Five years, and time is running out

Yesterday, I looked back at what I wrote on September 11, 2005, and I feel despondent. There have been many positive events in fighting Islamic terrorism over the past year, but ideologically we seem to be worse off than a year ago. So many people seem more interested in Bush's failure than in fighting Islamic terrorism. I don't know how much more time we have left. It can't be very much.

Rather than collecting scores of interesting September 11 links for you to check out, or connecting you with folks who have good roundups, I'll just mention one blog post and two articles that I think are worth reading.

1. From Friday, Allah notes at HotAir that one of the grievances of the 9/11 hijackers was the suffering of the Muslims in Bosnia. Yes, that Bosnia, the one where we bombed Serbia to stop ethnic cleansing of the Muslims. Allah says, "If your moral ledger extends back to the Crusades, the scales can't ever really be balanced - which of course is precisely the point. But even I never thought they'd start moving items from the credit column into the debit one. If we abandoned Israel tomorrow, how long would it be before Islamist savages were flying airplanes into the White House because we abandoned Israel?"

2. Also from Friday, Peggy Noonan writes movingly about the sounds of 9/11, including the phone calls. The phone calls of people who knew they were doomed and wanted their families to know they loved them. "Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, 'I never liked you,' or, 'You hurt my feelings.' No one negotiated past grievances or said, 'Vote for Smith.' Amazingly -- or not-- there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying 'I hate them.' No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it's all so clear."

3. The Jerusalem Post magazine examines airport security in Israel and the U.S. and discusses how Israeli consultants are helping the Americans with security. (Hat tip: Just Moi) But there are certain limitations on what will "fly" in the U.S., like profiling. Also, the sheer volume of passengers here dwarfs the more manageable load in Israel. ("The cost of all this security, exorbitant but imperative for Israel, is prohibitive for the United States, which services many times the number of air travelers as Israel does. 'Ben-Gurion Airport accommodates about 8.5 million passengers a year,' Ron says. 'By contrast, traffic in the average large airport in the US is in the neighborhood of 30 million a year. Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta accommodate some 70-80 million a year.'")

UPDATE: Via Ace, here are photos of the WTC site two days after the attack.

UPDATE: Via The Corner, more -- many more -- photos.

UPDATE: Ralph Peters is amazingly optimistic, listing our achievements since 9/11. I wish I were as upbeat.

UPDATE: Now, I'm even more downbeat than when I started. Confederate Yankee has a roundup of the left-wing bloggers' postings on 9/11. His post is swamped with angry comments from the bloggers and their sympathizers. I don't know how much of the American population these folks represent, but I think we're in big trouble.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention this earlier. My shul had a table set up this morning with a photo taken of lower Manhattan on the afternoon of September 10, 2001, with the WTC in its full glory. And on the table there was a yahrzeit candle burning. It's like having a photo of the deceased, I guess.