Thoughts on 11 September....

It feels like it's been a lifetime since I was walking in the hall at graduate school and Karen stopped me. It was 6:30am and we walked into the lounge where a handful of other students were watching the twin towers of the World Trade Center burning. The scene was surreal.

We must never forget that there are people and groups of people who hate us because of who we are. There are those who resent the liberties of the American way of life so much that they would kill us.

Their hatred does not stop at hijacking airliners and killing faceless thousands. They delight in the very personal killing of defenseless individuals, too. Do not forget Nick Berg and Danny Pearl and the many others who suffered torture, disfigurement, and beheading in the most painful and sadistic ways.

Their sadism is not reserved only for the unbeliever. They endorse and enjoy mutilating, torturing, humiliating, and degrading Muslim women. The lifelong abuse of women in Islamic culture breeds a mother that is capable of desiring her offspring become martyrs by blowing themselves to pieces in the process of murdering innocent and unsuspecting people.

Their stated objective is to kill all infidels and create an Islamic state ruled under sharia law.

While for you and me it seems a lifetime since 9/11, for the Muslim terrorist it has only been a short while in which he has worked and trained and gathered in preparation for his next action.

We must never lose sight of the fact that whether or not we are at war with terrorists, they are at war with us. The horrific and cowardly attacks we saw on 9/11 were not the beginning and they were not the end. This is a fight that will continue as long as good and evil coexist on earth. We cannot opt out of it. We can choose sides or sides will be chosen for us.