THIS WAS NO ACCIDENT

I walked into our pastor's office to say, "Hi" to the staff before going to my own office to start my duties for the day.

"A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center," said the pastor.

He had a TV in his office and the entire staff was watching as the newsmen tried to make sense of what they were reporting.

Suddenly our secretary shouted out, "Wait...there's another one."

We looked at each other and I muttered, "This is no accident."

Sure enough, 19 Middle Eastern men, it turns out, were involved in a plot to fly two jets into the twin towers, one into the Pentagon and one, presumably, into the Capitol building in Washington DC.

This was an attack that killed 2,977 innocents in those two towers.

The Twin Towers represented all that is "wrong" with the Great Satan, America to the perpetrators...the center of the economic activity of the U.S. and the world.

In the Middle East, there was celebration...some of it very public, much of it in clandestine meetings in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Make no mistake, the leaders of this radical element of Islam considered this an act of war on the U.S. and saw it as a great victory.

Now days it is fashionable to "try to understand" what might have driven these radicals to such a dastardly deed.

What did America do to cause such hatred?

The answer is, "No matter...there is NO excuse for the taking of innocent lives."

Just as there is no excuse for killing in response to the burning of a few copies of Qur'an.

Just as there is no excuse for killing in response to drawing a cartoon of Mohammad.

These people just like to kill, and will do so for almost any reason.

They kill their own women for breaking imagined religious rules.

They cut off the hands of thieves.

They inflict cruel and unusual punishment routinely, so that it is cruel, but no longer unusual.

To point out these propensities is called "Islamaphobia."

Well, I confess: I hate this element of Islam, and will defend myself against it to the best of my ability.

Today, we have the insidious suggestion that building a "community center" that includes a place for these very people to worship is somehow going to build a bridge of understanding between them and us.

It will not.

If you think that is the motive for the building of such a center, you are Pollyannic and can't see the truth when it is as close as the end of your nose.

In the minds of the perps, this was a successful war on America.

As a forgiving society, we are on the verge of forgetting what really happened on that day nine years ago.

We do so at our peril.

If we are to remain the land of the free and the home of the brave, we must

NEVER FORGET!!