Eleven years ago today, Islamists murdered 246 people on the four planes (from which there were no survivors).  2,606 were murdered in New York City in the World Trade Center and on the ground, and 125 were murdered at the Pentagon. About 292 people were killed at street level by burning debris and the falling bodies of those who had jumped from the World Trade Center’s windows. All the deaths in the attacks were civilians except for 55 military personnel killed at the Pentagon.  372 of those murdered were foreign nationals.  The 19 dead murderers are not included in any of these counts. (Adapted from Wikipedia)

In his 1984 book, The Haj, Leon Uris explains the heritage of such murderers.  The setting is Tabah, 1937,  when the British have sent a liaison officer  to support Gideon Asch who is a first generation Jewish emigrant from Romania.  He has become an effective fighter for the Shomer,  protectors of the settlements in the Galilee.  The officer, Wingate, says to Gideon:

“…The Jews will eventually have to face up to what you’re dealing with here.  The Arabs will never love you for what good you’ve brought them.  They don’t know how to really love.  But hate!  Oh God, can they hate!  And they have a deep, deep, deep resentment because you have jolted them from their delusions of grandeur and shown them for what they are–a decadent, savage people controlled by a religion that has stripped them of all human ambition…except for the few cruel enough and arrogant enough to command them as one commands a mob of sheep.  You are dealing with a mad society and you’d better learn how to control it.”

We have lived the truth that there is a time for tears and anguish, as Ecclesiastes 3:4 says.  We can’t help but relive sad memory, including the mental still shots of that day of evil; but let us also deliberately step out of lingering grief, away from our own sense of trauma and uncertainty and away from our own memories of where we were when we realized what was happening–and let us deliberately take our stand on the line that must be drawn for the sake of truth and for the sake of our nation.  Think of Todd Beamer, who stood on that line immediately, with almost no advance notice.

We’ve now had 11 years to comprehend what Mr. Beamer and his fellow passengers had about 15 minutes to get their heads around.  Their deaths taught us that we are not safe, and the years since their deaths have taught us that our lack of safety is, in fact, a harvest resulting from deliberately-seeded national deception.  May God bless their memory and strengthen their surviving family and friends.  And may God grant us wisdom and endurance to fight for that which, unknown to us, had already been lost before they were violently murdered in the midst of going about their business on a normal day.

That third chapter of Ecclesiastes paints the big picture with regard to times and seasons: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven…”  v. 8 specifically makes the point that there is “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”    Can we understand that times of peace and love are worthless if we don’t have the courage to hate when it is time, and to engage in war when it is time?

According to v. 7, there is ” a time to speak.” Today is not a time only for silent grieving.  It is also a time for speaking the truth about these dangerous times with knowledge and passion.

Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, 2016,  confirms that the ongoing battle to save our nation  has deep and direct connections with the Islamists who murdered our countrymen eleven years ago.

Remember their lives on the anniversary of their death.  Remember why they died.   They acquitted themselves well.   Let’s do the same.