I made a news item on WinCustomize.com tonight about the 5th anniversary of 9/11.  It's always a touchy thing putting up a political hot potato on WinCustomize.com.  One thing I have learned over the years is that many non-Americans who visit WinCustomize.com have an extremely poor opinion of the US, its policies.  I don't think that's representative of foreign readers of WC, just those who happen to post.

But 9/11 was a big deal. And at the end of the day, we're an American company.  We have people from all over the world that we work together with. A good portion of our development team is from UK for instance and we also have developers in Italy, Poland, and elsewhere.  But we are not neutral. What happened on 9/11 was unprovoked, monstrous, and required a strong response.

If nothing else, people, especialy people outside the US, need to understand how big of a deal 9/11 was in the United States.  I don't think most people, even today, realize the scale of 9/11.  There's been no terrorist attack, anywhere, in history that is remotely on the scale of 9/11.

The twin towers, even when pictured, don't show their scale because the pictures are so far away.  The twin towers alone supported a population that about a quarter of Detroit Michigan. And those two buildings weren't the only ones that were destroyed as a result (a couple of other nearby buildings were also destroyed).  Largely, only by luck, was the death toll not catastrophically higher. 

The twin towers, supporting up to 150,000 people when at full capacity, were cities unto themselves. Cities full of innocent people who had just gone to work that day.  Destroyed over an evil, fascist ideology that is based on a particular interpretation of Islamic theocracy. An ideology that is widespread in the middle east but not generally acted out upon - thankfully.

9/11 was a wake up call to the United States that the people who want to exterminate every man woman and child that adheres to western culture really were getting serious and needed to be dealt with now rather than wait until they managed to obtain even deadlier weapons.  The product of a failed culture that blames those failures not on themselves but on external enemies believes that if they can appease Allah and reintroduce the Caliphate (as a starting point) modeled after the Taliban, that Allah might then strike down the decadent, corrupt, immoral western nations and pave the way for a world of Islamic fascism.

The word fascism, has become a pejorative. A word that is used to insult rather than as a strict definition. I use the term fascism in its true sense -- a form of organization that is led by a single person or small group that is not accountable to the people and promotes an ideology based on the hatred of outsiders, other religions and racism. That is the way of life that these fundamentalist Muslims have in mind for the world.

It is something that must be fought against. It cannot be ignored. While one can debate the effectiveness of the current administration's attempt to fight Islamic Fasicm (Or Islamism), there should be no doubt that it exists, is real, and must either be dealt with now or dealt with later (except at a vastly higher cost).

Those who think that the problem can be ignored need only look at history.  9/11 was merely the most recent and most deadly attack by these extremists.  Since 9/11, the US has improved its intelligence, defense, and covert operations to the point that no new attacks have occurred on US soil since 9/11 (while there have been attacks overseas in places easier to carry out such attacks).

To see the announcement on WinCustomize.com along with the responses to it, click below.