We have to get right this time
Unfortunately, everyone knows what “9-11” stands for. I wish it were not so. However, it is so, and no matter how desperately we want a do over, we cannot change history.
We cannot beckon the months that led up to the cowardly acts that forever changed thousands of lives in ways that those of us who were not directly affected can barely imagine. If only we would take a second look at the many clues that pointed to an impending terror attack – the visas that had been granted to dubious people, flight training of men from Saudi Arabia, etc. Again, we cannot.
I cannot imagine the horror of being in one of those burning buildings and suddenly realizing that the only choices I had were to jump to my death or be burned alive. God forbid I ever experience receiving a text or a cell phone call from a loved one who has just a few seconds to tell me of their love for me, knowing it was the last time in this life they would say, “I love you.” Lonely nights, absent parents, hearts still aching from loss of sons and daughters – all are still horrors from that terrible, wretched day in September 15 years ago.
For fifteen years each Sept. 11, we have remembered the lives that were lost to us and what those barbarian terrorists did to us, but it seems to me that the remembrances have been less and less passionate as time goes by. In this regard, a saying comes to mind, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” After 9-11, for a while at least, we saw terrorists behind every tree and in every city doorway, but I wonder if we have slowly grown tired of watching for the enemy. Some folks who seek high office in our land have a very progressive immigration policy. In fact, some current immigration plans are in essence headlong leaps toward creating a borderless United States. Is there really such a thing as a nation without borders? Are not borders part of what is required of a people before they can be considered a bona fide nation?
Perhaps those who ridicule a hard shell stand on immigration should think back 15 years to 9-11. Allowing hundreds or even thousands of people from the world’s terrorist hot spots to enter the U.S. without our being able to vet them properly is illogical, illegal and immoral. It’s even worse than the slip up that allowed our enemies to do what they did on 9-11 – a Pearl Harbor II, if you will.
A similar irrational action has freed known terrorists, allowing them to return to the killing fields. We are inviting disaster at home and abroad. Our friends have warned us. Even our enemies have revealed their intentions to infiltrate with immigrants. When ideology conflicts with common sense, we should throw ideology on the scrap heap of good intentions and get on with defense of our nation.
We may not need another Great Wall of China, but please, oh please, avowed defenders of our nation, get busy and plug up the holes in our defenses before Pearl Harbor III occurs. We have given Iran the key to our back door – a key consisting of cash for terrorism and a path to nuclear weapons. North Korea is threatening our front door with nuclear missiles and missile-bearing submarines. Terrorists are coming in our windows. Who knows what is coming down our chimney?
If we the people want to live under our current Constitution and not under a theocracy – under Sharia Law, if we want our heads to remain part of our anatomy, we have better go the ballot box with the defense of our nation in mind. It is not as though we have not been forewarned. According to a Congressional committee in 1945, it was due to bad judgment in 1941 that we lost eight battleships, 200 airplanes and 3,000 U.S. citizens. We did not see the clues and slipped up again in 2001, losing another 3,000 innocent lives. Perhaps we can avoid Pearl Harbor III if, we the people, get it right this coming November.
A resident of Dunbar, DeWitt Clinton is the minister to the Church of Christ Church on Connellsville Street in Uniontown.