Fifteen years have now passed since the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were hit with commercial aircraft by al Qaeda operatives. Capitol Hill or possibly the White House would have suffered the same fate if not for the passengers on United Flight 93. Their sacrifice kept the death toll just below 3,000.
Yet I wonder if we have learned much of anything in 15 years time.
The Obama Administration and, by extension, Hillary Clinton, do everything they can to minimize the nature of these attacks and the nature of our enemy. if not outright dismissed it as when he told David Remnick of The New Yorker that ISIS was the "jayvee squad" in January 2014. ISIS now controls parts of Iraq, Syria & Libya. Some jayvee squad. Then there was The Atlantic interview this past April in which Jeffrey Goldberg noted that Obama frequently reminds his staff that more people in America die due to falls in their bathtubs than by terrorists.
But when Americans do die at the hands of Islamic terrorists, President Obama has consistently obfuscated the issue. When 12 soldiers, a civilian and an unborn child died at Fort Hood at the hands of a traitorous soldier it was "workplace violence." Because of this designation those soldiers were shamefully denied Purple Hearts and their families the benefits associated with them until Congress intervened.
When Americans died at the hands of Islamic terrorists in San Bernardino and Orlando, President Obama tried to make gun control the issue. And when four Americans died at our consulate in Benghazi four years ago today, on the anniversary of 9/11, the Obama Administration led by Hillary Clinton blamed an "internet video".
John Kerry, Hillary's successor at the State Department, isn't much of an improvement. Following the ISIS attacks in Paris last November, Kerry told U.S. Embassy staff in Paris that unlike the Paris attacks there was a "rationale" for the Charlie Hebdo attacks the previous January. In other words, to paraphrase Obama at the UN, if you slander Muhammad you deserve your fate. It goes a long way to explain why Obama didn't see fit to attend the Charlie Hebdo solidarity rally & Kerry saw fit to offer James Taylor as a consolation prize.
Earlier this summer, while in Vienna, Kerry said that air conditioners were a greater threat than ISIS. Then late last month, while speaking in Bangladesh, Kerry criticized the media for reporting about terrorism stating if they did this "people wouldn't know what was going on." Ah, ignorance is bliss.
Speaking of ignorance, this brings me to Donald Trump. Here is a man who is on public record as a so-called 9/11 "truther" who claims the Bush Administration had advanced knowledge of the attacks. Trump is in no position to say anything about 9/11 but when has that ever stopped him? After all, he erroneously claimed "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in New York City were cheering 9/11. If that had happened I doubt the people of NYC would have taken that lying down.
While Obama, Hillary and company downplay Islamic terrorism, Trump paints all Muslims with a broad brush threatening to ban all Muslim immigration and travel. Trump cannot discern between Malala and the Taliban who shot her. Trump cannot discern between the Muslim who killed Jews at the Hyper Cacher in Paris and the Muslim employee who saved Jews by hiding them. Nor can Trump discern Muslims who order Christians off a bus in Kenya and execute them and the Muslims who told al-Shaabab terrorists that if they shot the Christians they would have to kill them too. In Trump's world, there are no such distinctions.
On the one hand, Trump claims he will bomb the shit out of ISIS and on the other claims that America isn't a force for good in the world. A few short months ago, he was perfectly happy to let ISIS take care of Assad in Syria. But what can we expect of a man who on the one hand claims he knows more than all our generals about ISIS and the other cannot tell the difference between the Kurds and the Quds?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is our new normal. I, for one, do not like it.
Can this country survive the fools who run it?
In 15 years, we have learned nothing from the 9/11 attacks. I shudder to think where we will be in 15 years from now.
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