On Tuesday, 9/11/01, I was having breakfast and preparing to catch the train to Los Angeles for a day of teaching first year medical students. I was watching a special edition of Good Morning America which was on early because of a mysterious fire in the World Trade Center. Normally, that program did not come on in California until 7 AM and it was just after 6, nine o’clock in New York. As Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson talked about the fire, a huge explosion occurred in the second, heretofore undamaged WTC tower. Diane Sawyer flinched visibly and I went into the other room to awaken my significant other suggesting she turn on the TV. This was not just a fire.

We hadn’t yet seen the video of the planes flying into them so there was still some mystery about what was going on. I still was scheduled to teach, although I doubted much would be accomplished that day, but I changed and caught the train. Much of the talk about the medical campus was vague and of the sort one would hear at any disaster occasion. Nobody yet was talking about the fact that we had been attacked.

What does all this mean for us nine years later ? First, radical Islam has been at war with us since 1979. We have been attacked repeatedly with major loss of life. I once attended a session at the American College of Surgeons meeting by the surgeons who had been on the ships offshore of Lebanon when the Iranians blew up the marine Barracks in Beirut. That was 1983.

In one of Ronald Reagan’s worst foreign policy decisions, he had placed those Marines in the middle of the Lebanese civil war and left them unarmed. The guards at the entrance to the underground garage saw the truck with the bomb coming. They saw the driver grinning as he saw success for his mission and his 72 virgins waiting. But their M 16s were not loaded. I have heard arguments that this is not true but the fact remains they did not fire.

The surgeons said the worst part of the whole disaster was that there were no patients. They received no wounded to treat. The Marines were all dead. 241 Americans died, including some CIA personnel who were at work early. The bombing was a sophisticated operation by Iran. We bombed Libya for a less serious incident. Why did Reagan not retaliate for the Marine barracks bombing ?

There is an interesting book, called Rogue Warrior by a former SEAL who retired as a full commander. He was in Beirut before the bombing and has a number of harsh criticisms of our security. Among other things, he writes that the US knew that truck bombs, which had been used before, had remote detonation devices activated by radio in case the driver had second thoughts. Since we knew the frequencies used, why not send out random signals to set off any bombs that might be under assembly or in transit. He was turned down because of the risk of civilian casualties. Better the bombs reach their target intact, I guess.

Bush attacked Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to give up bin Laden and his fighters, once they had been identified as the perpetrators. At first there was hand wringing from the usual suspects that we would be involved in a “quagmire” in Afghanistan. Initial reports of less that unqualified success were seized upon by the political left. There were actually peace marches conducted against any invasion of that country. Those marches have been conveniently forgotten by the Democrats.

We threw out the Taliban and made a good faith effort at stabilizing Afghanistan but now I think it is time to quit that fight. Our enemy over there is Pakistan, or at least the radical elements of the Pakistan Army and the ISI. I stated my reasons nearly a year ago and have not changed my mind. Our primary enemy remains Iran. That seems to be forgotten. The NY Post seems to get it.

Tags: Afghanistan, terrorism