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Message: [QUOTE="uconndoit, post: 3269159, member: 782"] Posted elsewhere by a friend of mine: << Reposted with permission from Lars Ampler (a US administrator with whom I crossed paths in Afghanistan): “I’m not interested in your 9/11 memes... In my humble opinion September the 11th should not represent anything that we celebrate in any fashion, what-so-ever. We were attacked; innocents died on those planes and in those buildings: And brave public servants died as well. But 9/11 was an intelligence failure that spanned two administrations. And our response – 18 years fighting multiple wars, only one of which was even remotely related to the attack- has been an even bigger failure. While I am a veteran, I had been off active duty for several years by the time of 9/11. I was working in a classified space at a DoD Think Tank just a mile or so from the Pentagon, and heard the explosion as a plane hit that building. I/we lost brothers-in-arms that day, and my old unit rucked-up and was in Afghanistan just about a month later. I arrived in Kabul a few months after that. September 11th 2001 filled us all with the extreme emotions of the moment, and blinded us to the long-term consequences of decisions that were made that day and on subsequent days. Some of those decisions were made in good faith by hard-working public servants. But I firmly believe that other decisions were made by callous calculating mercenaries who saw opportunities for personal and/or political gain in the war they knew would come. September 11th was the first day of eighteen years of bad decisions (with good decisions in-among, but overwhelmed by the bad) that cost our great country immeasurably in blood and treasure. It was the kick-off of almost two decades of travesty that went unchallenged because to speak-up was somehow seen to be “unpatriotic,” or to somehow devalue the sacrifices our men and women overseas were making: When, in actuality, the opposite was true. The consequences of our patriotism, blinded by rage, have depleted our treasury (they were un-funded wars), and devastated one, if not two, generations of Americans. To be clear, I am not speaking-ill of the first responders, soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, FSOs, Civil Servants, Contractors or others who have sacrificed in this incredibly long trail of wars. But I am disgusted by the leaders who initiated them so blindly (or, less charitably, so driven by greed) and who pursued them so poorly.” >> [/QUOTE]

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