Does U.S. Have The Grit To Do What Must Be Done To Terrorists?

I'd been up all night working, and got up at ten. On the radio, an announcer intoned, "The World Trade Center is under attack." Nah. Can't be. But it's not April Fool's Day. Maybe it's a test. Yeah, it's a test of our response to a terrorist attack.

I turn on the TV, but it doesn't work. The stations I rely on, NBC, Fox, ABC, are all out. Nothing but snow. Ditto for the WB, UPN, and PBS. Only CBS' Channel 2 works. Just after I tune in, the voice-over announces that one World Trade Center tower has collapsed. I still can't believe it. Smoke billows out of the lone remaining tower. Then, just like that, the second tower is gone, in a cloud of dust. The eyesore that has for 25 years marred the Manhattan skyline is gone, leaving only the Empire State Building on the horizon.

You know the rest. Four separate, commercial flights, hijacked by four separate teams of suicide bombers working with knives, stabbing flight attendants, and herding passengers in the back of planes, passengers that had no idea that this was to be a hijacking like none they had ever heard of. Two groups were butchered against the two World Trade Center towers, one was turned into cannon fodder and shot into the Pentagon, and a fourth group went to earth in Pennsylvania. Thousands are dead, thousands more are wounded.

An Irish garbage man who lives in my house reports that the local Roman Catholic parish was full of people praying for 25 missing neighbors — cops, firemen, and office workers. An old girlfriend of mine works for a Big Six accounting firm there. Everybody knows someone who works down there. Make that, "worked."

TV reporters and anchors stumble over their words. They fight off tears, confess to having wept in private, or stand on the street, with wet, red eyes, like CBS' Pablo Guzman. His colleague Michael O'Looney says, "We can't seem to get our arms around this story." A grizzled, gray-mustachioed fireman at the scene laments, "I just want to cry." Another veteran reports, "There was tons of companies giving May Days. We lost tons of guys." A fire chief cooly tells reporter Byron Pitts, "It's personal, now."

At a press conference, fire commissioner Tom Van Essen, who has gone from fireman to union head to commissioner, can barely speak. He has lost over 200 men (in addition to 300 wounded firemen), including his chief and assistant chief, old heads on whom he relied, who could have retired years ago. Whenever Van Essen tries to answer questions about how many of his men are missing, his voice trails off, inaudible. "... uh, uh, unable to pull them out... How do I feel? We lost people who have given forty years.... I can't find ANYBODY from 5 Rescue.... The Fire Department will recover, but I don't know how."

Most of the missing firemen were trying to save people inside the towers, when the towers collapsed. (The 47-story World Trade Center 7, sandwiched between the two towers, burned out of control, until at 5 p.m., it collapsed.) Reportedly, many of those people were still in the towers, due to a misleading P.A. announcement telling them that the fire was under control, and that they should return to work.

I try to be strong, so that our baby, Richard, won't be upset, but I can't fool him. On any other day, whenever I hold him on my lap, he will fight to get on the floor, and usually win. But today, he is in no hurry to get off my lap.

By the evening, the stench of the dust is in my Queens neighborhood, miles away, across the water from Manhattan.

Dan Rather, of all people, announces, "America is at war." But against whom? In Pearl Harbor, at least we knew who the enemy was. Most observers think that this has Osama bin-Laden's fingerprints all over it.

Do we have the grit to find out who did it, and to do what must be done? George Bush talks about winning "the war against terrorism." Sounds like "the war against drugs." I don't like that sound. The President and his secretary of state talk of bringing the terrorists "to justice." Do they plan on making arrests, and prosecuting these characters "to the full extent of the law"? Just imagine, if we had told the Kaiser and Hitler and Il Duce and Tojo, "We are going to bring you to justice!" I'm sure they would have surrendered right then and there.

On WCBS-AM (880) this morning, a "terrorism expert" talked of how he had hoped that the juries trying bin-Laden's men who had blown up our embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing over 200 people, would NOT sentence them to death. That would have turned the bombers into "martyrs," and made their compatriots mad. Well, the mass murderers only got life. Such terrorism "experts" have helped turned America into an international laughingstock.

On the West Bank, Arabs who live on the American dole celebrate the attacks, while Yasser Arafat pronounces himself "shocked."

A motley crew of left and rightwing anti-Semites have long fantasized, that if only we let the terrorists have their way with Israel, we could have a "twofer" of dead Jews and cheap oil.

At 1 a.m., Dan Rather observes skeptically of the Taliban's insistence that we have "overestimated" Osama bin Laden, and that he "couldn't" be behind these attacks, "This is their story, this is their song, they haven't changed it."

We have to take out bin-Laden, in any event. Because even if it wasn't him this time, it will be next time. He has already bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, and the USS Cole earlier this year, murdering hundreds.

And we have to take out other terrorists, too. But terrorists won't be taken out by the air strikes that have become the signature of our dainty, feminized military. Air cover, yes; but the killing will be done in fields and mountains and deserts by men in specialized forces, for whom "humanitarian mission" is a foreign phrase.

We have to consort with anyone who can help us, do whatever is necessary, and shower contempt on the "international law" and "international standards" crowd, which has used such myths, often in the service of terrorists, in order to undermine American resolve. Terrorists are psychopaths, and psychopaths live through fear. Sensing fear, they become stronger; sensing fearlessness, they become fearful. America must hunt down terrorists, make their lives "nasty, brutish, and short," and thereby teach them to fear US.

I wonder what Colin Powell would suggest, if he were alive. Hopefully, the President's threat to treat those who harbor terrorists the same as terrorists, was more than rhetorical posturing. The best thing the President has going for him is his personal intelligence advisor, the President, aka "41." But George W. Bush still must know that he may not only say, but must DO the right and necessary thing.

A CBS reporter noted, "The phrase you heard over and over was, 'It seemed just like a movie.' Dan Rather responded, succinctly, "No movie."

We are at war with a subtle, determined, devious enemy. There is a fair likelihood that Osama bin Laden didn't mastermind this attack alone, that it was mastermind at least in part from Libya or Iraq, and Osama is their cover, to divert attention from the real cell of rot. Yousef, who headed the prep for the first WTC bombing that failed, is likely an Iraqi deep cover agent whose alternate identity of Karim is fabricated, so we must be very thorough because these terrorists may have also left false trails. We must be sure from where this originated, and then be thorough in our annihilating retaliation. Spitting cruise missiles into the Afghan desert or a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant may please the kneejerk quarterbacks, but it is a luxury we can no longer afford.

We are in a war that will bring many more casualties in America, make no mistake about that. To reduce the potential for casualties after we make our initial strike, we must prepare for the coming struggle against an enemy determined to slaughter innocent Americans and an enemy who believes they will be blessed if they die killing innocent Americans ... to these hate-filled fanatics, there are no innocent Americans. And make no mistake here also, when the fire comes from the sky upon these terrorists, it will be the American people sending those strikes and it will be the American people who will receive the outrage that follows. We are not prepared for that and if we are to be successful against this evil that has slaughtered so many of our fellow Americans, we must get ready, quickly, and steel ourselves for the long haul against these bastards.

There is much talk of the greatest generation ... their war lasted just at five years, but it was in fixed, pitched battles overseas. Our battles will be fought in airports, on train lines, in banks and hotels, and yes, right in the very neighborhoods we considered safe just three days ago. Targets of opportunity are everywhere in this vast land, and they're not all in the blue zones around biggest cities. This war will be, in part, fought in the heartland of America. We are not yet ready for that. Until we are at least preparing for that level of conflict, prepared to deal with catastrophic evil such as biological and chemical devastation, we are not ready to make our initial strike, our devastating first blow at the enemy, whomever that turns out to be.

When the deviant, bill clinton, fired off missiles at targets he knew would not be bloody in the main, he did nothing but steel our enemy. Now, we must become the hammer that beats that steel into oblivion. Recriminations will come soon enough, and I will be one of the first to point out the complicity of the whole Lott of pubbies who would not stand up for what is right ... but now is the time to prepare for war. May God grant us the determination to see this through, now, before it is beyond our capabilities to deal with it.

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