NEVER FORGET

Never forget. We heard that a lot this past week-end. We heard it a lot twenty years ago right after the planes, having been hijacked by terrorists, flew into the buildings and into the ground in Pennsylvania. Estimates are that three thousand people were killed. Since then, there have been many, many more.

 

This has been an interesting weekend. Parades, flags, military celebrations, in fact all manner of celebration. What happens then this week? Will we pack all this away for another twenty years? Will we sorta remember or sorta forget? 

 

Let me tell you of an experience I had nineteen years ago. I had to take a flight to somewhere for business. I don't remember much about why I was traveling but I most certainly remember something that happened on the trip. 

 

I was sitting with two other guys who were also traveling on business. That's what we did. A couple of flight attendants came up to us to have a conversation. The first thing out of the attendant's mouth was, "Do you know what today is?" Immediately I responded, September 11th. That's when it hit me. I hadn't thought about it but I was flying exactly one year after the attack on our country by terrorists.

 

She asked had you forgotten? If you were in the airline industry you certainly wouldn't have forgotten. In fact, she added, some airline employees even refused to show up for work on September 11, 2002. 

 

At that point I was a bit disappointed in myself. How could I have not thought more about this date, this event, that so affected our lives? I suspect that I, like so many others, had just resumed our lives. We all had jobs. Children to raise, bills to pay. You know, the regular things that we do. I certainly didn't forget, I just didn't dwell on it. 

 

The flight was otherwise uneventful and so I went on with my life. Meanwhile America hit back. We sent a lot of goat herders to a different century. Thousands of so-called fundamentalists were sent to meet their Maker and try to explain their actions. The problem was not the number of enemy that we killed but rather the number left alive. 

 

Today, because of ill advised choices made by the Biden Administration, Afghanistan is being ruled by the same thugs who were there twenty years ago, and they haven't changed their opinion of us. Plus, we left them millions of dollars’ worth of weaponry and helicopters. There is no doubt that we will have to go back there to finish the job. We can never allow terrorist thugs to govern a country. There is a ten-million-dollar bounty on the head of one of their high up officials. Eventually they will be taken out. That goes for Iran and North Korea as well. Remember, no war ever ends until there is a clear winner and a clear loser. You can't just gather your marbles and go home. 

 

Listening to the Biden people trying to explain away their incompetence is humorous. They continue to blame everything on Trump. It isn't going to work. Secretary of State, Winken, Blinken, or Nod, whichever one he is, looks truly out of his element at the Congressional hearings.

 

The facts are simple. The chaotic pull out from Afghanistan was ill advised and poorly handled and we will doubtless have to go back to that rat hole country to finish the job we started. Because of the Taliban's pseudo need to kill Americans, that war will only end when we end it. There are no ties in war.

 

Ron Scarbro September 15, 2021