9/11

Not being a gud riter, I'll defer to Scrappleface, Lileks, and Varifrank to memorialize the day. Here's also a portion of what Hugh Hewitt has to say:

(The majority of Americans) understand the relentlessness of the enemy, and have begun to glimpse the essential reality: The war won't be over until the governments of the Middle East and the entire Islamic world are as committed to the end of Islamist fanaticism as we are. Until that time --and it may take decades even as the Cold War did-- America must wage relentless war on the Islamists via weapons and warriors both obvious and not, and especially through the training of allied forces in countries emerging from dictatorship such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

At times the domestic political debate about the war is wearying because of the sheer nuttery of some of the participants who want to argue that our own government blew up the towers or a plane didn't hit the Pentagon. Hard up against them are the Michael Moores and Kosputins for whom the war is just a political football which they can't seem to advance past midfield. Their extravagent hatred, deepened by loss after loss at the ballot box, has made them a curse upon the Democrats, not the center or the right, and thus an actual if not intended ally to the realists.

Five years out and the country has avoided another attack because of the superb competence of the military and the strategic vision of the political leadership. Of course there have been tactical set-backs and missed opportunities, and the loss of nearly as many in combat as died on 9/11 is a terrible price to have paid for the security their sacrifice has purchased.

But we have not lost and in fact are winning the war because the American ideal is still intact. On 9/11 the Islamists intended to decapitate the government and force finanical ruin upon the country. They failed in both attempts, and the war that has followed has forced them back into caves and limited their safe havens.