User blog:ProudAmerican1776/14 Years...

Maybe I should say this, maybe I shouldn't. I'll say it anyway.

14 years ago, when I was 5 years old, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center we struck by two hijacked planes. Another two were hijacked, one of which hit the Pentagon, and the last one crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after the passengers fought back against the hijackers. 2,977 innocent people died in the attacks, and another 6,000 were injured. Those responsible for the attacks were the terrorist group al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, in control of Afghanistan, harbored the leader of al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden. On October 7, 2001, the United States and her closest allies launched an invasion of Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden. In December of 2001, an operation was launched to capture bin Laden, but he managed to escape. It wouldn't be until May 2, 2011 when a team of SEALs of SEAL Team Six, also known as DEVGRU, raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan that he was finally killed.

It has been 14 years since the attacks, and the world has changed. I was 5 years old when everything happened, and the people I grew up with in school are now in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, or providing training to the Iraqi Army. People who I knew from high school who graduated when I was a freshman in high school went to Iraq and Afghanistan, one of whom died and another parilized from the neck down. At airports, we have tighter security measures against those wanting kill. Our own government even went as far as spying on it's own citizens.

I am going to agree with what many people say, September 11th was this generations Pearl Harbor, in a way. Pearl Harbor was avenged with the defeat of Japan in 1945, but it took almost 10 years for us to kill the man responsible for killing so many people. Even then, we are still fighting an enemy who isn't fighting for a country, but instead for an ideology. While we did get some sort of vengence on May 2, 2001, we will never avenge the attacks like we did with Pearl Harbor.

But we need to remember 9/11, not because of what happened, but so we can prevent it. Now, we are facing an enemy worse than al-Qaeda, and worse than the Taliban. The people who call themselves ISIS want to kill anyone who doesn't turn to their "ideology". They claim to be doing it in the name of Islam, but they are rejected by the majority of the Islamic peoples. They don't care about how many war crimes they commit, they want to kill. What happens when we forget about what happened 14 years ago and let our guard down again? How many more people have to die? Will I have to go volunteer to fight against ISIS because our President won't? Will we have another 9/11?

I wrote this because within those 14 years of war, I lost 3 family members and 2 friends to combat. They are part of the 6,639 people who died in Iraq and Afghanistan since the war began. Honestly, if you think that the US Government were the perpetrators of 9/11, you are a f*cking idiot who needs to stop listening to the d*ckbag Alex Jones and rethink your entire life.

For those of you who are also American, do me a favor and never forget that day, even if you weren't born yet or did not see the images of the buildings you visited the year prior, because when we forget that we are not invincible or prepared, we will always get hurt.