Have we forgotten?

Does anyone remember July 7?

I am sitting here wondering what went on this week that I forgot, something significant. Not my dog’s birthday, which is today, nor America’s birthday a week ago..hmm

I type the phrase “history July 7” and get things like History -Events-Birth dates

 

And then I type July 7, 2005, “London's transit system is bombed by terrorists, 56 deaths, 700 injured”

The War on Terror visited London.

I wonder who else in this country remembered.

It’s like we are all sleep walking, the memories of 9/11 and other attacks since then blending into a blur of time passing. 

I have a newspaper front page of 9/11 on the wall in our house. I didn't forget, will never forget. 

Yet many who voiced those same sentiments have now had a softening of their views, pacified by changes in syntax as the War on Terror becomes Overseas Contingency Operations, knowledge that an massive attack of the 9/11 scope has not happened again.

And then here it is 2010 and the Attorney General of the United States of America refused to blame "radical Islam" for terrorism.  Others in the administration clarified that, pointing out that “ the administration would not "describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or ones community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children."

Forgetting that the terrorists are motivated by a (in my view seriously flawed) religious zealotry, has led this government to release many gentle people wrongly swept up in the search for enemies.

Gentle people like 30-year-old Saudi national [Qahtani], who was arrested two weeks ago, had been in contact with Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri... Qahtani, who adopted the nom de guerre "Sinan al-Saudi," held a degree in business administration and also graduated from King Fahd Security College with the rank of lieutenant.

He entered Iraq in 2004, shortly after the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, and was involved in operations in the towns of Al-Qaim and Husayba near Iraq's border with Syria.

Abdullah Azzam Saleh Misfar al-Qahtani was apprehended by the US military in 2007 under the false name Muzawar al-Shammari, and was released last year.

More recently, he participated in the planning of a series of co-ordinated attacks against Baghdad hotels in January which killed 36 people, and in the organization of five vehicle-borne bombs that killed 127 people in the capital in December.

He was arrested by Iraqi Security Forces before he could set in motion his biggest plan yet, attacking the World Cup in South Africa.

He was released from Guantanamo bay under orders from the Obama administration in 2009. insufficient cause to continue ot hold or detain...

Thanks to the outstanding leadership of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, the line distinguishing warfare from law enforcement has been thoroughly eradicated.   The inevitable outcome -- demonstrated by this, the latest in a series of close calls -- is guaranteed to be toxic to the civil society.

The war on terror is no game.  These people intend to kill us in large numbers, and unless we take that seriously, they will succeed.  It’s not the same as using the exclusionary rule to return a burglar to the streets rather than offend tender sensibilities because someone filled out a warrant incorrectly.  Al-Qaeda is not the Gambino crime family, and a law-enforcement approach will not defeat them.

To my friends and family serving  - Hooah and Semper Fi