The legacy of 9/11

Thursday is the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, an assault on American pride equaled only by the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attack changed America in fundamental ways.

Like Pearl Harbor, it invigorated American patriotism. We didn't fold. We stood up.

And, like Pearl Harbor, it lead us to war against two enemies, in this case, the Taliban/al-Queda in Afghanistan (who had orchestrated the attack), and Iraq (a rogue nation run by a brutal dictator but which had nothing to do with the attack). So far, those wars, which have lasted longer than WWII, have cost nearly 5,000 American lives (well below the 400,000-plus of WWII).

Che Guevara, the communist revolutionary whose book on guerilla war is virtually a bible to terrorists and guerilla fighters, in his discussion on the use of terrorism, said that it was designed primarily to force governments to impose restrictions on their populations that would prove unpopular, undermine their support, and open the door of the guerilla/terrorists to recruit the disaffected.

In some ways, that happened. Our government has suspended habeas corpus, approved and engaged in the use of torture to extract confessions and information, conducted massive wiretaps and electronic surveillance on American citizens, intercepted and opened the mail of those citizens, imposed a large number of silly "window dressing" restrictions on air travel and access to public buildings and placed infants on terrorist watch lists. In exchange, less than a dozen people have been convicted of any terrorist activity.

We also haven't suffered any major terrorist attack, but al-Queda is known to wait and plan for years before launching one of its spectacular "showpiece" assaults, so that may or may not mean anything. Our allies, however, have suffered (al-Queda opposes all the western democracies, although it does see the U.S. as the leader of the "blasphemers").

But while our government may have adopted restrictive measures, unlike the hopes of Che and bin Laden, the American people have not risen up in arms to oppose those restrictions, and in fact have either largely accepted or embraced them in the belief -- which we think is mistaken -- that security is more important than liberty.

It will be a long time before we recover from the scars of that attack.

Thursday will be a day for somber reflection.

It will be a day in which we will fly flags proudly from our homes and businesses in honor and memory of those who died in the attacks -- of the courage and heroism of the rescuers, and the men and women of the military who were sent to war following the attacks.

It will be a day in which American patriotism is renewed.

And perhaps, just perhaps, it will be a day in which we look hard at the policies that followed those attacks, and begin to dismantle those that stand in opposition to all the things our flag and this country truly is supposed to stand for.

-- Kelly Everitt