Posted on 09/13/2001 5:24:54 AM PDT by Rightfield14
In the wake of the most horrific act of war ever committed on American soil, it is brutally ironic to note that this December 7th will be the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That far off morning, like this one, caught America sleeping. On that day, like this one, millions of Americans were going about their own business, bothering no one. On that day, like this one, a peaceful America was attacked, civilians slaughtered, by a vengeful enemy who brooked no quarter.
However, in 1941, we knew that a militaristic Japan was on the march in the Far East, and we had received strong warning that the Japanese could strike some of our military targets. The cowards who perpetrated today’s attack have remained so far faceless, their plan to simultaneously hijack four commercial airlines and use them as bombs totally unforeseen by intelligence experts. The casualities sustained at Pearl numbered 2403 KIA, 1178 wounded. Today’s casualities, still unknown, are estimated at 10-20,000 - the size of a small city. It’s a dozen Pearl Harbors, and the sheer savagery of this heinous act is unsurpassed in all of our history.
All Americans are recoiling with horror and grief at the barbarity of this perfidious attack. As our initial shock wears off, it must be replaced with a grim, united and firm intent. We must pound the bastards hard, and endlessly, until their terrorist facilities, terrorist cells and terrorist weaponry are tiny bits of rubble like that which is now the World Trade Center. There should be no negotiation with murderers, as Israel has long contended.
The television photos showing Palestinians and radical Islamics rejoicing at innocent American deaths will hopefully awaken us to a now undeniable fact - these people are our enemies. We ought not to be playing kissie face with them, as Hillary Clinton did with Sela Arafat. We ought not to be negotiating with them, as Bill Clinton did with Yasser Arafat in hopes of pressuring Israel to give him his "legacy". We should, instead, regard them henceforth as dire foes. Foes to liberty, operating as they do under totalitarian, dictatorial regimes. Foes to religious freedom, with their fanatical, repressive Islamic fundamentalism which declares itself enemy of Jew and Christian alike. And definitely, foes to America, which they dub, revealingly, "The Great Satan." The Left, with it’s record of mollycoddling terrorists, has been proven wrong yet once again - with dire results. You don’t mollycoddle these bastards, you bomb them back to the Stone Age.
In the wake of this tragedy, there will also be, no doubt, cries from those on the Left for "more airport security" - undoubtedly manifesting themselves in proposed laws which will further erode our freedom and self-autonomy. Overlooked will be common sense. Our citizens already submit to intrusive "security" procedures unthinkable a generation ago. Metal detectors, X-ray machines and the agent asking, "Did anyone else get ahold of your bag" did nothing to prevent this atrocity. In fact, one might reasonably ask if an armed flight crew and/or a few armed passengers might have been able to disarm fanatical, suicidal terrorists armed with boxcutters - or at least have prevented the planes from reaching their final destination, thereby saving thousands of lives. Keep that in mind as the hysterical talking heads, always willing to take advantage of tragedy, get geared up for the next shot in the culture war.
Finally, we can take heart in the fact that our foes usually make the fatal mistake of underestimating Americans. They don’t understand that, despite our differences, we are Americans first and when America is attacked, we band together and fight like hell. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor, said, after the attack, "We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve." Damn Straight.
© 2001 Jennifer King
An open letter to a terrorist:
Well, you hit the World Trade Center, but you missed America. You hit the Pentagon, but you missed America. You used helpless American bodies, to take out other American bodies, but like a poor marksman, you STILL missed America.
Why? Because of something you guys will never understand. America isn't about a building or two, not about financial centers, not about military centers, America isn't about a place, America isn't even about a bunch of bodies. America is about an IDEA. An idea, that you can go someplace where you can earn as much as you can figure out how to, live for the most part, like you envisioned living, and pursue Happiness. (No guarantees that you'll reach it, but you can sure try!)
Go ahead and whine your terrorist whine, and chant your terrorist litany: "If you can not see my point, then feel my pain." This concept is alien to Americans. We live in a country where we don't have to see your point. But you're free to have one. We don't have to listen to your speech. But you're free to say one. Don't know where you got the strange idea that everyone has to agree with you. We don't agree with each other in this country, almost as a matter of pride. We're a collection of guys that don't agree, called States. We united our individual states to protect ourselves from tyranny in the world. Another idea, we made up on the spot. You CAN make it up as you go, when it's your country.
If you're free enough.
Yeah, we're fat, sloppy, easy-going goofs most of the time. That's an unfortunate image to project to the world, but it comes of feeling free and easy about the world you live in. It's unfortunate too, because people start to forget that when you attack Americans, they tend to fight like a cornered badger. The first we knew of the War of 1812, was when England burned Washington D.C. to the ground. Didn't turn out like England thought it was going to, and it's not going to turn out like you think, either. Sorry, but you're not the first bully on our shores, just the most recent.
No Marquis of Queensbury rules for Americans, either. We were the FIRST and so far, only country in the world to use nuclear weapons in anger. Horrific idea, nowadays? News for you bucko, it was back then too, but we used it anyway. Only had two of them in the whole world and we used 'em both. Grandpa Jones worked on the Manhattan Project. Told me once, that right up until they threw the switch, the physicists were still arguing over whether the Uranium alone would fission, or whether it would start a fissioning chain reaction that would eat everything. But they threw the switch anyway, because we had a War to win. Does that tell you something about American Resolve?
So who just declared War on us? It would be nice to point to some real estate, like the good old days. Unfortunately, we're probably at war with random camps, in far-flung places. Who think they're safe. Just like the Barbary Pirates did. Better start sleeping with one eye open.
There's a spirit that tends to take over people who come to this country, looking for opportunity, looking for liberty, looking for freedom. Even if they misuse it. The Marielistas that Castro emptied out of his prisons, were overjoyed to find out how much freedom there was. First thing they did when they hit our shores, was run out and buy guns. The ones that didn't end up dead, ended up in prisons. It was a big PITA then (especially in south Florida), but you're only the newest PITA, not the first.
You guys seem to be incapable of understanding that we don't live in America, America lives in US! American Spirit is what it's called. And killing a few thousand of us, or a few million of us, won't change it. Most of the time, it's a pretty happy-go-lucky kind of Spirit. Until we're crossed in a cowardly manner, then it becomes an entirely different kind of Spirit.
Wait until you see what we do with that Spirit, this time. Sleep tight, if you can. We're coming.
09/12/2001 20:42:40 PDT by B-Cause
Everyone copy and paste this to your e-mailers and send it world wide OK?
Be thankful Al Gore is not in the White House to punch the snooze alarm button.
Lest America ever forget why X-42, W(B)-97, and all their enablers should be hectored, hounded, and harried into silence, until "clintonese is only spoken in Hell," look here:
-"until clintonese is spoken only in Hell!"--
Hillarrhea!© and Arafat's wife-
We must take Iraq while the world is sympathetic to our plight. Pump enough oil to significantly reduce oil prices, stimulating the world economy. The lower oil prices will cause the mideast regimes to collapse so we must set up democracies there. Buy western Jordan for a new Palestinian state with infrastructure paid for by the Iraqi oil fields. Create US bases in Iraq from which to enforce regional stability. Afghanistan/Syria/Iran/Sudan are much easier to deal with once the US bases are in place with a million troops to back up our policies. And it gets rid of the requirement for US carriers over there and for massive military support of Israel.
DO IT NOW. WE MUST USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO STABILIZE THE MIDEAST AND NEUTRALIZE TERRORISM.
BUMP
Sorry, Jennifer, we used to be that way. Now we're a nation of grief counselors and empathy therapists. It has already begun. The congresscritters are already balking at GWB's requests for money to go find and flatten whoever was even remotely involved. Mealy-mouthed libs are already preaching reconcilliation and understanding.
Everyone is going on about how to resume normal life. We don't need to resume normal life. We need to stay hurt and, therefore, as pissed off as Jennifer would have us believe we are.
The Monday after Pearl Harbor, the military recruiting stations were overwhelmed. They started rationing and gearing up the war machine. Life got suddenly harder for everyone in the country. The result was that we stayed pissed off and our resolve hardened into an iron will. Has any of that that happened here? Do you think that will happen here? Hardly. Soccer moms still tote the kids to the match and everyone is more worried about what will happen to the stock market than what has happened to our country. The television news airheads babble incessantly about how bad everyone "feels." Network bimbettes yammer pointlessly about how to keep the kiddies from damaged self-esteem and how to explain all this to them. Housewives are beginning to grumble because the soaps have been pre-empted for three days.
My cynical nature tells me that by this time next week, the will to punish the perpetrators will be gone and everyone will simply be focusing on the best way to encapsulate all this so it can be tidily disposed of. The insurance companies will pay off the buildings and the jets. The dead will be buried, mourned, and forgotten by all but their kin. The giant will roll over and go back to sleep.
Every society in the history of the world has had it's share of drone bees.
Time for those types to move over and let the real workers get it done.
Sorry, I don't agree with you. What you say is partially true, on the surface, but there are still enough real American patriots around to:
1. understand the situation
2. solve the problem
Well, consider America in 1941. By then, we voted not twice but three times for a socialist-loving Democrat. Our military was so pathetic that our Army still had calvary and the Navy was still sailing old rusted-out hulks from the turn of the century. The Air Force didn't even exist yet. What modern stuff we did have would soon be destroyed at Pearl Harbor. Even though a war was raging in Europe, here in America, we stuck our heads in the sand in pretended not to notice. Sure, we'd send a bunch of materials over there for England but we sure didn't want to get our hands dirty. And if you think the general populace is dumbed down now, consider that in 1941, there were so many functionally illiterate people that the military didn't even require literacy for new inductees. The military actually had to put some of their training materials in comic book form.
Well Pearl Harbor changed all that in a hurry.
America has been underestimated before.
Once you are hijacked it needs to be understood by everyone, your life is forfeit. Armed or not, you owe it to yourself, your fellow passengers, and your countrymen, to do all you can in concert with others to prevent a hijacking, or having been hijacked, to prevent the hijackers from accomplishing their goals.
These particular acts of terror, should be placed directly at the feet of those we all know, including the president of the nra who have and had a hand in imasculating the American people from protecting themselves and their countrymen through the many and egregious gun control acts, laws, ideas, propositions, bills, proposals, and such like, that flow from the mouths of the clueless, to draw a nation into a mode of criminal passivity, for which we are now known world wide.
Having said the above, we know that at least in the case of the fourth airplane hijacked, brave, heroic resistance took place and the airplane failed to reach its destination. May the names of those brave souls, and their daring deeds be shouted from the housetops as the war cry of a nation that still stands for freedom and liberty, but has lost the true meaning of those words, as the documents of our liberty and freedom continue to be treated like toilet tissue by the very elected officials who take an oath "so help them God" to protect what the founding Fathers knew was more important than life itself.
That's nice. Care to elucidate about what? Or were you having more fun just taking the pot shot?
I was watching Fox this morning and they were quoting aides to Daschle and Gephardt saying that they would need to see what the president had in mind before they would give him carte blanche. I don't know about you, but I've seen that waffle before.
No kidding, if you want to see hostile posts by me here, there have been several. I was being pretty nice this time, relatively speaking.
None of my posts are meant to harm, but to vigorously state my opinion, which, last time I checked, was the raison d'etre of FR. Plus maybe have a yuk or two.
Let me elucidate.
I am overwhelmed not so much by this tragedy, but how American secular newspapers have mentioned prayer, God's help, love of country and countrymen, loyalty, and courage.
And how the average New Yorker has acted toward the others in this dark time.
At how brave Glick was, to realize he was dying but organizing a counter-mutiny against the terrorists.
And how the churches are packed, and opened around-the-clock (as they used to be during my childhood, before fears of Satanists caused them to be locked.)
And how no insurrection or looting has occurred in New York.
And how silliness of liberalism and interracial sniping and pettiness is fading away (except for the hard-core idiots like Sharpton, etc.,).
And how American resolve is building by the minute.
And how my son, and his friends, all want to enlist. And they are not naive. They are elementary school students, but they have read about our country's founding, its defenders throughout the years, and NOW THEY SEE THEMSELVES AS HEIRS AND PROTECTORS OF THE COUNTRY. It is good to see this. And liberals won't dare comment; their philosophy is bankrupt now.
And how we are essentially optimistic in this challenging time.
And how we are beginning to see that hatred of multiculturalism and hatred of America's enemies is not bigotry. It is mere self-respect and self-defense, plus, love of God and country.
And how we are figuring out now, at last, that liberalism is just a thinly-disguised means of hating America and working behind-the-scenes to destroy it.
And how we all know that we will prevail.
And how right we were to pick W as our president, and how good I feel right now to see Swartzkopf and Powell and Haig on the TV instead of Gore and Clinton and Shalikashvili and Boorda and Janet Reno.
Let that sink in for a minute.
I don't know where you are, in the country, and I don't really need to know, but, from where I stand, I feel very proud and optimistic about our ability and resolve to overcome this tragedy and emerge a LOT stronger and smarter as a nation.
So see my previous comment not as a potshot but as terse encouragement.
We are not drugged and out of it.
We are strong and we will prevail.
And our enemies and would-be-enemies are going to really regret ever tangling ass with us.
I feel sorry for them.
Regards, caddie.
4 Posted on 09/13/2001 05:37:37 PDT by scooter2
Exactly, probably be a tea processing plant bombed.
I've become such a skeptic, I find it convenient he and the other thing, Clinton, were out of the country. Has anyone mentioned where Hillary was?
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