Twenty-one years ago today I was riding my motorcycle to work, a little late, but almost there. My boss, Governor Rick Perry, called me along the way, and I had to pull over to get the phone out, take off my helmet, and answer him.
He asked me if I still had family in New York (I didn’t) and if I had seen the news (I hadn’t). He told me to get to the office as fast as I could.
I arrived to everyone standing in one room staring at the TV. I walked in almost exactly as the second plane hit the South Tower.
A short time later we learned of the plane hitting the Pentagon. One of the people I occasionally worked with, an incredibly intelligent woman, Barbara Olson, died on that flight.
Over the course of that day, the nature of those attacks became evident, and over the next days I would hear so many people talk about what “we” were going to do.
Friends, co-workers, everyone, was talking about how “we” were going to get the people who did this. “We” were going to go over there and kick the hell out of them. “We” were going to make them pay. “We” were going to keep our nation, and her people, safe.
I came to realize that everyone I was talking to didn’t think “we” meant the same thing I thought it did. Those people meant “we” in the same sense they talked about “we” on the football field. They knew damn well they weren’t playing in that game, and had no intention of ever doing so.
To me, “we” meant you and me. A short time later I got that it was really just me. So I signed up, as an enlisted man, and became a medic. No one, and I mean not one of the people I worked with — family, friends — no one did the same. Those people actually meant “they” every time they said “we.”
And that’s the crux of the issue before us today in regards to our daily carry of firearms. Around our nation, far too many people attempt to pass on their duty to protect themselves and the others they are responsible for. They depend on us to protect them, all the while saying “we” are safe.
No folks, I am safe. I make myself safe, and I’ll do my best to make you safe, too. But if you aren’t taking responsibility for your own safety, if you walked out of the house today unready, there’s no “we” to it.
For those of you who did, who on this day woke up, tooled up, and went about your life, thank you for standing with me. I am proud of our nation, and proud of us.
This post was originally published in 2015.
It’s always good to hear from you JWT and your reasoning resonates.
Heading out to walk the dog. Tooled up on my person and the car too. nothing like your truck but I like my odds.
Oh so true, they and we vs. me…
I taught high school social studies & geography in a small central Missouri rural town. I was careful not to push any agenda but I did not leave out facts either. At the end of the Middle East unit a 15 year old farm boy came up to me and said “Mr. Mule, we’re gonna have to fight those guys for a thousand years”. Some kids just get it.
Only if we play by “the rules”.
They cannot build the plane or the technology, just take it and crash it into buildings. No – we don’t need to fight them for a thousand years. We have to be smart and keep them in the right context – they are uneducated, primitive, and for a successful nation state will never be much more than a pest. It always amazes me that for a bunch of people who criticize the media for their coverage of gun, we don’t get how much of the GWOT was driven by fear and media. Instead we spent 20 years fighting people on donkeys while other nation states which are the real threat (Russia and China) were ignored. Last month – last month!! – the CIA acknowledged it needed to shift efforts from the Middle East. No kidding. It sounds like your 15 year old farm boy and perhaps you also watch too much Fox.
and this is written as a former Army platoon leader who served in Mosul 2003-2005. My name is not “achmed”. If those people are a serious threat to the greatest nation on earth, somebody is seriously deluded and is being spoonfed nonsense.
I recorded both President Bush’s Address to Congress and his subsequent SOTU from live TV. Later converted the VHS tapes to digital MP4. Still have them today and will show them to my grandchildren one day. Those speeches were taken down from YouTube many years ago, and I’ve never been able to find them anywhere. Videos of 9/11 from news sources, yes, but the President’s actual addresses to Congress, no.
So glad I kept them.
It genuinely bothers me what’s been scrubbed by YouTube and social media the last few years. An immense amount of history. Now, much of this history is recorded elsewhere, but the younger generations either don’t know where to find it, or are brainwashed to believe if it’s not in a 5 minuet clip on YouTube it’s not real.
Are these the ones you mentioned?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wPuY5hI96U Address to Congress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGwxw4tUzlo State of the Nation Broadcast
Interesting. Thx for the links. I haven’t found that first link’s footage anywhere, and I looked again as recently as a couple of years ago. I wonder if YT’s filters simply didn’t allow me to see it, even though that particular vid’s upload date is 2012.
However, the second link is a short address to the nation less than five minutes in length. The actual SOTU the following January was about an hour and a half long.
Atticus, one of my son’s best friends, was killed in a traffic crash last night a little after midnight. September 11, 2022. He was a firefighter and paramedic. He made his nation and community a safer and more pleasant place to live. Atticus, rest in peace. You did your duty.
Motor vehicles are the greatest threat to life and limb that man has ever devised.
Atticus, I never knew you. But thank you.
I’m honestly tired of people being applauded for making their money of taxpayers.
Like sorry your son’s friend died, but living off other people’s taxes isn’t something to celebrate.
Publius, I can only hope you are insincere. If your home is burning; do you intend to extinguish it with your garden hose? Or, would you rather Atticus show up with his fire truck? If you were in a traffic crash and someone you loved were dying would have told Atticus to stop life saving measures? You, sir, sound like a poor excuse for a man. I’m glad I’ve never met you.
Publius, I’ve reconcidered my response to your comment. If you are a volunteer firefighter, EMS, or LEO in your community, and paying for everything out your own pocket, then I apologize. Most people don’t agree to do any of that. If you don’t, do any of that. Sit down. Be quite and dial 911.
He lives in a dream world where “no government” is possible.
Limited government certainly is, however, and something we can continue to strive for. And it’s something that has to be continually fought for.
“No government” simply quickly leads to small but totalitarian governments.
We spent the year after 9/11 waiting and training to do our part in whatever the response was going to be – also spent that time living with heightened security, locked doors, isolated parking areas, all the “horse left the barn” long ago responses that really couldn’t make an Air Guard unit based on a municipal airport any safer in any meaningful way.
I pretty much clawed my way over my subordinates and peers to make sure I was going on the ADVON party to southern Turkey with the tents and field gear after the plans were announced – then the Turks pulled the rug out from under us, the Iraqi army had their historic collapse and Sadam’s statue fell and we spent the time after shipping all our hard to acquire aircraft spares back out to the field. Then sat and waited…
Later on I used all my well-learned political skills to wangle myself a billet at Kirkuk in July later that year and spent three “interesting” months doing what needed done in a decrepit hanger with piles of cast-off stuff from all over the theater, a gang of young, inexperienced (and way over-eager) AD USAF airmen, too many MREs and tray rats, spotty electricity and water, running convoys wearing Vietnam era flak jackets in COTS trucks (the SF folks had unarmored HUMVEEs – we mostly used Suburbans and half-ton pickups), watching tracer rounds coming in over the fence and generally enjoying the “hospitality” of northern Iraq. It wasn’t heroic, it wasn’t an action movie or some kind of catharsis – it was doing the job I trained for and keeping my oath.
I don’t dwell much on the “where I was when the Towers fell” thing – it was good that I was with my comrades, there’s nobody else I’d want to have shared that experience with – and the significance of the US response to 9/11 will be debated long and hard by bigger brains than mine, I know what my “we” did and I’m proud of how we stepped up.
“I don’t dwell much on the “where I was when the Towers fell” thing…”
For those not serving, it absolutely was as big of a deal as the Pearl Harbor sneak attack was in 1941, in terms of a national historical turning point. and should be recognized as such.
Likely more so, since the only media recording that event in Hawaii’ were a few B&W movie newsreels, while 9-11 recorded in high resolution video (and audio) people jumping to their death from hundreds of feet to avoid being burned alive…
Both happened, or were allowed to happen, to facilitate getting the US to fight a war for Jewish interests. Mainly, central banks. In the case of 9/11, it was so Americans would fight Isreal’s enemies in the middle east. It is no different than the sinking of the Lusitania, to get the US into WWI, to save the loans the US banks made to England and France.
What brand tinfoil do you use?
Illuminati
And lowlife self serving democRats tried to use 9-11 to advance their Gun Control rot…Today’s it’s holcul keeping the law-abiding unarmed and criminals armed. What a pathetic worthless pos holcul and her ilk are especially on 9-11.
Just going to say:
The Taliban never tried to make my kid transgender.
The Taliban never tried to make you go to jail for defending your self against black crime.
The Taliban never tried to flood my country with illegal immigrant foreigners.
The Taliban never tried to take Jesus out of our society. (While they don’t believe Jesus is God, they do consider Him a prophet.)
The Taliban never pushed feminism.
Long live the Taliban.
The 9/11 attackers were all Saudi/Egyptian. And they were probably organized by Mossad. Search for “Dancing Israelis”.
“The Taliban never tried to make you go to jail for defending your self against black crime.”
What did you say?
I have a problem with *all* crime, while you seem to only have a problem if certain ‘other’ people do it.
GFY, racist asshole… 🙁
Derek Chauvin is in prison because a guy stealing from a small business had a Fetanyl overdose.
Taliban didn’t riot and burn down our country. That was BLM and their (((enablers))).
It’s been 20 years. I’ve forgiven the 9/11 attackers. How can I care about them when such evil is occurring here at home?
The Taliban didn’t even do 9/11. That was Saudi Arabia. After 9/11, the US demanded that the Taliban extradite Osama. The Taliban asked for proof that Osama was responsible. The US declined and just invaded anyway. It’s unclear if Osama bin Laden even took responsibility for 9/11, as purported videos of him look like different people. After he was supposedly killed in Pakistan, his body was supposed dumped in the sea. The official narrative doesn’t add up.
The Taliban absolutely would remove Jesus from what ever society you are in, via the barrel to of an AK or the blade of a scimitar.
Feel free to think such men are hero’s, but you’ve chosen to leave out the fact child rape is an integral part of not only their society but their economy.
I think you are so angry at the left that it’s blinded you to think anyone that seems to oppose the left is an ally.
The Taliban, Russia ect.. are not “right or left wing” in the western term of the sense you perceive. They are pro themselves and will support any method or ideology to achieve their own goals of power.
And I just want to say, fuck the Taliban, and fuck you you jihadist piece of shit.
Wackjob
The sad fact is, the entire rest of the world hates the US – they love our foreign aid and the fact we ARE nato, but as a people they hate us. Maybe it has something to do with the way we stick our noses into everything.
Case in point, our aiding of Ukraine… it’s tantamount to walking in on a bar fight between rival biker gangs and pulling your pistol on the guy you saw hitting an adversary over the head with a beer bottle, instead if thinking to yourself ” time to make scarce.”
We’ve gone into country after country to “make things better”, then later disappeared into the night, usually leaving things much worse. Maybe we would be well advised to cure our own ills here – wake up people, there IS a war going own here, right on our very own soil, and NO ONE is coming to help us.
The outside forces of evil are winning, without having fired a shot.
Just going to say:
The Putin never tried to make my kid transgender. Russia enforces laws against promoting degeneracy to children.
The Putin never tried to make you go to jail for defending your self against black crime.
The Putin never tried to flood my country with illegal immigrant foreigners.
The Putin never tried to take Jesus out of our society. Russia uses state money to build new cathedrals.
The Putin never pushed feminism. In fact, Russia repealed Domestic Violence laws.
Long live Putin.
“The Putin never tried to make you go to jail for defending your self against black crime.”
And –
“Long live Putin.”
And now we see “What happened to our country?”‘s true colors, a racist that supports a dictator that murders political opponents with Alpha particle emitting nuclear radiation.
That encourages the troops invading a country under his orders to rape and murder the population.
Get metastatic cancer and die like your butt-buddy little boy, ‘putin’ will in the not distant future, jerkoff… 🙁
Geoff PR loves American values: usury, sodomy, and abortion.
Geoff PR is basically a democrat Obama liberal who I guess likes guns and black criminals.
His political opponents are Jewish communists, who are without question trying to kill him for opposing Jewish central banking.
Search your feelings, Boomer, you know it to be true.
Putin was a member of a communist regime, in fact the communist regime with the biggest influence on leftism in the last century globally.
Their communist ideals are what created the modern left.
You may see them now as some force against which the left is opposed to, but they are at odds not over what you perceive. They are at odds over power, pure and simple.
Putin is no communist. He sees what communism did to Russia, and is currently fighting to keep it from happening again.
He even mentioned that he wasn’t a fan of communism in his speech announcing the special military operation to free the oppressed Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Putins own words stated the “greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Think about line that for a moment.
Putin also recently has begun to “nationalize” industries and private companies.
Putin is a communist. Just not a modern pinko trans gay one. He’s an old school kremlin hardliner, he’s got a lot in common with Stalin.
Stalin never forced you to be gay or anything you stated either. But Stalin sure as shit was a communist.
9/11 is being use by the left standing on their soapbox to condemn half the country’s population. A perfect storm to declare a national emergency and start the confiscations. Maybe they are building up to it, Hmm?
9 11 and the importance of being armed.
?
Like what was I supposed to do yank out my shooter and down Mohammed before he made it to New York.
The Jews did not attack the US on 9/11.
Putin is not a person to lovingly compliment.
The Taliban would kill you for being anything but an Islamists. They even kill Muslims who do not adhere to the same poli-religious ideology of Islam.
The Taliban do love some young children, they rape them. They believe the pretty young girls need married off to old men who have the money to buy them. Little boys are nothing but play toys.
Good to see who supports what here. Don’t come to me when the SHTF, don’t need you, don’t want you. You are not reliable.
The attack was planned by Mossad. Facts don’t care about your feelings, boomer.
Don’t come to you when SHTF? Lol, lmao. Done.
Bin Laden was part of the Mossad?
Any proof you would like to offer implicating the Massod
Not a Boomer either.
Your batting average sucks.
No you fucking moron, he wasn’t. He didn’t plan it.
Reality does not fit well into US political tribalism. The Taliban actually put a stop to the raping of little buys ….which our Pashto allies supported. Having said that it certainly does not make the Taliban heroes. Maybe we’d be better off worrying about other nation-states rather tan dirtbags in the ME
hornyhorsemumbler, no, the rest of the world doesn’t hate the US. They just like to pretend they do while quietly arranging their future move to the USA and US Citizenship. While you are correct in your statements regarding “interfering in other people’s business” and then having political expediency constantly reduce it to nothing more than that: interference, imagine the emboldened free for all the globe would be without that past interference and the continued threat of it. I’m up in Canada (and 9/11 hit me pretty hard) and I’m well aware that if your population numbered about the same as ours, we both might very well be speaking Chinese now, or maybe German or Russian. But of course people are assholes and insist on having their boogeyman to vent their righteous indignation on from their vaunted safe spaces. Your nation is truly the last Free country on the planet, or at least as close to being Free as it now gets (two years ago I would’ve said mine is next up) and there is a very good reason for that. There is also a very good reason why it isn’t even better than it is now and you guys need to nip that shit in the bud before it gets more entrenched, for all of ours sakes. “Left unchecked”, to turn a phrase, will most definitely fuck up the world. Our idiot manchild is small beer compared to the influence your government wields. Get those dangerous assclowns out of office. Fat chance we or any other nation will ever be able to without you guys first leading the way. Long live the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States of America. Cheers. Edit: not sure why this won’t post as a reply to unicornwhisperer… it doesn’t seem to post at all.
No proof? Vast Jewish conspiracy?
We may be dealing with an idiot here Paratrooper, I feel strongly about this 😂
It is perfectly normal to be very emotional about things like this. That is what the people who control the narrative count on. Are you a person who lets their emotion control their thinking, like most women, or are you able to think objectively? It is a very difficult thing to admit that something you feel so strongly about isn’t true.
You ask for proof, but would you honestly consider evidence if I offered it? The vast majority of people blindly trust and repeat what the government media tells them. “There is no evidence of election fraud,” or “The COVID shot is safe and effective.” No amount of evidence to the contrary would ever persuade them otherwise, as it would completely blow up their worldview, and they are not strong enough to handle that. Do you ever question the official government narrative?
Present your evidence. If it’s valid it will stand on its own merit. If you cannot you have no facts.
Enough with the empty platitudes and suppositions, VLAD already told you the score.
Told me the score? I must have missed that.
Ok, let’s start with this. Do you believe that the US government has ever created plans to stage false flag attacks in its own citizens in order to justify a war with a foreign country?
Yes I do.
Or to clarify, I find that possibility plausible.
I would review anything presented, if it was based on something verifiable.
We have the words of Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri as two who have made claims to being the planners of 9/11 and of the 1993 attacks. The claims of another organization being implicit would need to soundly refute the previous claims.
Have at it and present something to back up your claim of the Mossad.
Also understand I have never accepted Israel’s explanation of the attack on the USS Liberty. So I do not have blind allegiance to them.
John Taylor there is no person I disrespect more than a coward like you who runs and hides behind the moderation button when someone tries to debate you. You obviously have a very fragile ego. Thanks for not letting me post because I called you out on your nonsensical article that had zero to do with 9/11.
Instead of speaking about 9/11 all you did was brag about what a great hero you are. And by the way just what the hell does 9/11 have to do with concealed carry.
If the passengers on the plane had been allowed to carry 9/11 would’ve never happened.
And yes and I’m serious. Pressurized Air craft don’t suddenly just suck everything out or explode from a small hole or even a few in the side. 30,000 ft isn’t Fucking outer space.
ChoseDeath: It appears that our earlier conversation was moderated, so I will start anew.
You are correct, the most well known operation that I am aware of is Operation Northwoods. This was a proposal by the DOD to stage false flags attacks against our military, and blame them in Cuba, to gain popular support for a war against Cuba. It was actually approved by the joint chiefs, but Kennedy shut it down. It was shocking to me that as far back as the Kennedy administration that our government was already that way. This one is pretty well accepted, it even has its own Wikipedia page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Same question, but for a different government. Do you think it’s plausible that the Israeli government would stage false flag operations for similar reasons?
That doesn’t prove 9/11 was a false flag.
The biggest line of the conspiracy theory about 9/11 is that supposedly the US government did it as a false flag so they could invade Iraq for oil, right?
That alone proves the conspiracy theory is trash.
If the US government wanted to pin it on Iraq, they could’ve very easily made 9/11 an attack via Saddam and used Iraqis… but it was very clear, to literally everyone, very soon after, Iraq and Saddam and no ties to it.
So, if your goal is to invade Iraq… why develop this massive, intricate, complex conspiracy using mainly Saudis, Bin Laden, and Afghanistan? It does make any sense to do any of that.
The foolishness of the Iraq war in fact proves the US government didn’t “do 9/11”. If the US was that evil, and that capable, 9/11 itself and the ensuing war in the Middle East would’ve looked VERY different.
You think people with that kind of power and ruthlessness would’ve let some pissant insurgency turn them away?
No. There would’ve been concentration camps and gas chambers or even nukes before such a regime would tuck tail and run.
No the wars in the Middle East only prove something we’ve all known for quite awhile, that the government and politicians are bumbling idiots, cowards, and incompetent.
The intent of that information isn’t to establish proof of who perpetrated 9/11, it is to show that there is precedent for false flags, which are often flippantly dismissed as “conspiracy theories.” Understanding that makes it easier to accept alternative explanations than what the government tells us.
There will be more to come, if ChoseDeath wishes to continue.
The US military has not spent a single day holding Saudi Arabia to account. Growing up with the knowledge I would never have an opportunity to participate in the punishment of those responsible for the attack, because doing so did not serve our traitorous ruling class, was and remains heartbreaking.