9/11 remembered

It’s been 14 years since the world witnessed horrific events of September 11,  2001, when two jetliners hijacked by the terrorists belonging to al-Qaeda headed by Osama bin Laden were deliberately crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, killing 3000 people.

      

In the aftermath this terrorist act, the United States government launched a massive manhunt for the ringleaders of the plot. While some key leaders of al-Qaeda were hunted down and sent to prison, it was not until many years later that bin Laden was traced to a building in a remote area in Pakistan where he had been in hiding for at least a few years and killed by Navy SEALs. 

      

Today, on the very spot where the Twin Towers once stood, a new skyscraper now stands, a testament to the American resolve to combat terrorism and affirm freedom and democracy. On the site now also stands a memorial to the thousands of innocent people who died that fateful morning.

      

The terrorist organization responsible for 9/11 is said to have lost much of its clout over the years, replaced by a much more vicious group called the Islamic State (ISIS). This group now controls large areas in Syria and surrounding areas and is committed to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and elsewhere, and employs terrorist methods, including grisly murders of hostages, in pursuit of this goal.

      

Here in the Philippines, military intelligence indicates that several groups have declared support for ISIS. Among these are the Abu Sayyaf who had earned notoriety since the late 1990s for the very same terrorist acts, such as kidnapping, that ISIS now commits with seeming impunity.

      

What this tells us is that the global struggle against Islamic extremism is not yet over, 14 years later. Al-Qaeda may have been contained and reduced to only a few, but the same drive to kill innocent people and sacrifice lives at the altar of Islamic fundamentalism will go on unless the world takes a united stand and tells them that hell, no, we will not let you succeed. –End-

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