We must never forget the events of September 11, 2001.
There are people out there that want us dead.
Yet we involve ourselves in partisan nonsense instead of uniting against a common enemy.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak
City of El Paso debt=$2,670,400,000, county and school district debt=$1,600,000,000. Total $4.27 billion. Your share $19,350
elpasospeak 
After all this time, you still look at the mess in that fashion? How about, instead of “There are people out there who want us dead,” why not recall *why* those people want us dead? Maybe if we had not meddled in so many foreign and sovereign nations’ affairs they would not want us so dead. Yes, we should be united, but we should be united for peace, and against tyrants and oligarchs.
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Excellent comment John!
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John, they’d want us dead regardless of how much of little we’d meddled. Study a little European history. The fight between the West and Middle East has gone on a long time. Bin Laden was a rich Saudi, not a poor Afghan or Iraqi. All that said, Eisenhower was right when he said, “ Beware the military industrial complex.” We’ve wasted a ton of money on an unwinnable war against an enemy that moves from one corrupt country to another.
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From the CIA’s senior Middle East specialist during that period:
“Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.”
OBL’s “Letter to America” will be instructive here.
We would be better off in terms of peace, treasure, and lives of soldiers if we stopped playing world policeman and tended to our own garden for a change. You are right to remind us of Eisenhower’s warning.
Re: studying European history. Some of the readership is multiply degreed in the subject and need little encouragement to study. 🙂
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Frater John, your comments are interesting. The individual who describes the Muslim world as an unflushed toilet is bad, yet a wealthy, but insignificant Saudi who decided to increase his historical significance through declaring war on America and killing thousands of civilians is justifiably motivated by American meddling in the Middle East. That’s the fundamental problem we deal with today. We make folk heroes out of bored, trust fund babies who declare themselves victims. We denigrate folks who want to speak bluntly about a religion that includes sects that politically control large populations and actively engage in aggression against unbelievers, other sects of their own religion, women and ethnic minorities. And while I saw no good purpose in going to war in Irag and Afghanistan is likely unwinnable, but the sad reality is that if we were to totally pull out of the Middle East, we’d find it occupied by Russia and China in 20 years. We can achieve oil independence but that part of the world also has the rare earth minerals we’ve built our electronics industry around (and spoiler alert: alternative energy sources need electronics). We don’t have large deposits of rare earth minerals. China, Africa and parts of the Middle East do. For the last decade, China has been making strategic investments in areas with key raw material commodities–today’s investments will be tomorrow’s golden handcuffs. Russia has also been pursuing a “control countries through energy deals policy.” China actually punished Japan for a trade decision a few years ago by cutting off its access to their rare earth mineral supply. We can’t completely disengage, but we do need to look at how we engage in the region more intelligently. And while I know most folks around here aren’t fans of President Trump, he is one of the first Presidents I’ve seen in a long time that is smart enough to understand China and Russia’s end game. Most politicians can’t see beyond the appropriately laundered and bundled campaign or foundation contributions that come from playing ball. Forget the rhetoric being bandied about in ivory towers. Our enemies love our compassion and fear of being labeled racists. I sure they are laughing very hard about how well carefully crafted spin and politically correct thought leadership has turned us into the biggest proponents of our own demise.
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Throughout time and despite the Saudis’ many violations of human rights and their financing and protection of terrorists, the U.S. government has continued to make nice with Saudi Arabia. It’s all about the money and our government, which is controlled by special interests, has always turned a blind eye to the Saudis’ wrong-doing. The Saudis have a free pass to do whatever they want. That’s why certain Saudi individuals were permitted to leave the U.S. on private jets on 9/11, while other non-military aircraft were grounded.
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> but insignificant Saudi who decided to increase his historical significance through declaring war on America and killing thousands of civilians is justifiably motivated by American meddling in the Middle East.
Explaining why something happened is not the same as justifying or approving of it.
> That’s the fundamental problem we deal with today.
The fundamental problem is that we, collectively, run on emotion and tribalism instead of reason. See the paragraph above for a recent example.
> We make folk heroes out of bored, trust fund babies who declare themselves victims.
I don’t, and I suspect you don’t, either.
> We denigrate folks who want to speak bluntly about a religion that includes sects that politically control large populations and actively engage in aggression against unbelievers, other sects of
their own religion, women and ethnic minorities.
We denigrate folks who like to bash other religions while hand-waving away the problems of their own.
> And while I saw no good purpose in going to war in Irag
Particularly since they had nothing to do with 9/11, as even Bush admitted. We didn’t have the guts (political or otherwise) to take it up with the actual countries of origin.
> and Afghanistan is likely unwinnable,
There is a reason Afghanistan is called “the graveyard of empires”.
> but the sad reality is that if we were to totally pull out of the Middle East, we’d find it occupied by Russia and China in 20 years.
So the question is who is to occupy a region? Perhaps the only national sovereignty we really care about is our own.
> that part of the world also has the rare earth minerals we’ve built our electronics industry around (and spoiler alert: alternative energy sources need electronics).
This is why we have free trade and allies. Buy what you need.
> For the last decade, China has been making strategic investments in areas with key raw material commodities–today’s
Yes, I’ve been following that.
> We can’t completely disengage, but we do need to look at how we engage in the region more intelligently.
Agreed.
> And while I know most folks around here aren’t fans of President Trump, he is one of the first Presidents I’ve seen in a long time that is smart enough to understand China and Russia’s end game.
The current POTUS wouldn’t recognize an end game if he tripped over one on the golf course. As someone remarked, “He’s not playing three-dimensional chess, he’s playing hungry hungry hippos”.
> Our enemies love our compassion and fear of being labeled racists.
Our enemies love anything that divides us, including racist opinions. Push the buttons of a few social media-connected belligerents and it’s instant discord.
> crafted spin and politically correct thought leadership has turned us into the biggest proponents of our own demise.
PC thought isn’t the problem. The problem is that folks are so tribal and partisan that they do not *want* to engage in reasonable discussion. We have largely lost the desire (and maybe the ability) to talk with each other in good faith.
It’s so much easier to live in an echo chamber and repeat talking points. Orwellian duckspeak is the new norm and our democracy is the poorer for it.
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The US hasn’t won a war since 1945. 17 years later we are still in Afghanistan and from what I’ve read, the Taliban controls just as much if not more of the country than in 2001. Then there is Syria. Can anyone say what our objective is there? You could call the entire Islamic world an unflushed toilet, IMO.
Our national treasure is increasingly consumed by the death industry and it doesn’t make a difference what party is in power.
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Eisenhower tried to warn us of the military industrial complex.
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> The US hasn’t won a war since 1945.
We also quit *declaring war*, in the Constitutional sense.
Another interesting factoid: there have only been something like 20 calendar years that the US has NOT been at war since our founding.
Yes, one *could* call the Islamic world an unflushed toilet but that would say more about the person than the Islamic world. On the upside, it might result in a job offer from the White House.
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My only Son enlisted that day. His 18th birthday was just the day before, the 10th. He had graduated Andress High School in El Paso in June. He said “Dad, there is a storm coming, I got to go”. I had done 24 years in the Army, four and a half in Vietnam. I tried to understand what he had to do. As soon as planes were allowed to fly again, the 17th, he left for Basic Training. Until 2006 he was doing back to back tours to Iraq, other places with only about 8 months turn around, to and from Ft Hood, Texas. Some how he survived it all, a bit worn, battered. Now wears a Sheriffs Badge in Texas. Serving, Protecting, Defending.
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one would think we would have learned our lessons from the Vietnam War. Deja Vu all over again.
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We are our own worst enemy.
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Most of those who served learned. The problem is the politicians and bureaucrats who never served.
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We are our own worst enemy.
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Can’t agree more, and we also have to recognize the truth of the matter and not dismiss it as an “incident “.
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