9-11 +5

Like most things these days, I'm late with my 9-11 post. I'm sure there will be more on that later, but work, health, my school board job, and a few other odds and ends keep me slowed down on writing.

Five years have passed since 9-11. I remember the day well, I was in a meeting with a guy from Haifa Israel whose sister worked at the WTC (she got out OK). How many Americans can honestly say that they would have believed on this day 9-11-2001 that we would not have been attacked in the 5 years following? I'd assume very few, and that would include me. We had been attacked with relative frequency somewhere in the world during the '90s; the first WTC attack, Kovar Towers, the USS Cole, and other smaller attacks. It was only reasonable to assume that we would have more, and likely greater attacks. 9-11 taught most of us for a few weeks, and some of us for our lives that there was no limit to what these people were willing to do. The current Iranian president is on tape saying that if they attack Israel with enough nuclear power to kill the Israelis but Israel gets off enough to destroy Iran, it is still a "victory". Israel is gone, and billions of Muslims live on. The US and world press ignores this, as they did all the signs leading to 9-11.

The reason for not being attacked seems obvious. We went on offense. We are fighting Al Quaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan with relatively large military forces. We are fighting them and other groups around the world with CIA and other intelligence services. They are forced to hide for their survival, their funds are cut off, their communications are monitored and when caught, they are incarcerated for long periods of time with the best modern methods of interrogation. Their lot is much worse than it was prior to 9-11. Were the Democrats in power, we can be sure that the MSM would be telling everyone these facts, and calling them "success".

Who would have thought that our economy would be comparable to even better than it was during the late '90s after the dual shocks of the Internet bubble recession that started in 2000 followed by the 2001 shock of 9-11? Virtually nobody I'd suspect, it seemed flat out impossible. Add in a few huge hurricanes and oil price shocks, and it would have seemed ridiculously optimistic. We couldn't possibly be experiencing moderate to high growth in incomes and jobs and low inflation in that kind of world could we? Well, we are, but again almost nobody knows it.

The MSM has a HUGE problem that something like 1/2 of Americans will still indicate the Saddam had WMD. He only used them in the late 80's, and we found 500 rounds. Nope, that is the WRONG ANSWER, the right answer is "no WMD were ever found" ... because those 500 rounds were much less than expected, so they just don't count. However, on the economy something like 65% of Americans think it is "bad" which would mean that we only had a "good economy" in like '98, '84, and '53. Things have just been bad in this country most all the time by that logic. That however doesn't bother them, they are quite happy that the sheep got that one right!

On top of it all we have over 100K troops in Iraq, and have lost 3k military lives in defense of the country since 9-11. Name wars in which it took 5 years for the military losses to equal the civilian losses on day 1. Stumped? One; the Current War on Terror. That isn't really a war though, that is some sort of an action for "political benefit". It is politics of the oddest kind though ... again, something over 60% OPPOSE the war, and the MSM that often wants to claim it was all "for political purposes" expects a Democrat rout this fall because of an "unpopular war". The MSM keeps trying to make it into "Vietnam". Well, I guess Al Quada is telling America to "give up and go home" now and N Vietnamese used to do the same thing. Somehow though, I don't see these guys as the sort that are likely to have Jane Fonda come over and sit on a gun, and I don't think they are going to operate many prisons for US prisoners. One would think that the left would find Muslims that provide zero rights for women, pray 3 times a day, stone gays, and cut peoples heads off to be somewhat unappealing, but it goes to show that any group willing to fight America is popular with the left and the MSM.

Just like most anything else that happens, 9-11 pretty much just made everyone more of what they are. The right has more resolve to stand and fight for America and freedom around the world. The left has found a new ally in the never ending fight of anger and rage to "tear it all down". The battle is always here, it just looks a bit more stark when the issues are brought to the surface by an event like 9-11.