Posted on 09/11/2002 7:14:25 AM PDT by RonDog
What were they thinking?
Posted: September 11, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Does the remaining leadership of al-Qaida regret the attacks they launched a year ago? The dead ones can regret nothing, of course, and the scum-on-the-run thump their chests via videotape, but in their quiet moments inside this hovel or that cave, do you suppose they ask themselves: "What were we thinking?"How could they have misjudged America so badly? The America that pauses today to remember its losses and its heroes is not very different from the America of Sept. 10, 2001. The tears for the victims, the vast love of country, the genuine admiration for the political leadership that guided us through the crisis and the deep appreciation for the police, fire and military forces standing watch today as they do every day these are expressions of the basic American character that existed prior to the attacks. How could the Osamas of the world have misread it?
My guess is that bin Laden and his crowd mistook the American fringe for the American majority, and also believed the Clinton administration's fecklessness on foreign policy to be an expression of underlying American impotence.
The fringe is always there. It is there still, in fact. Jill Stewart is widely regarded as one of the toughest journalists in Los Angeles, but her snarling and deeply bitter attack on the country, in general, and Lisa Beamer, in particular, in the New Times is an expression of a widespread loathing of the country's political center that infects most of elite media today, as it has in the years since Vietnam. In the decade prior to the attacks on America, the media's dyspepsia over core American values had grown so pronounced that foreigners could easily mistake that self-hatred for a general American sentiment.
It is easy enough for Americans themselves to forget that Phil Donahue draws less than 200,000 viewers a night even as Rush Limbaugh attracts 20 million listeners a week and that NPR would fade the moment coerced subsidies stopped flowing its way. The columnists in the unreal world of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times Scheer, Krugman, Dowd and Rich are often clever, but never representative of the American pulse. Observers from abroad can easily miss hearing the voice of America when all it hears is Alec Baldwin and Barbra Streisand.
Enemies of the United States might also have watched the Clinton administration's indifferent responses to escalating atrocity and concluded that the attacks of last year would provoke, at worst, the launch of a couple of cruise missiles followed by subpoena servers. A country that needed U.N. approval in 1991, and which responded not at all to an attack on a ship of its Navy in 2000, is not a country that inspires fear among common criminals much less terrorists.
Would Osama have been wrong to conclude that this country would seek permission from sheiks and dictators before coming after him, and then would only do so from the air, if at all? In any of his plans, could he have foreseen a Special Forces cavalryman charging a Taliban redoubt, or Neil Roberts sacrificing himself for his buddies? (If you haven't yet read "Never Bring a Box-Cutter to a Jihad," do so today, and then visit frogfriends.com.)
As Churchill famously put it and which our enemies often forget the generations before us did not cross plains, mountains and deserts because they were made of cotton candy. Neither are their descendants.
The anti-American lobby has reopened its offices as of late, and the hand-wringers are once again out front with their posters, and busy with their documentaries. You have to hope that the world no longer thinks Margaret Carlson and Al Hunt stand for any significant segment of public opinion, or that Sandy Berger represents our best thinking on foreign affairs, or that the military might of the United States has been mothballed.
If we are safer now than a year ago, it is because rough men with big guns can move across the globe in days, because powerful ships armed with lethal missiles and from which pilots can launch can strike at a moment's notice, and because invisible planes can take off from America and deliver justice 12 hours later.
It is safer as well because Todd Beamer and his fellow heroes set an example that has already been followed and would be followed again if the circumstances arose, because this president is patient and determined, and because the vast, vast majority of America is not tenured, does not play with words for a living, does worship God and would sacrifice all willingly in defense of their country.
My guess is that, this year, the remnants of al-Qaida know all these things and will never again confuse the Peace Corps with the Marine Corps. Though the war is far from over, the clear recognition of American resolve, American purpose and American power is the guarantee of eventual peace.
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Best regards. Stay aremed ... stay safe!
That's not surprising when you were stumping for President Lamar Alexander, as Hugh was.
My father was descended from colonists, and earned a purple heart in WWII.
My father-in-law was NOT descended from colonists, but also earned a purple heart in WWII.
Two more proud American vets could not be found. FYI Americans of Mexican ancestry have served and sacrificed in wars, in greater proportion than their share of the population. I expect they saw it as a way to fully "earn" their places in American society.
Today's volunteer military ranks are made up by minorities in greater proportion than their share of the population. They are pretty good at what they do, and I suspect many of them would find your characterization of their abilities to be way off base.
Mr. Hewitt quoted Churchill suggesting that it is the pioneer heritage that gives America the cultural character to fight for liberty. Those who voted for Clinton were not people that love our nation and its heritage. (Or if so they were badly deluded.) That body of Americans clearly does NOT have the pioneer spirit. You and I may disagree as to why the "Blue State" masses don't possess American cultural character, but that problem threatens our nation's future.
Your in-laws and the others whom you laud are unquestionably capable to and AND willing to serve. And I thank them for their service.
You do a dis-service to the discussion, however when you suggest that ethnicity has anything to do with what I am saying. Surely you are not suggesting that there were no Irish colonists or that there were no African-American pioneers! There most certainly were.
So, please don't muddle this otherwise thoughtful discussion with a (perhaps unintentional) red herring racial argument.
I hope you're right about this. I don't travel in the circles of the Hollywood Left, but I do talk to my co-workers and neighbors.
Many, if not all, are of the general consensus that this (9/11) would not have happened if Bill Clinton was still in the White House.
Many blame Dubya for the "recession", Enron, Worldcom, and their latest hangnails, and long for the days Bill Clinton provided for them so nicely. (Forget about explaining to them about the Reagan tax cuts as the master stroke that made the 90s boom possible. It falls on deaf ears.)
Our company sent out a pre-9/11 directive that no American flags, red-white-and-blue ribbons, or any other patriotic displays would be tolerated in the office out of their commitment to diversity; that they are symbols of bigotry and hate, and that failure to abide by the directive would result in immediate termination with prejudice.
There are still multitudes of people who worship Clinton and his sleazoid, harpy, shrewish wife like gods, not to mention the army of soccer moms who fantasize about him day in and day out, who would do literally anything to put him back into the White House.
I believe Dubya will win re-election in 2004, no sweat. But the more I see of things -- not in the elite media, or on college campuses (which is depressing enough), or on television -- the more I think these eight years are but a respite between the tandem terrors of two Clinton regimes.
And don't expect the nation to survive eight years of Hillary. I don't know what will emerge after that carnage, but it won't be this Republic.
I hate to say it, but I have my doubts about Hugh Hewitt's outlook for the future, although I'd love to be proven wrong.
Jeepers, it sounds like you are in the "belly of the beast" where you are. Hang in there! Sometimes a word spoken now and brushed off will be remembered down the line over a cup of coffee...
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