Before Netanyahu even arrived in Washington DC, my thoughts were already drawn back to September 20, 2001. On that day, nine days after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush was prepared to address a joint session of the United States Congress. The president was announced as he entered the chamber, and members of Congress greeted him with a standing ovation lasting more than three minutes. Eventually, the applause subsided as the president stood at his podium and the audience sat back down. Before he began his address the speaker of the House told the members of Congress he was honored to present to them the president of the United States. The crowd erupted with another standing ovation.

Two standing ovations before George W. Bush had uttered a single word of his speech. These two rounds of applause established a pattern for the rest of the evening. The president would spend a large percentage of his speech silently looking out at a room full of standing representatives and listening as applause echoed through the chamber.

The speech Bush gave was certainly powerful. I can put myself in that time and remember being a teenager inspired by his words, but the passage of time has not been kind to the contents of his address. Listening now I am no longer filled with a patriotic resolve, but rather a kind of catatonic dread. The twenty-first century was only months old, but the United States was about to set itself on a path littered with self-inflicted wounds as if it were a nation in search of a lethal error. The steps down this path were greeted with rabid applause.

That evening the president declared a Global War on Terror. Nothing less than a holy war against evil. In his own words, "I will not yield. I will not rest. I will not relent in waging the struggle for freedom and security for the American people. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."

I remember believing those words. God was on our side. We might not have known the twists and turns of the journey ahead, but we knew its ultimate destination was freedom, justice, and security. The U.S. government was going to do whatever it needed to do to keep its citizens safe. If war in the Middle East was the only way to achieve our promised outcome, then so be it. The coming war would not be easy, but it would guarantee the safety of all Americans.