9/11 : It's not about your personal or political agenda

Eight years. Sometimes it seems like yesterday. Other times as I watch the bickering and abuse of the day and deaths as just another pawn in personal and political agendas, I wonder if it wasn't a lifetime ago instead.

Personally, today I choose to honor both the fallen and those who continue to fight to keep us safe in the fields abroad. For a short six months after our great nation was attacked by radical Islam, we came together as a country. Then we allowed the two main political parties in the country to steer us both back the few petty things that divide us instead of the countless things that unite us as Americans. I reflect upon all of this.

The next time you hear the media or defeatist politicians bemoaning the latest deaths of our warriors in the field I ask you to consider this: Since 2001, our total military deaths both combat and non-combat related in Afghanistan and Iraq total under 5100. That's about 5100 trained military men and women in just under eight years. Then remember that over 3000 civilians died in one day on 9/11/2001. Not military men. Civilian mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives who just went to work that morning. When you compare 5100 military deaths in eight years to 3000 civilian deaths in one day, and further consider that those military personnel are fighting on foreign soil taking fire from terrorists so that you and I do not have to do so again here, how can anybody justify the surrender attitude of the left and others? When you take the time to put it in proper perspective, the surrender moaning seems beyond silly doesn't it?

Never forget that day and how it made you feel. Don't forget who did it, and the pictures of their supporters rejoicing around the world. Don't surrender. They will only follow us home. And next time it may be even more than 3000 people who die in an even larger calamity when they do.