Posted on 09/16/2001 2:17:12 PM PDT by KevinDavis
The national cry for revenge is shameful. We Americans are presumably a people who do not believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Yet many of our national leaders, most of the talking heads who have been babbling on television this week, and the mental defectives who repeat cliches on talk radio are demanding that we get even.
The desire to even the score is an understandable human reaction. Thousands of lives have been destroyed and thousands of families suffer from losses that will change their lives and in many cases ruin them. Yet no one--certainly not the president or any of those around him--is promising that we will avoid action that might lead to the death of more innocents.
Moreover, who are ''they'' with whom we must get even--30, 40, even a hundred fanatics? We must apprehend and punish criminals. Then what? Will we nuke Kabul or Baghdad? Will we blow Afghanistan from the 10th century back into the first? Will mass murder satisfy American blood lust? Do we want to become indistinguishable from our enemies? It would appear that many of us do.
The Pearl Harbor analogy is frivolous and dangerous. There is no militaristic enemy bent on conquering half the world. No mighty navy to sink. No brilliant air force to annihilate, no fanatical population to bring to its knees. We must capture a few terrorists, eliminate a couple of networks, improve our intelligence agencies. Indeed, if anyone is to be blamed for the tragedies in New York and Washington, it is Congress, which has not passed bipartisan legislation that would have improved our intelligence services. We hotly debate a dubious shield against missiles and skimp on funding to intercept terrorists. Perhaps the cries for vengeance we hear are a cover-up for that failure.
The too-easy use of the term "war" is scary. With whom are we to go to war? Iraq? Iran? Afghanistan? How will we fight them? Will we send combat troops into central Asia? Does anyone remember that the Russians tried that and it failed? Those who prate about "war" seem eager to have one.
President Bush knows full well that his legacy as president will depend on how he reacts. There are two models on which he might reflect. The first is that offered by John F. Kennedy who, when everyone else had signed off on an invasion of Cuba, would not give the go-ahead to an impatient military and thus avoided World War III. The other is Lyndon B. Johnson, who did not stand up to the military and escalated the war in Vietnam. In the short run, restraint looks like cowardice. In the long run, it becomes a mark of greatness. In the short run, the use of overwhelming military power looks like decisive leadership. In the long run, it ruins a presidency.
There appears to be nobody around the president on whom one could count on to counsel restraint. For all of Bush's fervent piety when he demands that God bless America, he does not seem to grasp that the religion to which he subscribes teaches that vengeance belongs to the Lord, not to us.
Also, he might follow the example of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other leaders and warn against abuse of Muslim and Arab Americans.
The media babblers are telling us that Americans have lost their innocence, that the country will never be the same. Such claims are nonsense. The serious fear is that the American government will sink to the level of our enemies, and that a revenge-hungry public will support them.
You are kidding yourself. Islamic fundamentalism sees itself in a war for survival against cultural forces that threaten to overwhelm it and wipe it from the Earth. The fundamentalists are quite right about this, that's exactly what is happening.
They do not intend to go quietly. They understand very well that their resources are quite limited relative to those of their enemies, and that this will require them to use every ounce of cunning and deceit that they can muster, for however long they can last.
They are not insane, they are fanatics. They believe in what they are doing with a passion that overcomes even the fear of death. You are not going to get inside these peoples' heads. They were taught the Koran at their mother's knee. They have lived their brand of it all their lives. You are not going to persuade them out of it, or reach them with logic or reason. Theirs is a faith-based obsession, one that to them seems wholly justifiable and even righteous in its fury.
When people like this start murdering infidels in 5,000-person swaths, it is time for their crusade to end. It's too bad; theirs was an honorable cause from their point of view. But like Mastodons, there is no place for them on our Earth today. They must be destroyed, like a dog that mauls babies.
Enemity is the key, and that is completely different and requires completely different rule, when are Libertarians and liberals going to spare us their PC bull crap?! Bunch of morons, you tell me.
The stakes are huge, the threats are real and permeating the whole society through muslim inlets and their supporters as well as possible diplomatic special forces used on US soil to assist them on NBC attack technicalities. We are at war, we have no time to discuss the sex of the angels, we have to scatter indeed and isolate muslims, their supporters and diplomats. Can America do that? In the current mood of political correctness it is a difficult task, one that looks like trying to inform Jerusalem in 52 AD that it is about to be destroyed by a Roman army at the gates....
Judgment Day America.
Much more than this, they are a Take Over The Whole World Club. That's what Jihad means. They are not content to live in their own enclaves.
Great idea! But why decide? Twice the nukes, twice the fun!
Will we blow Afghanistan from the 10th century back into the first?
A fine idea!
Will mass murder satisfy American blood lust?
Works for me.
Do we want to become indistinguishable from our enemies?
No, I'd like to be considered much more brutal and cruel than they ever imagined being.
I agree. Well planned and executed exacting of payment for this atrocious deed will go a long way, however.
After Pearl Harbor? I doubt there was as many of them as we have in the Press today.. who would publish them?... Not even the Communist organs were pushing that line, and I think even Kennedy and Lindbergh were quiet by then.
5000 dead and 10 billion in damage and Greely wants us to respond as if one plane was hijacked... The Hate America First crowd in action..
We just happen to be the biggest Satan. It is Western values that threaten them. We're just a symbol of that. Had Napoleon conquered the world and we all spoke French today, they would have crashed the planes into the Eiffel tower and the Arc d' Triomphe.
It is their observation, and they are correct, that a country which practices Islamic Fundamentalism on a country-wide basis is destined to forever be an economic backwater in a world where other sets of values lead to things like men on the Moon or vaccines against polio. And yet everything they know tells them that Islamic Fundamentalism is the right way to live. It is the right way for all people to live. There is no other right way.
Therefore the West must die.
Our freedom is at stake. The terrorists are in our own government. They created the people who attacked us. And now they're calling on us to give up our freedom.
Will we voluntary wrap ourselves in the flag while our "friends" deprive us of our liberty?
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