I remember the morning of September 11th, 2001 very well. I was part of an E-6B crew standing alert at Offutt AFB in Nebraska. The first plane had already hit the first tower and the news had just focused on what had happened. I heard the commotion from the rest of my crew in the common room as they watched the coverage.

I hurried into the room with plenty of time to see the second plane’s impact. That is when it sank in that it wasn’t just some crazy accident, it was an attack.

Things got busy very quickly as the nation began to respond. The mission that we had been tasked with was cancelled, and all aircraft, over the entire country, were ordered out of the sky. That is one of the reasons we were concerned when a few hours later we saw an aircraft on final for the runway.  It turned out to be Air Force One that was transporting the President to Strategic Command. I actually saw President Bush step off of the air stairs into a waiting SUV.

The immediate chaos of action began to slowly calm over the next few days, and gradually turn itself into a simmering anger. The anger was a kind of low fire that was fed daily by the increasing death toll, and had no definitive direction for release. The entire nation had been struck, and its collective anger needed to find the enemy and repay its injuries.

That is the reason people like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi voted for the authorization of military force. It was not only the right thing to do, it was political suicide not to.

It was on October 7th that the United States began the public air campaign against the Taliban, The nation stood behind the President and our military as they found and brought to justice the regime that allowed September 11th to happen.

It is against that backdrop that President Biden (or Obama from behind the curtain) wants to pull our troops out of the region that we spent lives and treasure regaining our honor from.

I am not against leaving Afghanistan, I spent almost a year there trudging through the political morass. And I am against the perpetual war. But to tie our withdrawal to September 11th in any way can only be seen as surrender to the Islamo-nuts that caused the war. They will be singing victory from every minaret in the Islamic world. This will only help their recruiting, and lead to more of what got us there in the first place.