Greetings from the lounge at Heathrow Airport. I’m sitting here cooling my heels waiting to catch my flight back to the US. I am happy to be going home.
It did not dawn on me till yesterday-what day I had been booked to travel. Today is the 9th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. Has it really been 9 years? It seems as if the decade has just flashed by.
There is a very good article by George Friedman ( the guy who wrote the book about the Next 100 years)-about what this day means, and what it also does not mean. I strongly commend it to you-it is a good read.
But let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States. Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attack. That is a tragedy, but in a nation of over 300 million, 3,000 deaths cannot be permitted to define the totality of national strategy. Certainly, resources must be devoted to combating the threat and, to the extent possible, disrupting it. But it must also be recognized that terrorism cannot always be blocked, that terrorist attacks will occur and that the world’s only global power cannot be captive to this single threat.
Read more: 9/11 and the 9-Year War | STRATFOR
Read more: 9/11 and the 9-Year War | STRATFOR
Time to go board the plane.