Posted on 12/19/2003 7:47:39 PM PST by FairOpinion
On Friday, ABC News reported, "U.S. intelligence has received information about a credible and imminent threat to New York City." There were no details, nor was the terror alert raised. This story put me in mind of the theory that Al-Qaeda could ramp it up close to the 2004 election, hoping to show Bush as a failure and thus propel Howard Dean into the White House. No question that the terrorists would prefer Dean, but there's another side to this that they can scarcely conceive.
The full breadth and scope of American power has barely been tapped in this war. I'm going to tell you right now, if these people, al-Qaeda or whoever try another 9/11-scale attack, the world is going to be a very different place. We are prosecuting this war in the traditional, civilized American way right now. We're doing it with conventional weapons and with as much cooperation and consultation as we can internationally. If it happens again, you are going to be amazed.
This mighty nation is going to unleash its full strength. Howard Dean and the rest of the Democrats can run around and say whatever they want if that awful time comes. I don't care. If this country is attacked and thus forced to unleash the full scope if its weaponry, the people that said they would never do anything about it and who played politics with the issue by delaying a vote on the Homeland Security Department's creation and such, are not going to stand a prayer at the polls. The president who's trying to stop this, who's the only president in 12 years to seriously engage this threat of radical Islamofascists, will be reelected in a landslide.
Attack Will Be No-Win SItuation for Dean or Any Democrat
If these terrorists try something again, I don't care if it's October next year, you just wait and see what kind of response there will be. I don't think most Americans have any idea of the full scope of American power, as evidenced by their misconception that we "need" France and Germany when those people would literally take hours to put a single fighter in the air. (And even that would be obsolete.) We haven't even begun to project our strength. We are reining ourselves in and tempering what we do for a host of reasons.
I don't mean to be redundant, but I'll say it one more time: If a 9/11-scale atrocity happens again, Democrats may as well concede right then and there. They'll raise Cain about it and do whatever they can, but there will be nothing in the record that any Democrat can call on to say he would have acted differently to stop it. Most Democrats from Wesley Clark to John Kerry are ruing military force, folks. They want to subordinate America to the UN when everybody knows we can't depend on those weak-kneed thugs and appeasers.
Democrats will not be able to point to a track record of saying what they would have done better because they won't do anything. Howard Dean has said he thinks we can reach an understanding with these people and that we should just show them we don't mean them any harm. Some of you might think that Dean has opening with that. I don't think so at all.
I think that if the Democrats had a prayer with their policy of appeasement, that they'd already be leading in the polls and Bush wouldn't stand a chance. They've been out there talking about this for 2 1/2 years, ever since 9/11. It didn't take them long to break with Bush. They went out there and gave lip service to the war on terror, but if you listen to what they say when they're running for high office, they do it exactly different: "Bush doesn't know what he's doing! Bush is incompetent!"
Now, you might think, "Okay, so terrorists launch again and it proves what the Democrats are saying." Again: the American people are not going to want to sit around and do nothing if it happens a second time, and they aren't going to want to sit around and let the United Nations handle it or to okay our self-defense. The president, who's been dealing with it and who has a track record of success to show for it, is going to be standing very tall if something like this happens again - not Howard Dean. I guarantee you not Howard Dean. You can engage in wishful thinking or doom-and-gloom thinking all you want out there, but it just won't be the case.
Hello Al Qaeda. If you want America to conquer the whole Middle East, just try 9/11 again. (Rush is Right...)
While AngloSaxons are relaxed and easy-going if not harassed, they are fierce, implacable, and unrelenting when attacked or forced to fight. The militant Muslims need to realize that before it is too late.
Hard to forget that time. For a few weeks we stopped being Republicans and Democrats, or divided by the usual hyphenated descriptions that divided us. I'm still moved by the clips of congress singing God Bless America on the Capitol steps. I think the terrorists were taught a lesson after 9/11...and not just the one we dished out in Ashcanistan...that when they attack us, they unite us. The enemy that they hoped to splinter was made stronger and more determined. I think Toby Keith summed it up well with the line "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." They will come at us again...that much is certain. But when they do it won't be with hi-jacked planes. They know that one more 9/11 attack, and even the soccer moms will be screaming for mass deportations and internment camps. If it can be tied to another country, nukes will be a very real option. That ups the stakes for them, meaning that their attack will have to be an order of magnatude higher. I'd be concerned about what happened to the several dozen old soviet era suitcase nukes that went missing a few years ago, or something along those lines.
The only way Hitlery can have her coup would be another terror attack--something to flaunt while chanting, "Are you safer?"
But Rush reminds us how we were ready to go get some--Let's Roll--after 911.
Should another such attack be launched, the public reaction will incinerate the blow-dried dwarves and send a message to Hitlery:
Get thee behind me, Satan.
If, God forbid, we will be attacked, people will want a president who has demonstrated that he is doing everything humanly possible to keep us safe And that may not be Bush. If we are attacked again, the political danger to Bush is not from Democrats. It's from a demagogue who promises to do what Bush won't do. If it happens again, especially if it involves biological or chemical weapons, the American people are going to demand that the threat be neutralized, in its entirety, right now. Anybody remember that Star Trek TNG episode in which an immortal, omnipotent being is confessing to having killed the creatures that attacked his planet, where he was enjoying life with his human wife? Picard says it's understandable that he'd be angry, and the immortal being says "You don't understand. I mean I killed all of them. Everywhere." That's the mood people will be in. |
"If we have another 9/11, our response would be too terrible to contemplate"-Victor Davis Hanson
We did it before and we can do it again.
I remember that one. That was something Reagan had going for him in spades...the universal belief that "Yes, I will reduce all of your cities to glowing rubble!" In fact, I remember seeing interviews with people in his adminstration who were instructed to quietly play to that behind the scenes foreign relations. In fact, Bush 41 made sure that Baker communicated that to the Iraqi foreign minister. Something along the lines of "the American people will demand a nuclear strike" and that he would give them what they wanted if our troops were gassed. Dubya needs to get that point across.
That's the message I wish Truman would have used on China during the Korean War. If anyone at the time had the credibility to do that, he did, but chose not to. If he would have said to China "In 1945 I had two atomic boms and I gave the order to incinerate two Japanese cities...I have more than two atomic bombs now. Stay the hell out of this if you know what's good for you!"
Good phrase for her or her scumbag husband.
Here's my question: The left loves to squeal about our "unilaterialism" in this war, and scoffs at the 60-nation coalition because it's "all those unimportant countries that aren't really contributing anything anyway." Well, then how come when it comes to U.N. approval, whenever some diplomat from one of those same podunk countries votes against us, all of a sudden we're supposed to stop dead in our tracks and honor his opinion? When they're against us, all of a sudden they're important and "count".
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