22 years later the war rages on

An entire generation has been born and grown to adulthood since that terrible day the towers fell.  Your Irascible Correspondent wept openly, in public, without shame, in mingled horror and rage.  All I knew then is that someone must pay.  At that time I was already too old to return to the Colors so as to personally wreak vengeance in fire and blood.  In the weeks following the Nation unified, ready to bear any cost only that our enemies be destroyed.  It was like that after Pearl Harbor too; the Nation arose, wounded, suffering, sacrificing, and  won through, becoming a globe bestriding colossus undreamed of by the Founding Fathers.

22 years ago we could have done anything.  At that time the Nation did not rise to its potential.  The challenge of violent, radical Islamism was ineffectually met and has so far ended in stalemate.  The Jihadist ideology that launched the attack grew, despite all the courage and stiving of our fighting men could do, and persists to this day, although focused on peoples less able to defend themselves and fight back.

We were led to believe that the primary purpose of our government was to make us safe; we have permitted this, and it has made us weak, a people living in fear.  A fear that is antithetical to liberty and love of life, virtues for which America was once famous.

The one clear lesson that has emerged from the ashes of the 9/11 attacks is that America is beset by worse than enemies that can kill only the body, we are beset by enemies that aim to kill our spirit, enemies that aim to hold our minds and bodies and souls in thrall.  These enemies have waged covert war against us from within.  We thought we were one people expressing differing ways and means to essentially the same ends.

We were wrong.  We have been at war with an enemy within.  More and more of us can see that now, and more shall see it yet.

Already we see this enemy’s allies faltering, already they see that their clever plans collapsing and that all their flailing will not hold it together.  They know they are losing and that our victory is sure, though not soon.  We the People are wounded, suffering and sacrificing to achieve a victory we can see and salute in the midst of the struggle, though it is not entirely ours yet.

This enemy, is the same enemy mankind has faced since the Fall, using the same tactics with the same goal.  The same enemy that was defeated on Calvary 2000 years ago.

Our victory will come when we, fiercely, faithfully, unite our cause, our hope, our lives to His cause and make our own the battle cry of our American Fathers of old: In God We Trust.