The Fire This Time

Today is September 11.

I am ashamed to say I let the date, and its real significance slip my mind until this morning. You know how it is: we’re buying a used car for the oldest boy to drive to college, the Jigglet’s computer is on the fritz, there’s a stray cat we’ve rescued, my work has become very chaotic. Immediate, day to day life captured my attention, not the currently quiet war we are fighting.

To avoid politicizing this day, I’m not going to lay the wood to the idiots who would minimize the dangers, or suggest incredibly complex conspiracies involving our government are behind the events of that day.

We are in a war. Many people don’t realize it or support it because we’re fighting an enemy that is more of an idea, a system of beliefs, than a physical force. Unfortunately, when those beliefs do become physical, mostly it is innocent civilians who die, people going about their lives in peace, who end up in pieces.

The last idea enemy of that kind was communism, although it quickly manifested into a serious physical force in the form of Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. Our war with them was largely through proxies (Korea, Vietnam), and ultimately, we defeated them by having a better idea: democratic freedoms.

The enemy we contest with now would drive us back to the year 600. Even now, we are defeating our new enemies with better ideas (better technology doesn’t hurt). In Iraq, for instance, the local people have seen that our soldiers treat them better and provide more opportunity than the hidden armies of Al Qaeda who have slaughtered their families.

In this age of spiritual emptiness, with the nine million ways we have to distract ourselves from who we are and where we are: Remember Who the Real Enemy Is.

http://911digitalarchive.org/