Al Qaeda got what they wanted. We are not united. We are not free. We are watched. We must undo this.

LinkedIn is not Facebook. What I say below is important to how we conduct future business in the United States. It is important for my contacts to know what I think, and what I value. Please indulge the words of a veteran on this auspicious day.

Our president stood with a bullhorn in one hand and an arm wrapped around the shoulder of a fireman ensuring that the world would hear from us soon. I had my mobility bags ready for war, but no place to fly to and fight that day. So we spent the days wondering what targets remained for Al Qaeda around the base. We were primed for the attacks to keep coming in for weeks. What Al Qaeda did was like the bite of a Komodo Dragon. No more attacks were needed--the puncture would fester quickly. Our Congress embarrassed us by singing off-key hymns on steps. Then they voted for emergency powers, with one brave woman dissenting the knee jerking direction our government tumbled. Our president told us that they attacked us because they hate our freedoms and our way of life. So we quickly went about throwing away our freedoms and destroying our way of life. There is a generation on this site who thinks our situation is normal and who doesn't know it is missing the following:

• Watching a loved one walk down the sky-bridge to board a plane. Or see them waiting for you at the other end of a sky-bridge when you come home.
• Looking down the aisle of an airliner and watching the sunset over the shoulder of the pilot.
• Sending an email without thinking the government is reading it.
• Calling someone without thinking the government has a list of the numbers you have dialed and when.
• Leaving the country without getting one's face scanned.
• Bringing a large sum of hard currency for business on a plane.
• Not disrobing oneself or being touched in sensitive areas in order to travel.
• Not being banned from air travel extra-judiciously.
• Looking up to see a plane circling overhead and not thinking it is following you or your neighbors.
• Not having to give your social security number up to get a cell phone.
• Not having your phone invaded and inspected when returning to the U.S.
• Not being harassed or investigated because your extended family comes from particular nations.
• Not taking a decade to become a legal naturalized citizen.
• Using an ink jet printer without it leaving a secret code on the paper.
• Not having big tech doing the bidding of a political party to censor or surveil.
• Not being at risk joining on a list for making this post about a nation you love.

Al Qaeda's motivations could not be stated simply, nor with a slow Texan accent. They weren't Cobra on G.I. Joe trying to take control of the nation by the end of the episode. Their game was long. Their faith in their twisted religion was strong. The intention of their attacks twenty years ago was for the population to lose faith in the U.S. government's ability to protect its own people. They wanted to sow distrust in our government's institutions, and sow division within our population. They wanted Sharia to take hold in the U.S. over time to bring about a Global Caliphate. But first, the nation needed to be weakened and infirmed. The coffers needed to be emptied into protracted wars. They needed to hide under the protective umbrella of leftist deconstructionists to vilify patriots. They needed to stoke the flames of identity politics by confounding faith with race.

They accomplished their tasks.

We now have a government conditioned to restrict liberty at the start of an emergency. We now have a government that rules by executive edict instead of legislative compromise.

We are in the same danger of attack as we were twenty years ago due to how events have unfolded over the last few months. The attacks will still succeed despite our lumbering security surveillance state and our over-extended military, and what will be the result of those attacks?

We will lose even more liberty.

Like a certain USMC lieutenant colonel, I implore my government to come to account, and reconsider their decades of folly, thus returning our nation to a beacon of liberty and independence. Our country is flickering. Have the courage to admit that the government can't protect all of us, all of the time. Adamantly affirm that there are virtues of our nation and culture that must not be violated out of fear. We are a nation of individuals, not subjects of a federal state.

On Franklin's wager, our government's behavior leaves us neither with security nor liberty.

End the PATRIOT Act. End TSA overreach. Stop spying on Americans. Stop relying on allies to spy on Americans. Limit yourself. Be accountable.

Twenty years on, I'm still hurting from the attacks, and as I watch how our leaders conduct themselves today, it hurts more.

Return to being the union I signed up to protect.