9/11 changed everything.
They say “Never Forget” 9/11 and I know I certainly won’t. It was the worst attack ever carried out on U.S. soil and it hit home very hard for me, since I was in New Jersey at the time and a significant number of victims on 9/11 were from my home state. My heart still weeps uncontrollably for the men and women who died that day, all of whom went about their normal business thinking they would see a tomorrow that never came.
We have been at war ever since, beginning with Afghanistan.
Now, our Armed Forces are spread out all over the Middle East, battling numerous countries in wars that seem like they may never end.
Strangely, the country to which the vast majority of the 9/11 hijackers belonged – Saudi Arabia – has not been touched. I was hopeful that President Trump, who seems to march to the beat of his own drum on these matters, may have been different when it comes to kowtowing to the Saudis.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case thus far.
Not only have we not stopped kowtowing to the Saudis, we have allowed them to get away with all kinds of human rights abuses and we have done nothing to put pressure on them to do their duty when it comes to the migrant crisis in the Middle East.
As noted Middle Eastern scholar Daniel Pipes explains, “Saudi Arabia has many unique attractions for Sunni Muslims. To begin with, it has 100,000 high-quality, empty fiberglass tents that can house about 3 million people in Mina, just east of Mecca. Fireproof and air-conditioned, complete with toilets and kitchens, this unique resource is occupied a mere five days a year by pilgrims on the hajj.”
In demonstrating how little the Saudis have contributed here, Pipes notes that the amount of Syrians in that country is shockingly low:
“One study, by Lori Plotkin Boghardt of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, estimates the number in the ‘low hundreds of thousands,’ say 150,000. That’s a small fraction of the over 4 million in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan — and just 5 percent of the migrants who could be housed just in Mina’s splendid tents.”
So on this day when we remember the tragic deaths of thousands of innocent people, let’s also remember who was ultimately responsible for carrying out the attack and continue to push for them to have to answer for it. Money shouldn’t buy a pass in these matters, but it repeatedly has and probably always will.
They say you have to know your history so that you don’t repeat past mistakes, but it seems like no matter what we know about the history of this event, nothing is going to stop the same mistake – ring-kissing of the Saudi Royal Family while they support terrorists who wish to do us harm –from being made over and over again.
And that’s a damn shame.