Seven years ago this week, Muslim terrorists from al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial jets, flew two of them into the World Trade Center, rammed the third into the Pentagon and crashed the fourth in a field in pastoral Somerset County, Pennsylvania – leaving close to 3,000 people dead by lunchtime on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
The bloodbath brought a holy war to this secular nation and changed the world. It forced us to gag on a crash course in the poisonous zeal of Islam’s extremists, and the mentality of its mainstream followers, who kept their heads bowed and their lips zipped as the tumult and disbelief unfolded – and expanded.
As is the wont of progressive nations, after the tears had subsided and the anger justified with sort-them-out sorties in Afghanistan and blistering blitzkriegs in Baghdad, where weapons of mass destruction have a long and sordid history, a new phenomenon emerged: the radicalization of reason.
Almost subliminally, since 9/11, there has been an international, multi-level crusade to temper the terror assaults perpetuated upon America, London and Madrid in the name of Islam, and to near forget those which have disrupted and destroyed the Islamic world from within, because no one quite knows how to deal with anarchistic, suicidal people, nor resolve their issues except by offering them a pacifier to suckle.
Why the Free World is able to proceed – and even turn the anger inward by concocting 9/11 conspiracy theories when al-Qaeda admitted to the attacks – is plain and simple: People living in progressive, liberated countries have a verve for life and a new day.
Their priorities and emotions differ from those bogged down in the lawless nations of the Third, Arab and Central Asian sectors, where the earth’s bounty has been depleted by deadly demagogues, and where spineless societies malinger because they cannot, or will not, find the courage from within to stem the tide.
The fallout is detrimental. For a new generation, the war on terror – brought to our shore by our enemies – has become America’s doing and ruination, and slandered its reputation, while history, in hindsight, will record a far different version.
Seven years later, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, or elsewhere on this beautiful planet, Muslims are exacting their revenge on the western world – and there seem to be few obstacles along their quest to Islamicise all of us.
One of the more disturbing ramifications is the curtailment of free speech, likely borne more of a fear of repercussions from a society known for its emotional drama and tantrums.
Beacons of authority in the west have been scared into mollifying Muslims. In March, when Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders released his short film, “Fitna” about Islamic universalism and the Koran’s incentive for terrorism, the Muslim uproar deafened craters on Mars, no television company would air it, terrified Dutch politicians tried to ban it and Jordanian justice authorities sent “a signal to the Netherlands” by prosecuting Wilders as a criminal. When the British Website, LiveLeak.com finally aired the film, it promptly removed it after receiving death threats.
Then, there was the case, last year, of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal blacklisting conservative writer Mark Steyn – compelling him to move to the United States – because his book, “America Alone,” offended the Canadian Islamic Congress, which thought it “flagrantly Islamophobic.”
Easily insulted, emotionally volatile and ever subjective, Muslims have not been able to turn the other cheek because of the militaristic aspects found in the Koran. The inability to take part in necessary world discourse about Islam and its practitioners is one more indicator of the shaky Muslim mind, which cannot seem to cope with criticism beyond flying off the handle, and issuing fatwas – much less learn from it.
Nor can we afford to forget about fundamental Islam’s growing numbers, its huge, radical wingspan and its hatred of western beliefs. That trilogy of woes is only exacerbated by what has become the near bastardization of 9/11.
Can its commercialization be too far away?
Some events are just too monumental and catastrophic to place on the back burner of time. The next president of the United States should not forget that close to 3,000 victims made the supreme sacrifice on September 11, 2001. They should not be allowed to have died in vain.
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