It's a shame, but our cultural elite are big boys and girls, and they made their choice after ignoring the warnings. The one thing your father should be grateful for is that 90% of the country is choosing not to join them in the mutual suicide pact.
It was the "cultural elite" that said, immediately post-911, that "everything has changed". Well, nothing has changed, especially them. They're still living in their little liberal private universe, where actions do not have consequences, and good intentions are superior to good deeds.
They were temporarily shocked into silence by 911, and looked into their puny souls, to the best of their ability. They could not acknowledge that their unexamined, emotion-laden, solipsistic philosophy could ever be wrong, so by their "logic" we are the ones that are somehow at fault. They long for the days when klinton told them it was all about himself, and they worshipped him for it. They are junkies who get desperate at even the thought that their supply of dope could be turned off.
In the imagery of LOTR, they've gone the Grima Wormtongue route. Bush is saying "Open war is upon you. Whether you risk it or not." They've got their fingers in the ears, yelling "la la la la I can't hear you." America and her military took out the nazis and the kamikazes, and they were smarter, tougher, and more honorable foes than this bunch of hopped-up orc wannabes. It ain't gonna be pretty, but our enemies have been begging for it, and they're about to get it. Leftists preaching denial can't change it, and that's why they have to make themselves sound a thousand times more numerous than they really are.