The 12th Anniversary of September 11; Terrorism Is Not a Motive, but Is Illegitimate Warfare

           This year was the first that I did not post on the anniversary of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks.  I am sorry, my dear readers, for not posting at the time.  School board business and political campaign matters have been taking up much of my time lately, but I do wish to offer a few thoughts, nevertheless. 

I also wanted to wait until the next day before posting that there were no attacks this year, unlike last year, when Americans learned the next morning that the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya had been attacked and the Ambassador murdered and three other Americans killed.  This year, there was only an attack a few days after the anniversary on the American Consulate in Herat, Afghanistan by the Taliban that resulted in no American casualties.

            The twelfth anniversary of the attacks means, of course, that Americans have survived another year mostly free of terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland, except for the Boston Marathon bombings, although there was nothing on the scale of September 11.  There were relatively few terrorist attacks on Americans abroad, although jihadist attacks on U.S. military and other government targets continued.  In addition to the American people themselves, the Executive and Legislative Branches of the Federal Government deserve the most credit for preventing another September 11.  Additional credit belongs to the Judicial Branch and to the States.  Included within the Executive Branch are the military and other federal officials charged with terrorism prevention, investigation and prosecution. 

However, the Obama Administration still has failed to conduct trials for the September 11 conspirators, which it had halted not long after taking office in 2009.  Also, as I had posted earlier this month, although the 2009 deadly attacks on the Arkansas recruiting station and on Ft. Hood were not terrorism because they did not target innocent civilians, they were examples of militant Islam and therefore should be declared acts of war by the Obama Administration and treated accordingly.  The Administration has declined to declare the shootings acts of war for political reasons that preclude it from identifying the Islamist enemy and its motive, which compromises its ability to win the War on Terrorism.

            There were media speculations about the motivations for the recent shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., which apparently was committed by a mentally ill individual.  “Terrorism” was considered as a possible motive, even though the target was a military command center, not innocent civilians.  Terrorism is not a motive, but a strategy.  In fact, terrorism is the waging a particular type of illegitimate warfare, specifically one that targets innocent civilians to create mass terror to intimidate the populace into accepting the demands of the terrorists.  The motives for terrorism would be the ideological goal for the strategy, such as promoting Palestinian statehood or waging Islamic jihad.  The better that Americans and others around the world understand the particular evil of terrorism, the better it can be identified as distinct from other acts, opposed and prevented. 

           The continued efforts of federal and state officials and the cooperation and vigilance of the American people are succeeding in helping to save lives and to maintain freedom from terror.  These efforts must be maintained and not diminished.  Most of all, Americans and other liberty-loving people around the world must continue to resist the demands of terrorists to guarantee that terrorism would never be a successful strategy.