Operation AXIOM | The Savage Wars of Peace

Fourteen years ago to the day, 11 September 2001, agents of the Salafi jihadist terror group al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners & deliberately crashed three of them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City & the Pentagon in Arlington, near Washington, D.C.; the target of the fourth aeroplane, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania after the passengers fought back against the hijackers, has never been definitively established, but was likely the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The day of infamy is remembered as "9/11."



The United States had been at odds with al-Qaeda specifically for several years prior to 9/11 & with Salafi jihadists for a decade, but 9/11 proved epochal. In response, the United States launched the War on Terror, invoking Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty & Article IV of the A.N.Z.U.S. Treaty to gather an international coalition to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which harbored & supported al-Qaeda. The U.S.-led coalition has been conducting anti-insurgency operations in Afghanistan & building up sympathetic Afghan government institutions & civil society ever since. The War on Terror has dominated international relations for the decade & a half since 9/11, a period that has seen the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition; the Iraq War, an eight-year Sunni-Shia civil war, U.S.-led counter-insurgency, & regional struggle 'twixt Iran & the Gulf Arab states; the "Arab Spring," encompassing multiple regime changes in Egypt, the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, & the multi-faceted Syrian civil war; numerous acts of jihadist terrorism in Western Europe, North America, & Australasia; & most recently the rise of I.S.I.L.'s "caliphate" in Iraq & Syria. Despite changes in strategy & repeated declarations of victory, the War on Terror continues & continues to be necessary.



The two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven persons murdered on 9/11 hailed from ninety countries & died alongside their nineteen murderers, most of whom hailed from Saudi Arabia. It is taken for granted that most persons know exactly where they were & what they were doing when the first learned the awful news about 9/11. Your humble narrator certainly does. Pray for peace, pray for justice, pray that we never forget. Four airliners were used as flying bombs, two to destroy the World Trade Center, one to damage the Pentagon, & one to be brought down short of its target by the first, ersatz soldiers in the War on Terror, fourteen years ago today.



Never forget.