“One year like any old other year

In a week like any week

Monday lying down

Half asleep

People doing what people do

Loving, working and getting through

No portraits on the walls

Of Seventh Avenue”

-lyrics to “Tuesday” by Five for Fighting

In a couple of days, we’ll mark another anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people.  It’s also the first anniversary of the attack on our embassy in Benghazi that left our ambassador there dead, along with three brave Americans.  That second incident could never have happened, I’m afraid, without some amount of forgetting about the first one by some people in very high places.  It appears now we may be on the eve of yet another war…this time, though, our brave soldiers will be sent to Syria to fight on the side of the people who took down those two massive towers—and left the lives of thousands changed forever.

Sure, we’re being told that this isn’t going to war, necessarily- just some very precise strikes at certain locations.  Does anyone really believe this?  Given the record of this president and his cohorts, how can we ever trust what they say?  These are the same people who blamed the Benghazi attack on a poorly-made You Tube movie by some guy no one ever heard of (who only recently got out of jail on supposedly “unrelated charges”).

They’re the same people who, to this day, refer to the deadly shootings at Fort Hood in 2009, as an incident of “workplace violence” instead of calling it what it really was.  Just for future reference, Mr. President and Mr. Eric Holder:  when someone shouts “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is greater”) while shooting American soldiers—or while flying planes full of people into buildings full of people—he or she is in full jihadi mode.  It’s called a terrorist attack.

They also ignored warnings from Russian intelligence about the two brothers who executed a successful attack at the Boston Marathon earlier this year where 3 people died and hundreds more sustained life-altering injuries.  At least that one they did see fit to call an act of terrorism, even though they had proclaimed last year that the War on Terror was officially over.  In fact, when Obama became president, he didn’t even want the phrase to be a part of the government’s lexicon, preferring to call the War on Terror an “overseas contingency operation”.  Political correctness gone wild.

Since then, he’s tried to fight multiple wars the PC way, by letting the enemy know in advance when we’ll be leaving the area, not even calling those who want to kill us “enemies” (or acknowledging that there are people who want to kill us), and neither defining nor desiring victory.   Only a horse’s behind could concoct such a motto as “Lead from behind.”

The words from the song noted above were written by John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting.  He captures very well the mindset of Monday, September 10, 2001.  I wouldn’t say we were a nation of innocence and naiveté back then, but compared to what happened on Tuesday and in the years since, it pretty much was an innocent time.

Maybe we’ve forgotten that there was once a time when people who took you to the airport or picked you up could actually go right up to the gate.  Or that getting on a plane didn’t involve removing any articles of clothing or being touched by a total stranger.  The Constitution of the United States has taken a brutal beating over the past twelve years (even before Obama) to the point that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t recognize it or the nation that still claims to be governed by it.

It’s easy and maybe even convenient for those of us who didn’t lose a loved one, either on 9/11/01 or 9/11/12 to allow our memories of these days to fade, only to look back once a year when we’re sure to see some retrospective on a cable news channel.

But for those who lost someone, they live with the results of terrorism every day.  They’d probably give anything for it to be Monday, September 10^th  again, just to have one last chance to see, talk to or hug the one they lost.  Many of us haven’t forgotten them, but I’m not so sure about our “leaders”.  It took less than a dozen years to go from Never Forget…to Try to Remember.

 “The thing about memories

They’re sure and bound to fade

Except for the stolen souls

Left upon her blade

Is Monday coming back?

That’s what Mondays do”

Ground Zero in 2006: Memorial wall listing names of victims of WTC attacks

***NOTE:  You can listen to “Tuesday” by Five for Fighting HERE.  And watch my video tribute to the victims of 9/11/01 by clicking the “Remembering 9/11/01” photo that is always linked from this page.