I’m not going to pretend to be a 9/11 guru. I don’t have total knowledge of the event. What I do remember is that the event changed me. I’m a different person today then I was 18 years ago.
I was on call the night before. I got home and was in bed. My mother-in-law called and said that a plane hit one of the twin towers. My mother-in-law seemed to never sleep. She always had the news on. She was always very concerned about some blonde teenager who was missing in Haiti or the Bahamas. I told my wife, after she hung up the phone, don’t worry about it. Then I figured that I would turn on the TV. For the next several hours, I sat in bed and watched the events unfold.
The first lesson that I learned was that a determined enemy can inflict damage on a much larger foe. The twin towers going down were heart breaking to see. Over 2700 people lost their lives.
The second lesson that I learned as that we were asleep at the wheel. There were plenty of clues but no one in charge thought that a band of knuckleheads could really attack the United States. If the job of the US government is to protect the people then they failed.
The third lesson is that we went into the “War on Terror” like a bull in a China shop. Either you are with us or against us. We killed or kidnapped anyone in our way. This created tons of new enemies.
The fourth lesson is that folks in power have agendas. We half invaded Afghanistan then decided Afghanistan doesn’t matter any more. We decided that Iraq was the problem. We packed up and took the show to Iraq. We tried to do the war on a budget. We were told that Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion. We didn’t get Iraqi oil. Folks at companies that we had never heard of before made billions of dollars (Halliburton).
The fifth lesson is that we can be real bad assess when we need to be. We completely folded up Al Qaeda in Asia. We kicked butt and took names.
What lessons did you learn?
