The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 just reached their 16th anniversary and it seems that the lessons we learned from them are already fading from memory. It’s been said that history repeats itself and that is because people forget the lessons history teaches us. What is surprising is that no matter how recent the history may be, our polarized political atmosphere tosses the lessons aside. There are a key lessons that we must be reminded of lest we forget them and history is repeated: we have enemies, preemptive strikes must be a possibility, and doing nothing and appeasement doesn’t work.
- We have enemies. When we look into the world today it is very easy to identify a few of our enemies, North Korea and ISIS, but it is the enemies that we fail to recognize that are scary. In the case of radical Islamic terror, especially state-sponsored terror, Hezbollah, Iran, and the like must also be on the list. 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were Saudi, many of which overstayed their visas. I don’t agree entirely with how Trump is going about reforming immigration but it is a good thing that he at least considers it a problem. Focusing on border walls is not enough as over half of those here illegally in America are overstaying their visas and there must be a system to make sure we don’t lose track of these people.
- Preemptive strikes and security based foreign policy must be a possibility. It is better to fight terrorists in their country so that they don’t get to come to our country. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, from the book Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying To Destroy America
“KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States ‘turned tail and ran.’
‘Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down? ““KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.”
Trump continuing the war in Afghanistan and stronger American foreign policy is a good thing. Another large scale attack is still a possibility, and if we discount fighting terrorists on their own land or taking preemptive action, another attack could become a reality.
3. Appeasement and doing nothing are not solutions. As a nationally qualifying member of the PV history bowl team, I could name hundreds of examples of this. One of the most recent examples being the Arab Spring. The Obama administration thought that “encouraging democracy” in the Arab Spring was an acceptable strategy. They were wrong. U.S. supporting governments and other stable governments were toppled and as we can tell now, most specifically in the case of Syria and Libya, supporting the Arab Spring was the wrong move.
