unless we are vigilant. Our freedom, in the West, is not something which is without cost, nor is it something which simply endures on its own merits. It was bought in blood, and its ongoing cost is also blood. Because “freedom” is not “free.”
Seven years and one day ago, as David Warren so ably notes
, was “the last day in history in which such an event was inconceivable.
It remains “a little inconceivable,” and although there have been subsequent major terror attacks in Madrid, London, and all over the world — and had been many previous, by the same breed of Islamists — everyone has now had seven years to reset their internal expectation monitors to “the day nothing happened.”
That this is the case even in the U.S. speaks to a remarkable accomplishment of the Bush administration, in power through all the intervening years. At a cost to the American taxpayer of many hundred billions of dollars, the country has been defended from subsequent terror strikes.
The cost — which extends to blood on the fields of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in several other countries infrequently mentioned in the news, and to the lesser investments in blood and money by U.S. allies — may seem, by now, out of all proportion to the benefit conferred. This is a hard reality of democratic politics. For if the politicians are successful in restraining a mortal enemy, we assume the threat must have been overstated. Ditto, if serious threats remain, but are concealed from us because they are kept far away.“
Vigilance. What does this word mean? To read a dictionary, one sees that it means “watchfulness,” and this is a good starting point. But more than that, it should mean — for us who so depend on it to ensure our ongoing freedom — also that we remember what has transpired before. We should remember that just because the bully has not yet succeeded in giving us another bloody nose does not mean that he does not lurk nearby still, waiting for us to drop our guard but a little so as to give us a black eye to match.
No, we shouldn’t be paranoid about terrorism either. But we must be honest, at least: it happened, once, that Muslim terrorists were able to slaughter thousands of people on this continent. It is still possible that they might do so again, if we give them the opening they are looking for.
Update: As much as the above is not comedic in any way, shape, or form, I have to share Dale Price’s priceless warning to would-be commentators:
This is a “Truther”-[sic]-free zone. You try to peddle your fraudulent wares here — on this of all days — and I’ll boot your ass out so fast you’ll red-shift.
I don’t have a comment form on my posts anymore, although the good Reader is of course free — and encouraged — to offer his or her thoughts via the contact form (I have a very good track record of re-posting what I receive). That said, Trutherism is somewhat less likely to be re-posted.
For a Few Updates More: Welcome, Steynians!
