09/11-Remembering

How are you spending the 7th anniversary of the largest attack on the United States since WWII? I have been thinking about it since I got up this morning. I sent a text message to a friend of mine out in Alabama wishing her a happy birthday. She turned twenty today and she is I think about 4 months pregnant. I was sitting there typing that message when it dawned on me that it had been 7 years since that fateful day, which has set us on a course that will be a long time in closing.

States, cities and townships around the country have erected memorials to the attacks on the Twin Towers , the Pentagon and to the plane that was forced down in Pennsylvania . Here is what I had originally written regarding the rebuilding of the Twin Towers into what is being called the Freedom Tower

(Why haven’t we started rebuilding the Twin Towers ? I personally believe it all boils down to politics. Politics of our government, politics of the owners of the ground and politics of the architects of the new “ Freedom Towers ” that was supposed to go up. I am sure there are some valid reasons as to why we haven’t started rebuilding, but I still thing that the corner stone to all of it is politics.)

After sending that out to several people my 19 year old son being one of them, he corrected me and showed me that we have started constructing the Freedom Tower. Thank you Bobby. You can find all kinds of information regarding it online if you do a search with Google. He also pointed me to a link for information regarding the Pentagon Memorial.

A month after the attack we invaded Afghanistan to take out Osama bin Laden that is the head of Al-Qaeda the terrorist that is reported to be behind the attacks. We invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban would not turn him over. While we were able to remove the Taliban from power, to date we have not captured bin Laden, nor have we been able to destroy the Taliban. We are still fighting them in Afghanistan and depending on what part of the country you are in; they still have control over parts of it.

Almost a year and half later we invaded Iraq due to what we all know as bad intelligence. While a lot of Americans have died over there, even more Iraq ’s have died. All because bad guys moved into that country to fight the Americans. We now have a country that is almost ready to be on its own and in fact they are pushing to have all of our troops and Marines out of the country buy June of 2009. Hopefully the commanders will pull our troops out in a way that will allow us from having to go back into that country to prop the government back up.

We need to finish the job in Afghanistan . I have tried over the last 7 years to get back in the military so I can do my part in the fight. However because of the discharge I received from the Marine Corps in 1991 for something I did, I have been denied the opportunity to fight for my country. While at the same time the services are giving waver’s to people who have committed felonies in the civilian world to allow them to serve. The have said it’s all about giving them a second chance, but they won’t give someone like myself a second chance. I try not to be bitter but it is hard.

Today though is about remembering those that died in the attacks that started this all and not to forget what kind of people they were, and what they had done in the past to contribute to the life they lived and helped other people live.

Thank you and may God Watch over you and your families!