Contributed by: filbert Thursday, September 11 2008 @ 12:03 PM CST
For years, Islamic extremists raged throughout most of the world, raping, beheading, and terrorizing people from Indonesia to Algeria. We did nothing.
One of them, Osama bin Laden, declared war on the U.S. We did nothing.
They set off bombs in the parking garages underneath the World Trade Center in New York. We did next to nothing.
They brazenly attacked a U.S. warship, the U.S.S. Cole. We did next to nothing.
They sent men to enroll in pilot schools in the U.S, never planning to finish their studies. We let them.
They took over four airliners and flew two of them into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon. The fourth was reportedly destined for the U.S. Capitol. Congress was in session that day. Due to the heroic efforts of ordinary Americans on that fourth airliner, it never made it to Washington, D.C.
The Islamic extremists said that they wanted to recreate the Islamic Caliphate, as it had existed at the time of the Crusades. They wanted Baghdad to be the capitol. They ultimately wanted to spread the Caliphate across the entire Earth.
They are the enemies of civilization. They are barbarians.
We did something. We attacked their stronghold in Afghanistan, and drove them into the dark recesses of the world.
We then lanced the festering boil on the world that was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq–a country which for years thumbed its nose at the United Nations, at sanctions, at negotiations. A country that had a history of using poison gas on its neighbors–and on its own citizens.
During the course of our lancing that boil, the very Islamic extremists who plotted all of those attacks culminating with the airliner attacks on 9/11/01 said that Iraq was their next battle against us. Iraq was where they would defeat us, and begin to create their Caliphate. They began taking over that country. At first, we let them.
Then we opposed them. We re-remembered how to fight a counter-insurgency. We started fighting smart, not just fighting strong.
Then we won.
That pretty much brings us up to today.