Today is the anniversary of 9/11. 20 years. Wow how time flies. I am pretty sure that everyone remembers where they were when the towers came down. I will always remember watching the second tower coming down on live television. The whole world saw it and the most of the worlds felt for America. The horror that we were all seeing was just heartbreaking. 20 years ago the word terrorism took on a whole new meaning in America. It was something that happened elsewhere not in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We should have seen it coming but were too arrogant to think it that it couldn’t happen to us. Most people didn’t even know that Al Qaeda attempted to assassinate Clinton in Manila in 1998. The CIA also had reported to the Clinton administration that they were planning air attacks on the US. Why was the US asleep at the wheel on Sept. 11^th 2001? Someone dropped the ball and history will record who.

I have seen a few historical moments in my lifetime. I was in elementary schools when Kennedy was shot. I was  a sophomore in High School when we walked on the moon. I remember Nixon resigning and the Berlin wall coming down. I will never forget the destruction that Timothy McVeigh brought to Oklahoma City. I was fixed to CNN when the bombs began to drop at the beginning of Desert Storm. To be able to watch a war starting live on television was just amazing. After everything that I had witness in my life I had never witnessed anything like what happened to the twin towers. Everyone knows where they were when the towers came down. As I watched the second tower come down during my lunch I was just in shock. The death and destruction that I was witnessing must have been what some witnessed during the bombings in World War II. America had never had to witness something like that before.

Al Qaeda had been hiding, plotting and training in Afghanistan. That was where there leader was holding up and bragging to the world what he had done to the great Satan, the United States. His reasoning was because of not anything that we had done. It was because of the support we were giving to groups and governments that he said were suppressing Islam. It was not our freedom that he hated it was how we used our power and wealth. That is why it had to be the World Trade Center. Innocent people died because he wanted to attack our money and the power that we exercised using around the world. The World Trade Center was a symbol of that power. They all came into the country legally and even trained here in America and we never took any precautions.

The nation rallied around our President similar to how they rallied around Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor. Right after the September 11^th attack we had the support of pretty much the entire free world. Some will say we wanted revenge but others will say that we needed Justice. We needed to hold those people responsible accountable and we did. Along the way we made many mistakes and even got sidetracked little but that may be for another blog. Al Qaeda now is no longer much of a force but it took us just under ten years to find Osama Bin Laden who was not in Afghanistan but hiding in Pakistan right under the noses of the local authorities. In the end though we were a country that held the people responsible for 9/11 accountable. Will we ever have closure. I don’t know. There are still so many questions that have not been answered that it makes closure difficult.

On Jan 6^th we were again attacked by terrorists but what was different. This time it was an attack on our freedom by domestic terrorists. I will never forget it unfolding in front of me on live television. People storming into our Capitol wanting to hang our Vice President. People wanting to hang the Speaker of the House. People wanting to install a non-elected person to the Presidency of the United States. These people were sent by the outgoing President of the United States Donald Trump. Like Osama Bin Laden he had attacked our democracy. Just like Osama Bin Laden we need accountability. We held Al Qaeda accountable and the country is safer for it. We must also hold Trump accountable. If we do not our democracy may crumble.