Remembering September 11th

hi everyone this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live september 11th 2021. it's an interesting day september 11th if you're an american it is indeed an interesting day time passes so remarkably fast it's been 20 years since 2001 20 years and i remember september 11th just it was yesterday it's one of those days that's burned into my memory it's 13 years old i was very young barely a teenager and i'd just gotten through living through the 90s as everyone did and the 1990s were a time where we viewed america we viewed the world as kind of post history the great wars were over world war ii was over vietnam was over and the soviet union had been defeated and even though the world was a very dangerous place and a lot of things were happening it always felt it was out there wasn't america it was in the middle east it was in africa rwanda happened in africa kosovo europe it's out there and america was past all of that and we were living in a new age where everything was going to be a little different and our problems seemed so local and so small and our biggest scandal of recent memory was the impeachment of bill clinton a rather trivial thing in the grander scheme of things and i think of my grandfather and his father they lived through world war ii and there was a day december 7th 1941. a little bit before 8 a.m this is 7 55 a.m pearl harbor was attacked and the day after fdr goes to this the congress and says december 7th is a day that shall live in infamy and never be forgotten and it was very impactful for my grandfather very impactful for his dad for everyone who grew up in that time it was burned in their memory but i could never connect to it my dad could never connect to it my mother could never connect to it because they didn't live through it 20 years later when i look at september 11th i lived through that although i was quite young it was the defining moment of my generation for americans of my generation those who were a little bit older just a few years older rushed in mass to join the military i've met many of them i know many of them and they wouldn't serve tours in iraq and afghanistan and other places specifically because of that event the entire perspective of america changed our safety and security as a nation our perception of it that we were far away from everything oceans on both sides changed and we ended up building a lot of things that we probably shouldn't have from the department of homeland security to unifying all the intelligence agencies and building the world's largest spy state to all the wars that we've prosecuted the people who are responsible for that day are all dead or in prisons for the rest of their lives very few are left that haven't been caught or found and to this day i don't know why we fight anymore what's the point of the war on terrorism what does it mean to be an american we started something because we were angry as a nation hurt broken we've needed some event to be able to carry us through to restore our pride and our sense of safety and security and i think to all the dead on that day what's the best way of honoring them as a nation i'm 20 years old a very different person than i was and all of you listening are probably very different people than you were back in we now have the luxury of time just like my grandfather had the luxury of time 20 years after pearl harbor 1961 and we have to ask ourselves where do we go from here what do we do from here recently we left afghanistan the longest war the united states has ever had two decades there ended up a loss there's no way to sugarcoat that there is no way to look at that any other way than what it is the enemy we sought out to defeat has prevailed and not only did they win they've been given 80 billion dollars of our military hardware to defend themselves against us and whomever they desire we look at the world as a whole and we can't with a straight face say the world of today in 2021 is a safer world than the world of 2001.