09/12/16

The Terrible Legacy of 9/11

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

[Editor’s note: I was asked (along with their other contributing editors) by the outstanding website Family Security Matters, to offer up our thoughts on how we “view the significance of 9/11, fifteen years on.” Here was my response, which they posted over the weekend. Roger Aronoff]

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the tragedy is that the Islamic jihadists are winning too many battles around the world, and have forced the West and its partners to abridge freedoms in pursuit of security. And despite the claims of the Obama administration, the U.S. is not succeeding in leading a coalition of nations to defeat the enemy, which it identifies as ISIL. In fact, ISIL, more commonly known as ISIS, is now operating fully in 18 countries—a three-fold increase in just two years—according to a National Counterterrorism Center report leaked to NBC News in August.

The fact is, after nearly eight years of Obama and Secretaries of State Clinton and Kerry, things have gotten much worse in many hot spots across the globe. Through the work of our Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB), we have concluded that Obama came to the White House seeking to empower the Muslim Brotherhood in North Africa, and the Iranian Shi’ite regime in the Persian Gulf region. Because of our unsigned nuclear “deal” with Iran, we have few options when it comes to restraining their behavior. We pretend that we have a common interest with both Russia and Iran, which is to defeat ISIS. But ISIS is just one manifestation of the jihadist ideology that seeks dominance, and submission, as it slaughters tens of thousands of people in its long, drawn out death march.

When the U.S. removed its remaining troops from Iraq in 2011, President Obama announced that “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” That was the same year that the so-called “Arab Spring” led to the fall of America’s ally in Egypt, the start of the Syrian civil war, and the West’s war against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, who had abandoned his WMD program and was fighting against al Qaeda. That is when America switched sides in the Global War on Terror, as we documented in our first CCB report, and further supported in our second report back in June. Benghazi turned out to be a pile-up of scandal, failed policy and dereliction of duty.

Today we have Libya as a failed state, dominated by jihadist groups; Syria as the home base of ISIS and the scene of what even The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof calledObama’s “worst mistake,” comparing it to Rwanda, with close to a half a million dead; and an emboldened Iran, regularly humiliating America because it can, since it has received an estimated $100 billion in formerly frozen funds, and there is no signed deal for which they can be held accountable. In addition, peace between Israel and the Palestinians is less likely than when President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton came to power.

Meanwhile, the corrupt news media pretend that Obama has been a successful foreign policy president, when, in fact, he has been a disaster. Fifteen years after 9/11, the frequency of terrorist and jihadist attacks is such that they are quickly forgotten in a fog of war that is rapidly enveloping the world.

This article was originally published on the website of Family Security Matters.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

09/11/16

9/11 – The 15th Anniversary

Hat Tip: Bare Naked Islam

I had to work today, so I didn’t get this out earlier. Here are some videos and remembrances of that fateful day that we will never forget.

09/11/16

Stealth war on American soil began with chaos of 9/11 terror

By: Ashraf Ramelah | Voice of the Copts

I grew up in an Islamic country within the Coptic Christian community of Egypt. On September 11, 2001 I was already a free man living between two nation-state democracies – Italy and the USA. I must admit I never looked back. I never again thought of tyrannical rule and persecution – the words and actions of a cruel, irrational dictator and his minions. I escaped bigotry and hatred. I chose a future for myself and left my family and country behind – radical but necessary. I never spoke of my origins thereafter – the persecution Copts suffer. In a sense, I tacitly endorsed Egypt’s official “democratic” image projected to the West.

The horror of 9/11 broke my heart and my silence, giving birth to Voice of the Copts (a human rights organization) as a response to Islam’s expression here in America. Memories of my childhood flooded back, and I was suddenly compelled to speak out for the Copts of Egypt — explain our plight as a warning to America. Unlike the Coptic community of 20 million in Egypt that has no military, no soldiers, and no political leaders, America could and would strike back. I wasn’t worried about that kind of warfare.

What alarmed me more almost was another facet of jihad – propaganda spreading wrong information about Islam through deception tactics to gain power within our civilization; slowly erode and conquer us through our culture and our laws. Deception and conquest are fundamental to Islam’s religious political doctrine.

After 15 years, civilization jihad has made progress in the West. Many Americans still don’t recognize or acknowledge the process taking place. This may be due to America’s failed leadership who collaborate with the enemies of freedom. At one point, Hillary Clinton promised the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) she would do her best to see that “shame-based” speech was employed in America in response to its request for suppression of free speech critical of Islam.

America chased down a single man in a single country in the Middle East in response to 9/11, but today its seems we have no real strategy to eradicate quiet civilizational, stealth jihad conducted from the Middle East inside our country – in fact the opposite is true; we are helping things along. This is why President Obama has said “the terrorist threat continues,” as he recently announced his extension of the 9/11 “State of Emergency” for his eighth time” (consistent with section 202 (d) of the National Emergencies Act). He should know. He has had so much to do with it.

No doubt America is dealing with explosive numbers of inner city and rural town encampments of Somalian and Syrian Muslims streamlined into the country by Obama’s advocacy and policies. Obama’s White House press release on August 30 says, “The national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency must continue in effect…” So the American people must give power and authority away and suspend constitutional rights. This is the worrisome part, and again my mind floods with memories of the authoritarian Egyptian regime.

From the 9/11 tragedy, America has lost more than the thousands of innocent victims we mourn for today as we continue to see the ideology behind the attack sow into the fabric of our great nation. For that we must mourn as well and move forward to change it.

09/11/16

Fifteen Years On, I Wonder What the Falling Man Would Think

By: Frank Salvato

Fifteen years on from the attacks of September 11, 2001, and Osama bin Laden is dead. This serves as a symbolic victory in the war against Islamofascism. But the fact of the matter is we are less safe; more vulnerable to an attack by Islamic jihadists than we were eight years ago. The blame for this must be laid at the feet of the politically correct.

We have withstood eight years of foreign policy that has seen the Middle East turn from volatile region with pockets of jihadist activity to a centralized location for Islamofascist tyranny. Sharia Law has been invoked, in many places at the tip of the sword. Christians are being slaughtered at will by Islamic State barbarians. And Iran, the most prominent nation state sponsor of terrorism in the world, is now a budding nuclear power – and a Shi’ite counter to the Saudi Sunni balance on the delicate scales of explosive jihad.

We suffer these realities because of an American power vacuum courtesy of a squeamish and non-committal – and perhaps Islamofascist sympathetic – Obama Administration, who chose to anchor US influence as a “cog” in the global machine instead of a leading force for freedom and liberty around the world. This administration – which, no doubt, will go down as the most debilitating force against freedom and liberty, globally – employed a foreign policy with priorities based in macro-regional power realignment.

This realignment did not have battling Islamofascist terror operations as a priority. Instead it served to ignore reality in denying and refusing to recognize the problem as it facilitated “regime change” throughout the region. Clinging to the naïve and misguided hope that regime change would bring to power new “enlightened” governance; the hope that the new despots would be more accommodating to the United States than the old, the Obama Administration stood by as Islamofascists acquired power throughout the region.

Today the Islamic State is militarily active in six locations around the globe, al Qaeda is reconstituted – complete with its own glossy international magazine that indoctrinates single-cell operatives to action, and the Taliban attacks US installations and major institutions in downtown Kabul at it leisure.

Today, Islamic State barbarians capture Christian and Yazidi women and young girls and sell them into the sex slavery trade and/or use them for concubines. Those who refuse or fight off their rapists are executed, some locked in cages and set on fire for their insolence.

Today, radicalized Americans of Muslim descent take up arms and commit acts of mass murder on American soil. And instead of addressing this spreading cancer with fact-based information and empowering law enforcement to counter the evil, the Obama Administration seeks to make us – the innocent Americans threatened by this Islamofascist threat – “understand” why we deserve these acts of butchery.

We are fifteen years on from the slaughter of 2,996 innocents in the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and our military men and women, still serving in harm’s way; still fighting the good fight against Islamofascist evil, are waging their battles with rules of engagement that keep them from taking the fight to the enemy, even as the Democrat candidate for President of the United States says we don’t have any military personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fifteen years ago many of us who stood strong against those who accused us of being “racist” and “Islamophobic” screamed from the roof tops that this conflict; this war against Islamofascism; this Holy War declared against us by Osama bin Laden himself – twice, we said our country had to be dedicated in our efforts. We preached and wrote and talked and begged anyone who would listen to understand that the battle we were to undertake, the war not of our making but the war we needed to win at all costs, was multi-faceted and generational; one that encompassed military, educational, economic and cultural battlefields. Our efforts had to be equally applied in each theater and for the duration.

But with the election of Barack Obama, those efforts ceased almost entirely. Our military effort – not the military, but the effort; the orders being handed down to our capable troops – was hobbled. The policies of the United States facilitated economic wherewithal to the Islamofascists, even paying ransom to the Iranian mullahs who would, in turn, use that money for terror, and military and nuclear development operations.

It is, today, punishable to teach the true oppressive tenets of Islam in schools. And the administration itself is expediting the dilution of the American culture by the importation of Syrian and Muslim refugees from the volatile region into the United States; into our neighborhoods.

Today, fifteen years on, the United States is in the crosshairs of Islamofascists who seek to end the “Great Satan,” and unless we have a radical and immediate change in foreign policy and the approach with which we fight this generational war we are on track to lose, at the very least, by attrition.

I often think about the “Falling Man” of September 11, 2001. I wonder about the horror that must have gone through his mind – and all the minds of those who had the unenviable choice of either burning alive in the Twin Towers or leaping to their deaths to the street below. I wonder what he would think of the policies of the last eight years and the ceding of power in the Middle East to Islamofascists like those who affected his death on that fateful day.

I think about the Falling Man…and I weep for our country. Fifteen years on.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining internal and external threats facing our country. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

06/13/16

Terror In Orlando – War Comes To America

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Yesterday, I wrote at length on the Orlando massacre here and here. Despite Obama, Clinton and Sanders seizing on the gun issue, this was an act of war by ISIS. It was radical Islam at play. It cost us scores of lives and is the deadliest attack since 9/11.

Terror has struck in Orlando, Florida at the city’s trendiest gay party spot, the Pulse nightclub. A shooter with Islamic leanings came into the club just as they were closing at 2 a.m. We are now in the month of Ramadan. He had a suicide vest, a rifle and a handgun. Hostages were taken and at least 50 were slaughtered. Approximately 53 others were injured. One officer was shot and his Kevlar helmet saved him. The shooter was killed by police. This is being called a mass casualty situation and it is now labeled domestic terrorism. According to WESH-TV, the casualties were so numerous that many of the injured had to be transported to the hospital in unmarked pick-up trucks instead of ambulances. A bomb squad and a crisis negotiator were called to the scene, the station reported. A mother outside said her son had texted her: “He’s rounded us up and he’s going to kill us.”

We now know the shooter was a warrior for ISIS and the Caliphate. Orlando Police Chief John Mina said officers were called to Pulse Orlando, a popular gay nightclub, at around 2 a.m. after reports of a shooting. He said officers were engaged in a gun battle outside the club before the suspect went back into the building where more shots were fired. It was reported that the gunman then took several hostages. About three hours later, Mina said officials made the decision to rescue the hostages in the club. They blew a hole in a wall to rescue approximately 30 of the 100 hostages taken. He said SWAT officers exchanged fire with the gunman and killed him. Pulse Orlando posted on its own Facebook page around 2 a.m.: “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.” Just before 6 a.m., the club posted an update: “As soon as we have any information we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love.” Mina Justice was outside the club early Sunday trying to contact her 30 year-old son Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call the police. He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide. He then texted her: “He’s coming.” The next text said: “He has us, and he’s in here with us,” she said. That was the last conversation. What a horrific tragedy.

We now know that the shooter was Omar Mir Seddique Mateen who is from Port St. Lucie, Florida. He is of Afghani descent and authorities are saying he has ties to radical Islam. We also know he yelled Allah-hu-Akbar as he mowed people down. He pledged his allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call while the event was taking place.

From Heavy.com:

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen has been named as the gunman who killed 50 people and wounded 53 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, CBS News reports.

He was later killed by police after taking hostages at the LGBT club.

Mateen, 29, is a U.S. citizen of Afghani descent from Port St. Lucie, Florida, according to CBS News. He has ties to radical Islamic ideology, CBS reports. His name was confirmed by U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson at a press conference.

1. Who is the shooter?: Omar Mir Seddique Mateen is a 29 year-old man from Port St. Lucie, Florida. He is an Afghani American and was on a person of interest list connected to terrorism. Police have not yet said why Mateen attacked the nightclub. His father told MSNBC that the shooting was not about his son’s religion, but that his son became very angry after seeing two men kissing in Miami months ago. He said “we are apologizing for the whole incident.” Mateen drove to Orlando to commit the terrorist attack. He had no criminal history. The gunman who killed at least 50 people at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday was a licensed security officer who claimed more than once that he had connections to Islamic terror groups. He had extensive weapons training.

2. How many were killed and injured?: At least 50 are now dead and approximately 53 are injured. Many critically, so the death toll is thought to rise. This is the worst death toll from terrorism on American soil since 9/11. There were 320 people in the club at the time of the shooting.

3. When and where did this happen?: The attack began around 2 a.m. in Orlando. Mateen exchanged gunfire with police before going into the Pulse nightclub to take hostages. He held approximately 100 hostages for several hours before killing en masse within the club. “The officer engaged in a gun battle with that suspect. The suspect at some point went back inside the club and more shots were fired. This did turn into a hostage situation,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a press conference. They now believe there was a bomb that he did not get a chance to detonate. He had a rifle and a handgun as well.

4. How was the attacker killed?: The gunman was killed by SWAT during the hostage crisis. They were attempting to rescue the hostages, who were being executed. This happened around 5 a.m. An officer was wounded during the shootout, but was saved by his Kevlar helmet. More than 30 hostages were rescued from the club. At the time, it was believed only 20 had died in the horrific killing spree.

5. Ties to radical Islam: Local FBI Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Ron Hopper said at the press conference that there are “suggestions” the gunman “may have leanings” toward Jihadist ideology. Hopper had been asked about whether the shooter was connected to radical Islamic terrorism. Hopper said they can’t say definitively whether the gunmen is connected to that ideology. He said we’re looking into all angles right now.” ISIS has posted messages on Twitter cheering the killing spree. Indonesian Islamic radicals also praised the slaughter. Per Fox News, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida is now saying they have information that the attack is connected to ISIS.

6. Was this pre-planned?: The attack was well-organized and planned for. Police are now searching his home and trying to determine if there were others involved in this. We are now in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and ISIS has commanded their followers to kill Americans everywhere they can. In an Arabic message released online, purportedly from ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, further attacks were urged against the West during Ramadan.

Three days ago, ISIS Muslim terrorists released a statement on their plan to attack Florida and even put out a list with the names of people in Florida that they plan on killing.

7. What is the shooter’s background?: Both of Mateen’s parents are originally from Afghanistan. He was born in New York and was 29 years-old. He was married in 2009, public records show. It is not clear if he was still married at the time of the attack, but he does have a little girl. Mateen is a registered Democrat who has also lived in Fort Pierce, Florida.

And there’s more… Mateen worked for a security company that visited federal buildings and transported illegal aliens. He also worked as security at a juvenile facility. He was interviewed by the FBI three separate times. His co-workers warned that he claimed he had terrorist ties. He was unstable and beat his wife. And the list goes on and on.

Omar Mateen’s father was an activist for the Taliban. Note the radio network that gave him airtime, Payem e Afghan, a radio show in California called Durand Jirga. So, when the father claims this had nothing to do with religion, that was an outright lie. The same lie that came from ISNA and CAIR yesterday on Fox News.

ISIS was quick to take credit for the atrocity. We are at war and we had better start acting like it. If we don’t stop blaming guns and Christians and anything BUT Islamists for this, we are going to lose thousands, if not millions, of Americans to these monsters. We need real, concrete solutions and a leader who is willing to fight our enemies without apology and aggressively. War has come to America… will we fight or stay on our knees?

Pics from the scene yesterday:

11/20/15

Politico Exonerates, Blames Snowden for Paris

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Some of our media, including the publication Politico, seem totally confused about the role of NSA defector Edward Snowden in the crimes of the terrorists who murdered and maimed hundreds of people in the Paris attacks. The verdict is in: he has bloody hands.

In a November 16 story, “Blaming Snowden for Paris,” David Perera of Politico insisted that no evidence had surfaced that the “revelations” of NSA defector Edward Snowden had “made a difference” in the case of the Paris terrorist attacks, and there was no evidence the perpetrators had “used encrypted communications to conceal their activities.”

Once again, the publication had gotten ahead of the facts in this story, prejudging the case in order to get Snowden off the hook for facilitating the activities of the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Politico is the same publication that alleged that GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson had admitted fabricating an offer of a West Point scholarship, only to reverse course and drop the claim in a rewritten version of the same story.

Only 24 hours later, after exonerating Snowden, the publication again reversed itself, running an interview with Michael Morell, the former acting head of the CIA, who said the Snowden revelations not only helped the Islamic State but probably contributed to the Paris attacks.

Morell stated, “First, ISIS went to school on how we were collecting intelligence on terrorist organizations by using telecommunications technologies. And when they learned that from the Snowden disclosures, they were able to adapt to it and essentially go silent…And so, part of their rise was understanding what our capabilities were, adjusting to them so we couldn’t see them. No doubt in my mind. And the people who say otherwise are just trying to defend Edward Snowden.”

As embarrassing as this was, the original Politico story had referred to “journalist Glenn Greenwald” as “a Snowden ally” who was arguing “that U.S. officials had complained of difficulty tracking terrorist communications long before the NSA whistleblower emerged.”

It’s true that the terrorists had been evading the NSA before Snowden went to Russia, but that was beside the point. What Morell and others were pointing out is that Snowden had made it easier for the terrorists to plot to kill Europeans and Americans.

Rather than being a “journalist,” Greenwald is a political extremist who speaks before Islamist, Marxist and libertarian groups. He has, for example, been afeatured speaker at conferences sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Cato Institute and the International Socialist Organization. At one of these conferences he declared that al Qaeda’s 9/11 terrorist attacks on America were “very minimal in scope compared to the level of deaths that the United States has been bringing to the world for decades—from Vietnam to illegal wars in Central America…”

He is more than a “Snowden ally.” He is a mouthpiece for Snowden’s illegal disclosures and an accomplice in his alleged espionage activities.

A former gay pornography executive, Greenwald was the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award, named in honor of the left-wing journalist identified as an agent of influence for Soviet intelligence. At the awards ceremony, Greenwald said that Soviet agent Stone “pioneered what modern journalism ought to be.”

Snowden is supposedly a “whistleblower,” but that is a false designation considering that he illegally leaked classified information and fled to Russia rather than face up to the authorities and take his punishment. He is specifically charged with espionage.

Despite the claim about encrypted communications not playing a role in the attacks, Politico had itself reported on November 16 in a separate article that “Terrorists linked to the so-called Islamic State are employing encrypted Internet services—including a new generation of mobile messaging apps—that the authorities do not have the technological capability to break, according to intelligence sources, public comments by senior officials, and evidence disclosed in recent criminal trials.”

By November 18, Cory Bennett of The Hill newspaper had identified and cited a 34-page ISIS manual on how to conceal communications from the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Bennett noted that the Arabic document was translated and released by analysts at the Combating Terrorism Center, an independent research group at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“It includes warnings to avoid Instagram because it is owned by Facebook, and Dropbox because former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sits on its board of investors. Famous government leaker Edward Snowden has also criticized Dropbox over its privacy, the document notes,” added Bennett.

In other words, the Islamic State is taking Snowden’s advice and openly citing the NSA defector’s expertise on planning terrorism against the West. The reference to Snowden is clear in the translation.

This means that no honest journalist can claim that Snowden’s activities have not helped the terrorists who want to kill us.

Bennett wrote a separate story noting evidence first developed by NBC News that ISIS had set up a 24-hour “help desk” to advise terrorists about encrypting their communications in order to evade authorities.

In the NBC News story, Josh Meyer quoted counterterrorism analysts affiliated with the U.S. Army as saying that the ISIS help desk is “manned by a half-dozen senior operatives around the clock” for the specific purpose of “helping would-be jihadists use encryption and other secure communications in order to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities.”

Now that it has been definitively proven that Snowden’s disclosures have aided ISIS in planning acts of terror, it is time for the media to start examining the Snowden network that AIM has been exposing for several years now. All of his apologists, including such figures as Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano, should apologize to the world for rushing to the defense of this despicable character, who now clearly has blood on his hands.

It was Napolitano who had declared, “I would describe this man [Snowden] an American hero, as a person willing to risk life, limb and liberty in order to expose to the American people one of the most extraordinary violations of the American principles, value judgments and the Constitution itself in all of our history.”

The evil genius of Snowden’s collaborators was to frame his defection in terms of alleging that he was a “whistleblower.”

He didn’t risk his life or limb but has given up his liberty in return for KGB protection in Moscow.

Citizens of France and possibly the United States, however, will be giving up their lives and limbs so that Snowden can be honored as a hero by Napolitano and his ilk.

10/18/15

Hillary Clinton and the “Dark Forces” in Benghazi

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

Kenneth Timmerman, author of Dark forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi, looks at Hillary Clinton’s next scheduled appearance before the Benghazi special committee and the Iranian nuclear deal. He cites evidence that the Iranians were behind the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans on September 11, 2012. In addition, Timmerman says Iran was involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks. Timmerman also discusses Russian backing for Iran and the Russian role in attacking the opponents of Assad in Syria. Timmerman also looks at: Will Russia attack the Kurds? And who are the Kurds? Is Obama a Muslim? Will Israel strike Iran?

09/12/15

Have We Forgotten

09/11/15

A Psalm for 9/11: The Dreams That Fly Away

Doug Ross @ Journal
Hat Tip: BB

We remember.

All mankind will pass before You

like members of the flock.

Like a shepherd pasturing his flock,

making sheep pass under his staff,

so shall You cause to pass, count, calculate, and consider the soul of all the living;

and You shall apportion the fixed needs of all Your creatures

and inscribe their verdict.

For Your Name signifies Your praise:

hard to anger and easy to appease,

for You do not wish the death of one deserving death,

but that he repent from his way and live.

Until the day of his death You await him;

if he repents You will accept him immediately.

It is true that You are their Creator and

You know their inclination,

for they are flesh and blood.

Our origin is dust and our end is dust.

At the hazard of our life we earn our bread.

We are like a fragile vessel,

like the grass that withers

the flower that fades,

the shadow that passes,

the cloud that vanishes,

the wind that blows,

the dust that floats,

the dreams that fly away

Verily.

The dreams that fly away.

Your kingship is an eternal kingship.

Your dominion is for all generations.

09/11/15

5,113 Days After the Falling Man of September 11, 2001

By: Frank Salvato

It has been 5,113 days since the al Qaeda attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and the failed third assault that was intercepted into a farm field in Shanksville, Pennsylviania, by American patriots. To borrow a phrase from a past generation that certainly applies to this event, it is a day that will live in infamy. But few would believe where our country is today given the events of that fateful day. Today Americans stand viciously divided in our politics as a society that rationalizes Islamofascist aggression (and, in the case of Iran, facilitates it), even as we harbor ideological factions that stand in protest of our law enforcement officers. We have moved away from the cohesive and united front we embraced shoulder-to-shoulder at the smoking pile of rubble that was the remnants of the World Trade Center; the tomb that holds so many souls.

Today, as we face the fourteenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, the United States government has radically shifted from the sworn obligation to confront and exterminate violent Islamofascism wherever it exists, to a tolerant acquiescence of co-existence with a culture dedicated opposing that state. Today, 3,115 days after 2,977 people were slaughtered by Islamofascists, the Islamic State is on the march, spreading its oppressive and murderous dogma of Islamofascism across the Middle East and Africa, even as its influence reaches the shores around the world, extending into our homes right here in the United States. Al Qaeda has a state of the art “inspirational” magazine for the discerning jihadi. And the United States, under President Barack Obama and the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hilary Clinton, stands not only sympathetic to the Iranian mullahs, but have purposefully facilitated their path to a nuclear weapon.

Today, just 74,760-some hours after the first jetliner sliced through the North Tower, and on a day that would claim the lives of 71 law enforcement officers and 343 firefighters would lose their lives in the line of duty, the racists and supremacists of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement – a violent and intolerant ideological faction spurred on by those who benefit from divisive and race-based politics – march in the streets bastardizing statistics and calling for violence against police officers and first responders. The very people who were hailed as heroes for their courage and selfless acts fourteen years ago are, today the target of vile protestations, lies and vilification.

These societal maladies are but two that exists in today’s United States, maladies born of selfish, ideological politics and a population that refuses to engage in the hard work of casting aside the special interest rhetoric of opportunistic skullduggery or even supporting those who fight daily to dilute the madness.

In all the wrong that exists today, and suffering the wickedness of the dividers, the political opportunists, the Islamofascists and the ideological zealots, we – the American people – must reach deep down into our souls to find the courage and the dedication to come together; to re-attain the brotherhood we shared on that fateful day fourteen years ago; 3,115 days ago; 74,760-some hours ago, that we can not only measure up to what we should be as Americans, but so that we can become what we need to be so that our Republic can survive; so that we can confront and defeat the things that divide us; so that we can achieve e pluribus unum.

Each September 11th, I remember – purposefully – Jonathan Briley, the “falling man” of September 11, 2001. I penned a piece titled, “Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of September 11th” on the first anniversary of the attacks. Since then it has been updated to address current circumstances. I ask you – I implore you – to remember the pain you felt on September 11, 2001; to feel the loss and the immediate kinship you felt for being American and being in the cross-hairs. I implore you (and invite you) to remember Jonathan Briley:

Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of September 11th: Redux

Everyone remembers the horrifying images of September 11, 2001. Anyone alive and aware on that date will live with those images the rest of their life. The scenes of havoc and panic, destruction and slaughter, demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though the United States military is the best trained and well equipped in the world, our country remains vulnerable to the wicked.

When one accepts the fact — and it is a fact — that the free world, not just the United States, is at war with violent Islamists, this story is all the more chilling and disturbing.

The mainstream media in the United States has taken the images of September 11th, 2001 off the television and out of the newspapers, but for the obligatory image on the anniversary itself. They say that the images are too disturbing, that they incite a want for revenge rather than allow for closure. But they are wrong to do this.

The United States should not and cannot simply forgive and forget just because the our current president fallaciously insisted that al Qaeda was on the run and that the Islamic State is “jayvee.” Facts demonstrate that al Qaeda, the Taliban – and now the Islamic State and Boko Haram; violent Islamists, have been planning and preparing to implement their global campaign of terrorism — their declared war against the Western World — since before 1993, well before September 11th. Their central location for training may have been eliminated but they had prepared for that, splintering like roaches to the four corners of the world, preparing, planning and implementing their battle plans made decades before.

Make no mistake, they are a cunning adversary. They understood that the US would come after them. They planned for this event. Now they have metastasized and their threat is even greater than before September 11, 2001.

This war cannot be about “tolerance” or forgiving, or about understanding the “reasons why” someone would want to murder innocents whether it be with an airplane, a car bomb, a suicide vest or a saif. This battle has to be about freedom and the right of innocents to live their lives in liberty, free of fear from an unholy sect of genocidal totalitarians who offer only oppression, dominance and terror as their bounty.

The Progressive left and the complicit mainstream media would have us believe that it is America that is to blame for her audacity in the promotion of freedom and free markets, liberty and the vision of a world free of dictators who torture, murder and slaughter for power. To that extent, Progressives and the agenda-driven media are dangerous and a direct threat to the existence of our country, teetering on the brink of treason and sedition. They will attack these words by saying that I have intimated that they are not patriotic and un-American.

For the record, I hold the belief that anyone who believes the United States brought the attacks of September 11, 2001, onto itself IS unpatriotic and un-American. I believe that they have become toadies for our enemy and should be treated and opposed as such. While they manipulate the true meaning of the First Amendment’s free speech clause, they attempt to indoctrinate and transform our youth and the less than suspecting among us into believing in the doctrine of self-loathing, an oppressive ideology born of the less than great thinkers of Europe almost a century ago.

In its March 15, 2006 edition, The Mirror, a British publication (the American mainstream media too gutless to publish such truth), revealed the identity of a man who had to make the unimaginable decision of whether to burn to death in the raging fires of the World Trade Center on September 11th or escape the pain of hell on earth by leaping from the top of one of the world’s tallest buildings to his certain death.

The article was titled, Revealing the Identity of the Falling Man of 9/11. Jonathan Briley was “The Falling Man of 9/11.”

I would beg each of you to read the article but The Mirror, along with Esquire and a number of publications who once cared about such things, has taken the article down. You can search his name – Jonathan Briley – and look at the pictures and feel Jonathan Briley’s helplessness, his terror, and then try to imagine the split second of excruciating pain that he felt when his body hit the cement below with such force that he, a human being just seconds before, was left a bloodstain on a sidewalk, slaughtered like road kill by barbarian Islamists.

The people of the United States need to rekindle the flame of emotional anguish about the attacks of September 11th, 2001. We need to seethe. We need to employ the ingenuity and intelligence that is fostered in a free society dedicated to liberty, and scream our ire from the top of the world. Then we need to take definitive action.

If we are to wage war on terrorists; on violent Islamists, then let us be the ones who strike terror into the hearts of our enemies. Let us bring terror to those who blow-up innocents, saw the heads off hostages and threaten the world with words of annihilation and nuclear Armageddon. If we are to be in a war we did not choose to begin then in the memory of all who have fallen in the quest to provide freedom and liberty to the world, let us be the ones who act decisively to end it.

We need to embrace the undeniable truth that the free world is at war and cease pandering to those who would wake up one day in the future ruing the fact that we should have acted earlier.

A pre-emptive strike doctrine for the United States? Eradicating the world of the likes of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Boko Haram and every other Islamist organization that preaches the conquest and servitude of the “dhimmi”? You’re damn right!