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Just Another Day

It is that time of year again when flags fly at half staff and faces are lowered. When wreaths are tossed on the barren ground and the passing of a plane overhead meets with ominous dread. September is the cruelest month, the end of summer, when light fades and darkness comes early, shadows creeping through the concrete canyons with the cold eastern wind.

Once again we remember the dead. Those who have died that terrible day, bodies falling through the air, choking on smoke and fumes in offices, or killed in an instant when metal met metal and became flame... and those who are still dying today on battlefields a thousand miles apart and in hospitals of undiagnosed health problems.

On line at a department store, the cashier promises delivery by the next day. "What day is that," the man asks. "September 11th, a day no one can forget, " the cashier replies. "Of course not," the man says, "it's my father's birthday."

A day. Memorial Day, once Decoration Day. Armistice Day now Veteran's Day. Labor Day. Martin Luther King Day, Father's Day and Mother's Day and President's Day. So many days in which we remember, and so many more days in which we forget. September 11th is swiftly becoming another "Day". A day of lip service for politicians and brief mourning. Just another day.

"Where were you when the attacks happened," some ask, the way people asked, "Where we you when JFK was shot." As if it is so important to capture that moment of dislocation when the world changed around you and when life was certain to never be the same again. But people are resilient and life has a way of snapping back into focus, even if isn't the life it's supposed to be. The right question to ask is not, where were you on that day, but where are you now? Where are we now?

The War on Terror has stumbled into a dead end with all the talk being not of how will we win, but how will we withdraw. How fast can we get out of this and make it all go away.

The left already has the answer. Just give it a day. Toss the wreaths and bow your heads if you must on, but move on. Forget what happened and turn it into a day of good feelings. Give blood, pick up trash in the park and volunteer for disadvantaged youth. Pat yourself on the back. You've done your part. You deserve it. The dead are dead, the war is lost, and all you can do is try to make the world a better place. Here, have a logo.

But let us walk another way for a moment. Let us loosen our grip on today, forget the glut of reality shows and talking heads, the congealed wisdom of editorial writers, shouting pundits and dueling campaign slogans. Let go of the future for a moment and walk back in time to 2001.

This is the way we're going. And this is the place. The millennium, both of them are past. The era of the Clinton Administration has passed, but its miasma lingers. Most people still have opinions on Impeachment. Touched by an Angel and Who Wants to be a Millionaire are on the air. Everyone knows that the internet is set to change everything, but they aren't sure exactly how. Dot Com businesses are hot and geeks are riding around in Porsches. The Musketeer tops the box office. The Chandra Levy case is in the news. Americans are by large comfortable and relaxed. The Cold War is over. There's nothing left to do but cash in and enjoy life. Build up your CD collection. Buy better furniture. Invest in the right Dot.com. But we are at the corner now. This is where we turn the corner. And around the corner is where the world ends. At least for a little while.

Walk now through streaming curtains of ash, through fragments of charred office memos and human skin, through the snow that came early to September that year, through the rubble in Washington D.C. and the broken aluminum fragments lining the crater in a Pennsylvania field. Pass now along Liberty Street again, turn now past the cafe chairs dusted with ash snow, stopped cars and human chaos. Look up into the sky and watch. Watch it carefully because it is both a beginning and an ending.

What is beginning and what is ending? That is up to you, up to all of us to decide.

Since then, our leaders have made more wrong decisions, than right ones. They were never able to turn that corner and break with the liberal political dogmas that mandate nation building over national defense, that say that the lives of their citizens are worth no more than anyone else's life, and that protecting America is no excuse for hurting a terrorist's feelings. The question is whether we will be able to turn that corner before it is too late.

On 9/11 we did not turn the corner. We were forced around it, dragged around it, by the brutal atrocities committed by a small group that is only a finger of the vast dark hand sweeping across the globe. Some of us woke up and rushed toward the rubble and the smoke, some hurried back the other way, away from all the disturbance eager to leave the memory of it behind.

And that is where we are now.

The enemy we have been fighting all this time is only the most brutal, radical and impatient, relentless and daring part of the horde that is breaking across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and America. This is a clash of civilizations. The thousands dead on 9/11 and the thousands more dead since then, are only a small down payment on the horrors to come.

While we spend fortunes to build nations, the horde is building its own nations in the cities of Europe and in the old manufacturing centers of America, in Gaza and in the south of Thailand. Their nations are not concerned with electricity or democracy. The ballot box is no different to them than a box of bullets, all tools to leverage in order to gain dominance and power. And though most of us may not understand the war or even be aware of the war, the war goes on.

It is not only a war fought with falling towers. It is also a war fought with billboards and acid to the face, with bribes carefully dispensed and with smuggling operations moving cigarettes, slaves and heroin across borders. It is a war fought with Fatwahs and the severed heads of schoolgirls. It is fought with polygamy and pregnancies. With IED's and soft spoken words about the Religion of Peace. And on every front we are losing the war, for the simple reason that we refuse to fight.

And so America turns away from the falling ash and the horror. From the covered heads, the flames and the grinning killers. There are new movies and shows to watch. New Twitter feuds and culture wars. New distractions and new escapes. We are poorer and weaker, but still trying to escape from History, capital H, by resorting to history, small h. As if a nation can be great and not assailed by foes. As if a nation can be strong and rich without inspiring greed and hate. As if a superpower can stand between two fires, pacifying those who hate it and still having plenty for itself. As if there is any escape from the real world... just waiting around the corner.

Two kinds of peoples lose wars. Those who lack the physical resources to defeat their enemies and those who lack the cultural resources to defeat them. We do not lack the physical resources, but our culture is the culture of the ostrich, a head stuck inside the internet and a body left vulnerable to whoever will have it.

There is one thing and only one thing alone that we can do to survive. Turn the corner. The ostrich is an endangered bird in the Middle East where sticking your head in the sand is no defense against those who would chop it off. Soon it will be an endangered bird everywhere else. There is no escape from those who would kill us, but that we kill them first. The failure to understand that is the failure to survive.

On September 11, that inescapable choice was put before every single American. Turn the corner before it is too late.

Comments

  1. Anonymous11/9/19

    On some enemedia station they had a enemy propagandist stating that 9-11 was a response by the "oppressed to their oppressors". Except the Moslems are oppressors wherever they have power to do so.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11/9/19

    “There is no escape from those who would kill
    us, but that we kill them first.” Every time
    we equivocate or moralize about how it would
    be “nicer” to be understanding and tolerant
    of Islam and Muslims, we offer our innocent
    lives to their relentless wrath.

    They see this easy victory as validation from
    their barbaric deity and augment their blood
    frenzy. Civilized life is the only value that
    matters and all we have left. Stark choice.

    Charlie

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Conservative Curmudgeon11/9/19

    "Where are we now" Daniel asks?

    The current administration is attempting to hold peace concessions at Camp David with the Taliban.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous11/9/19

    Excellent!

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is not enough to remember the names
    of the victims who died when the
    World Trade Center was destroyed by
    Arab Muslim terrorists on 2001 September 11.

    Even more important, we must remember:
    the names of the terrorists,
    which religion they believed in [Islam],
    which language they spoke [Arabic],
    and where they came from [Egypt and Saudi Arabia].

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yigal Carmon
    [President of MEMRI dot org] said:


    Two months before 9/11, on Qatar’s state-run
    Al-Jazeera TV, [Osama] bin Laden was lionized
    in a show dedicated to him. He was called
    “the No. 1 Arab and Islamic hero” and
    “the conscience of the Arab and Islamic world.”

    The program host underlined that as
    “the [Muslim] nation thirsts deeply
    for someone who will confront America...
    not with words and slogans,”
    and said that bin Laden was
    “the right man for this important role.”

    And indeed he was.

    SOURCE: Americans are good people —
    just ask the Qatari Emir
    by Yigal Carmon, 2019/7/14
    www.jns.org/opinion/the-americans-are-good-people-just-ask-the-qatari-emir

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yigal Carmon
    [President of MEMRI dot org] said:


    “For over two decades, Qatar has been fostering and advancing nearly every terrorist organization that has murdered Americans. It praised Osama bin Laden, and after him Ayman Al-Zawahiri [leader of Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden], to the skies.”

    SOURCE: Americans are good people —
    just ask the Qatari Emir
    by Yigal Carmon, 2019/7/14
    www.jns.org/opinion/the-americans-are-good-people-just-ask-the-qatari-emir/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Michael B. Oren said:

    “Negotiating with a representative of
    the Libyan pirates in [year] 1786 [CE],
    Thomas Jefferson was told that the Quran
    commanded the destruction of ALL
    non-believers, Americans included.”

    SOURCE: Ally (page 41)
    by Michael B. Oren (former ambassador
    of Israel to the United States),
    year 2015 CE, Random House, New York

    ReplyDelete
  9. Auntie Analogue11/9/19

    Mr. Greenfield, should your post's penultimate sentence begin with "On September 11, 2009," or with "On September 11, 2001"?

    Aside from that erratum, your essay makes irrefutable sense, which signifies that we are being led by an elite comprised of the insensible.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous12/9/19

    We in the West give names to our cars and
    computers, show them kindness and mourn
    their passing. A dog or cat is a cherished
    family member; we give them birthday gifts.
    All humanity has a mortgage on our generous
    psyches.

    On the backstreets of the Umma, cruelty to all
    sentient life amuses young boys. Dogs and cats
    are cut, burned, ripped apart; slowly. Mules,
    horses are beaten after exhaustion. Halal
    requires the anguish of the goat or sheep.
    Human victims of Shariah and Jihad meet the
    same ghoulish murder fetish. Islam is Islam,
    and every Muslim; male, female, young, old;
    is complicit.

    They are not like us. They are not romantic
    noble savages who will respect our sacrifice
    in furtherance of the World Califate. They
    will laugh at our deaths and defile our corpses
    with glee. All that will remain will be Islam.
    History will show that Islam is all there ever
    was.

    Forget euphemism if you want to survive. In
    this pearl-clutching Woody Allen movie, our
    parasitic Euro “allies” are horrified by the
    mention of violence, yet are fine (again) with
    us doing the “dirty work”.

    Fine. Then nuke Mecca, Medina, Tehran, Damascus,
    Baghdad, Ankara, Karachi, Dacca, Jakarta, Davao.
    Then a wave against African, Turkic, centers of
    power, aggression. Destroy all their economies.
    Remove all Muslims from the West. Isolate them
    to small stone-age corners of desolation. Then
    kill every last one.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous12/9/19

    September 11, 2009?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Brilliant. Thank you.

    .... In the checkout line at a store and the cashier promises a next-day delivery. "What day is that," the customer asks. "September 11th, a day no one can forget," replies the cashier. "Of course not," says the customer, "it's my father's birthday" ....

    For me? ... It's Clinton-Legacy Day.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous12/9/19

    Excellent summary, sad reality. Typo in the last line? 2009?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous12/9/19

    "Every time we equivocate or moralize about how it would be “nicer” to be understanding and tolerant of Islam and Muslims, we offer our innocent lives to their relentless wrath."

    THIS is the ongoing problem -- not for leftist opportunists, government traitors, corporate vultures and media vampires -- but for common people. It has been driven into their heads for so long that all "religions" are equal, the same, none better or worse that this diabolical lie, this mind-Worm cannot be dislodged whatever the evidence that one of these "religions" is not the same. All the real world images and experiences of murders and sawed off heads and falling dismembered bodies and arrogant insults and gun/van/acid attacks mean nothing but individual crimes to the brainwashed sheeple. It is impossible for Western people to identify Islam as a "religion" that is elementally different than all the others -- all have done "bad" to others and to their own -- that is life and history and human nature -- but none compare to the one in scale and scope and essentiality of brutal conquest -- it is completely different and will never be the same because it is not a religion -- it is a political ideology disguised as a religion. Until this reality becomes an acknowledged fact and not a false fear -- Western civilization is doomed.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Gary Sack12/9/19

    Thank you for telling the truth. I, for one, will shere this as wide as I can. Hopefully all readers will do so, and the message will spread geometrically. G-d bless America. G-d bless Israel. G-d bless anyone who has the sanity to fight the evil.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Got date wrong at end, but a fine piece.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous12/9/19

    Oh my goodness! Incredible article dude! Thanks, However I am having issues with your RSS.
    I don't know why I am unable to join it. Is there anyone else getting the
    same RSS issues? Anyone who knows the answer will you kindly respond?
    Thanx!!

    ReplyDelete
  18. CW2isComing12/9/19

    Outstanding article! Many have called for an awakening by the West to the true nature of Islam.

    "House of War," by G.M. Davis, should be required reading by all Americans (and all legacy Europeans wherever they live).

    Dr. Davis describes in unblinking terms the strategy that is being followed by Islam: there is the Dar al-Islam (all of Islam-controlled lands on Earth) vs the Dar al-Harb--the House of War (every place NOT under Islamic subjugation).

    Islam will not rest until the entire world falls under the Umma, the Dar al-Islam.

    Do you get it yet?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Another great essay. Thanks.

    Sadly, you're right. If Team A has the ability to defeat Team B but not the will, while Team B has the will but not the ability -- yet -- bet on Team B.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous12/9/19

    i was there . i couldn’t deal with yesterday so cleaned closets and had more martinis than i should .. mindless order to inchoate sadness .
    The night of 9/10 i was down by the lower side of world financial center . babysitting . there was a calder ? metal cut out art thing ( in front of mcnamurro ) ?? bankingoffice . in the twilight the metal pop looking thing , in silhouette was the g d hammer & sickle . a joke ? really was there .
    the next day of horrors i saved my grandlings . their school was on west side hwy ( later fema hdqtrs )
    “l look grandmom !! Ana , that is nothing debris .. no grandmon . i see legs “ . Every year grandson thanks me .. we said The Lord’s Prayer there on Chambers St then we ran like hell , bldg #1 ... didn’t know where their parents were ... as the second prayer was said there in Greenwich St .. their Mom was right there behind us .

    ReplyDelete
  21. Excellent article. We in the West are being slowly strangled by the golden rope of tolerance

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous13/9/19

    The world population in 2019 is listed as 7.7 billion people. Of these it is claimed about 1.7 billion are Islamics. That's a lot of headchoppers. But it still leaves 6 billion people! 3 times as many. And all but one group have been persecuted and attacked by Islam from its inception. Hindus had 275 million killed over the centuries. Sihks were equally as persectued and have a martyr who Islamics boiled in oil then sawed off the top of his head cut off. Christians have been attacked since day one and were eliminated in the middle east and are under constant attack in Africa and elsewhere. No mention of Judiaism is needed -- the purpose of Islam is to wipe it out. Even Buddhism is being persecuted and fighting back in Myammar and elsewhere. Native and animist religions have been enslaved and wiped out. Atheists are infidels just the same as religious people as China as well fights Islamics.

    So every non Islamic person on earth is the enemy of Islam -- that's a lot of enemies. There is one exception and the exception is preventing the rest from acting as one -- this exception is The Lying Left who enable Islam by preventing the other religions from talking to each other and banding together to wipe out their common enemy. If The Left can be defanged, the world's religions and everyone else can finally come together as 6 billion and put an end to 1500 years of constant attacks on them once and for all. We all just want to be left alone to live our lives but one group will not allow any of us to do this because they exist solely to dominate everyone. The only answer is to use the force of numbers. 6 billion versuus 1.7 billion. End this insanity once and for all.

    ReplyDelete
  23. "Nation Building" seems to me to be one of the stupidest strategic ideas ever. I can't at the moment think of a single successful example, and it violates lots of strategic principles. Headache prevents me saying more.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous15/9/19

    In 1980, I took a boat from Spain to Morocco,
    planning a long trip across North Africa.
    Just a backpack, time and curiosity. I was
    already seasoned in survival mode wandering.
    Yet, three weeks later I had beat a hasty
    retreat back to Spain.

    It was three solid weeks of non-stop vigilance
    for the next attack, trap, ruse. It could’ve
    been from malice, envy, amusement, boredom.
    All that mattered was that I was identifiable
    as prey.

    Even I couldn’t believe the experience, and
    later visited Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan,
    Bangla Desh, Malaysia, Indonesia. There were
    differences, but the Islamic traits stood out.

    Talking with Europeans and Americans, my story
    only evoked incredulity and disdain of my
    “bigotry”. Now, it’s 40 years, 9/11, several
    bloody wars, much terrorism later, and the
    dialog is the same. Giants: Salman Rushdie,
    Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Oriana Falacci,
    Winston Churchill, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Brigitte
    Gabriel, Geert Wilders, Tommy Robinson,
    Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Bill Warner,
    Daniel Greenfield have articulately warned
    from learning and experience the death
    penalty of inaction. And…

    Only glacial opinion shifts. My short Morocco
    experience changed me forever, yet seeing 9/11
    and weekly slaughter by bomb, truck, knife,
    acid are ignored. Millions jump to inane
    debasement of Judeo-Christianity and Western
    Civilization, they claim that there must have
    been some good people living in Germany and
    Japan during WWII, don’t forget the Crusades,
    what right have we to claim the high ground?

    Our modern Western scientific, technological
    capitalist civilization is the apex of human
    accomplishment. Understanding, appreciating,
    defending it is our core value.

    Andrew Breitbart, Ronald Reagan, and Donald
    Trump were/are all masters at getting the
    message across. More than anything else, we
    need to unite Americans in the urgent need
    to oppose Islam. Decisive, consistent,
    sustained, aggressive action is required now
    to force Islam and Muslims out of America.

    Charlie

    ReplyDelete

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