About 9 Am on a Tuesday morning seven years ago I awoke with the anticipation of placing
I was finally getting to go to live on the beach--specifically the hamlet of Mexico Beach, Florida.
"THE" house fire earlier on April 5th of that same year had reduced my inventory of "personal stuff" to a manageable size better transported on a few hangers, in a couple of suitcases, and stuffed into a few boxes in my vehicle rather than a U-haul or Atlas moving van.
As I turned on the TV and flipped through the Atlanta cable channels I quickly realized that something was amiss in the Big Apple.
Smoke was pouring out of the south tower and the commentary was that an airliner had accidentally crashed into the building on approach or departure from JFK, Newark, or La Guardia.
Before I could finish digesting the implications of an aviation "accident" involving a modern jetliner and one of the World Trade Center towers, the live TV images of yet another airplane striking the second tower proceeded to change my life in the short term and open a new chapter in international conflict between religion and ideologies rather than just countries and governments.
I actually delayed my cross country journey by a day because part of the route involved the interstate highway system and required that I drive through the entire length of Tyndal Air Force Base (home of the new F-22 fighters.) Since they were closing down all air travel, I was afraid that they could do the same with the interstates and I didn't want to spend a couple of expensive nights in a Holiday Inn in Lagrange, GA or Tuskeegee, AL.
That said, I knew in my mind that people should finally get it. The cold war and other silly battles we fight each day might be over, but a new chapter in an ancient religious conflict that had swept through Europe and Asia a thousand years ago was just then beginning on this continent.
No longer was it Auburn against Alabama...Georgia against Florida or Georgia Tech...or even your home town high school football team against the next town.
No longer was it George Wallace Democrats against Richard Nixon's big-city party.
No longer was it black against white or white against black.
It wasn't Crips versus Bloods (militant Muslim jihadists would cut the head off of a bad assed gang member just as quickly as they'd sever my cerebral cortex and skull from my Redneck spinal column and vertebrae C2 or C3.)
It wasn't even Protestant against Catholic since Ireland and the IRA had settled their religious/territorial differences.
I say that what we were seeing then and continue to see today was/is the public emergence on the world stage of the power and influence of money earned over only the past SEVENTY years since oil was discovered and commercially developed by US and European interests in the middle east.
Their "religious" hatred (and envy or our way of life) had been there all along, but the financial means and logistical infrastructure needed to carry out their brand of prosthletizing and "witnessing" had only come to fruition as our leaders and many of my ignorant fellow citizens ignored distant prophetical events like various embassy bombings, the killing of Israeli Olympic athletes, the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, the USS Cole, and even the first attack on the World Trade Center under President Clinton's auspices
In spite of what YOU think or choose to believe, they're still out there waiting for the next opportunity--for us through apathy and a short political memory to become distracted from the fight by worries of tax cuts and fears of being perceived as "the bad guys" by the pacifists in Europe and the rest of the world.
As president Ronald Reagan said back in 1984 (that would be TWENTY FOUR YEARS AGO...AND see my previous posting for more of his words):
"History teaches that wars begin when governments [or terorists] believe the price of aggression is cheap."
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