Thanks for posting this. It's too easy to forget with all the real and imagined "crises" we are inundated with by the news media daily and hourly.
I watched the History Channels annual "102 Minutes" again last night, I've watched it when repeated several times over the years, and for a few minutes, I am made to re-experience the outrage I and so many others felt. And should still feel.
I thought then that a war had in effect begun, and reluctantly guessed it could take twenty years to resolve. Here, seventeen in, and clearly it's got a long way to go still. I had thought that after a generation of failed Jihad against the West, the next generation would see that no amount of suicidal attacks had materially changed the state of the world or Islam and that this phase of its resistance would move on to something else.
Well, obviously I was wrong. Or, at the very least, the "progress" of the Jihad would be against fellow Muslims (and such Christians they could attack) in the Middle East and Muslim world in general. With the advent of ISIS and the energy that went into the attempt to recreate The Caliphate, a great deal was invested over there and less so against the West.
As the general Jihad continues to spread, and new potential bases of operation (as Afghanistan was in 2001) develop in North Africa and elsewhere, it may only be a matter of time before it returns to direct attacks of the most spectacular they can arrange on the West.
Then again, the Jihad may become subsumed into Iran's continuing efforts to become the dominant power in the Middle East and Islam in general (despite the gulf between Shia and Sunni).
Sorry for the meandering rant, but 9/11 was the beginning of a larger war as surely as 12/7/41 was the point where two regional wars boiled over into a general war. So, being in a new world war now for some seventeen years, my thoughts are still directed towards how to win it, and when it might be possible.
TVAG
!" from the radio room next door to the ship's office. The Chief Radioman never swore. Ever.
