Seven Years Later

I will never forget where I was that morning. I was a senior at Southwest High School. I had forgotten my wallet in my football locker the previous evening after practice. On my way to school, I swung by the football field to grab my wallet. I had "Dave Ryan in the Morning" playing on the radio of my trusty 1990 Chevy Celebrity. Just as I was pulling up to the football field, Dave Ryan came on the air, and mentioned a news brief, just coming across the AP Wire about a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center buildings. At the time, they, as I, couldn't figure out what had happened. There were a few jokes about a prop plane gone astray. "How could a pilot not see a skyscraper?" That sort of thing.

Less than 30 minutes later, all of our lives had been changed. I remember running into my adviser's room (Mrs. Sexton) and telling her she had to turn on the TV. Something was happening. There was President Bush getting the news (He gets the news at 1:02 but doesn't move for another 5 minutes even after two planes had crashed into the two World Trade Center Towers). We all would spend the rest of the day sitting in front of televisions. We moved from class to class, almost like zombies. Not sure what to think. Was this some sort of anarchist revolution? There were planes crashing into buildings, and fires on the D.C. Mall (later proved to be a false report on CNN). Greta Van Sustren reported helicopters crashing at the pentagon (Also later proved false - it had been an airplane). What was happening?

Well, it's 7 years later, and we are no closer to Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. As CBS points out:

Seven years after Sept. 11, 2001, in spite of President Bush's vows, the mastermind of the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil, Osama bin Laden, is still at large and leading a resurgent al Qaeda.

Since that day, al Qaeda has struck in Madrid, London, Bali, and Casablanca. The group has claimed more than a dozen terror attacks around the world and many hundreds more in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving thousands of dead and wounded.

John McCain would continue the failed policies of the Bush administration. At least, the Bush administration before the Bush administration started adopting Barack Obama's foreign policy positions over the past few weeks.

Incredibly, Bush has conceded to opening up some channels for lower level dialogue with Iran. Hmmm...Wasn't it Barack Obama who was skewered by the right and the center-left for his insistence at the CNN-YouTube debate on keeping all dialogue options on the table for dealing with Iran?

Bush too has decided that he is willing to work with Iraqi President Al-Malaki who has insisted on a time-table for troop withdrawal. Sec. of State Rice has even stated that the U.S. and Iraq are coming together on the issue of a timetable for troop withdrawal. Again, haven't we heard Barack Obama calling for this for months? Years?

Most important, considering today's anniversary, President Bush is finally starting to see it Obama's way on Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda. Obama was slaughtered by the media (are we sure it's his base??) for his statement that if he had the opportunity to take out high level Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, he would do so with or without permission from the government in Islamabad. Well, just this past week we learned that U.S. forces have commenced airstrikes aimed at targeted Al-Qaeda leadership within sovereign Pakistani territory. Actually, these tactical strikes may have been going on since February, just after Obama made is ill-fated statement. John McCain, in his victory speech when he claimed the presumptive nomination of the GOP this spring, attacked Obama for his position, calling it inexperienced. What would he say now?

Obama has been right time and again. It has just taken a long time to convince the Bush administration. Obama has been calling for years for a stronger presence in Afghanistan to allow us to go after the real perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. As Obama puts it, the war in Iraq has distracted us from the real war on terror. This is from a speech that Obama gave in August. Of 2007.

By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

It is time to turn the page. When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.

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After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story. To devise new strategies and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united. Friends around the world stood shoulder to shoulder with us. We had the might and moral-suasion that was the legacy of generations of Americans. The tide of history seemed poised to turn, once again, toward hope.

But then everything changed.

We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland.

Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

And so, a little more than a year after that bright September day, I was in the streets of Chicago again, this time speaking at a rally in opposition to war in Iraq. I did not oppose all wars, I said. I was a strong supporter of the war in Afghanistan. But I said I could not support "a dumb war, a rash war" in Iraq. I worried about a " U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences" in the heart of the Muslim world. I pleaded that we "finish the fight with bin Ladin and al Qaeda."

The political winds were blowing in a different direction. The President was determined to go to war. There was just one obstacle: the U.S. Congress. Nine days after I spoke, that obstacle was removed. Congress rubber-stamped the rush to war, giving the President the broad and open-ended authority he uses to this day. With that vote, Congress became co-author of a catastrophic war. And we went off to fight on the wrong battlefield, with no appreciation of how many enemies we would create, and no plan for how to get out.

Because of a war in Iraq that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged, we are now less safe than we were before 9/11.

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It is time to turn the page. It is time to write a new chapter in our response to 9/11.

As President, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO's efforts against the Taliban...Above all, I will send a clear message: we will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared. And today, that security is most threatened by the al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan.

Al Qaeda terrorists train, travel, and maintain global communications in this safe-haven. The Taliban pursues a hit and run strategy, striking in Afghanistan, then skulking across the border to safety.

This is the wild frontier of our globalized world. There are wind-swept deserts and cave-dotted mountains. There are tribes that see borders as nothing more than lines on a map, and governments as forces that come and go. There are blood ties deeper than alliances of convenience, and pockets of extremism that follow religion to violence. It's a tough place.

But that is no excuse. There must be no safe-haven for terrorists who threaten America. We cannot fail to act because action is hard.

As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

Now Bush finally seems to be agreeing with Obama. Again. Bush is set to draw down the troop levels in Iraq and shift resources to Afghanistan. It's about time.

Let's get the right man for the job into the Oval Office. Obama '08.