Informed Speculation

This is a post without links; I just want to take a minute here and say God bless the souls of the 3,000 departed on 9/11/01 and their families. September 11th is the defining moment of our time, and though I live hundreds and hundreds of miles from Manhattan, it’s a tragedy that affected me quite a bit. I still find the whole thing nightmarish, quite literally (I have had two September 11th dreams, dreams where I am onsite at the World Trade Center, dreams of such vividness that they are burned in my memory, one quite recently).

The images of those two towers going down, the sight of the falling bodies, the sight of that second plane sweeping across the skyline…it’s all beyond imagining. Yet, it happened, and it changed everything. Four years later, the echoes of that day reverberate across the world, in two war zones, in hundreds of intelligence operations, in the mountains of Pakistan, in a sleeper cell somewhere…the deadly struggle continues.

When we speak of a great man, there are at least two possible meanings. One is that a great man is a man who has had a huge impact on world affairs. By that standard, Osama bin Laden is a great man, as was Hitler, as was Stalin.

The other meaning of a great man is one worth emulating, worthy of admiration, wise, strong, kind, and righteous. By that standard, Osama bin Laden is a very small man, an insignificant bug, a killer, a thug, and a coward, as was Hitler, as was Stalin. Let’s be blunt; Osama and his fanatical followers scored a great victory that day 4 years ago; may it yet prove to be a pyrrhic one.

There are some who foolishly think Osama is winning, because he may yet be alive, because we have suffered heavily in Iraq. Nonsense. Osama lives in a cave; he will die in hiding, or in prison, or from a bullet. He controls no important areas; he inspires only those with hate in their hearts; he must plan his operations for years, and for every 9/11, there are probably dozens that have amounted to nothing. We, on the other hand, we can fight in Afghanistan, fight in Iraq, rebuild New Orleans, with hardship, yes, but with remarkably little disruption to our other obligations.

All of that, when all I really wanted to say was: never forget…