9/11 and the Pastness of the Past
A couple of months ago, when Howard Stern took a couple of weeks off from his morning radio show, Sirius radio replayed “The History of Howard Stern, Part Four,” the final installment of which consists mostly of generous excerpts from the Stern show for September 11, 2001, beginning a few minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. It was nothing less than riveting to listen to. (Unsurprisingly, it turns out that that day’s program is available in its entirety on YouTube.)
On the show, Howard is babbling on in his usual fashion about wanting to get into Pam Anderson’s pants when he interrupts himself to tell his listeners that a plane has smashed into one of the Twin Towers. His conversation with his in-studio regulars then takes a dramatic turn. They follow the reports on TV and talk among themselves in much the same way that millions of others did on that unforgettable morning. They don’t comport themselves like stiff news broadcasters — they don’t edit themselves; they don’t watch their words. They’re just real people, getting angry at the monsters who did this and speculating (correctly, as it turned out) about their identity and motives. They also take calls from listeners and friends of the show who have news updates, personal experiences, or comments to share.
On Sirius channel 100, every episode of the The Howard Stern Show is repeated over and over on the day of broadcast and again on Friday and the weekend. I must confess that I listened to the 9/11 show several times. I was surprised at myself. I wasn’t sure at first why I was doing this. Then I realized that it filled a deep-seated need. What I needed, as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approached, was to return to that day itself and remind myself what it felt like — the shock, the rage, the unashamed patriotism and moral clarity, all of it as yet unclouded by the poisonous cynicism, moral relativism, and multicultural shilly-shallying that would lead to so much national division and self-doubt in the years to come.
So salutary was my dose of Stern that I sought out other 9/11 material on YouTube. Among the things I watched was David Letterman’s first program after the attacks. It was terribly moving — a display of decency, humility, and quiet nobility of a sort that you don’t normally expect to see on late-night network TV, then or now. It served as a poignant reminder of everything that was positive about America in the days and weeks following 9/11 — all of which would soon be gone with the wind, alas, as the country became increasingly split over Afghanistan, Iraq … and Islam. “Courage defines all human behavior,” pronounced Letterman that day, lionizing Rudolph Giuliani for his brave stewardship. With a catch in his throat, and without the remotest hint of his trademark mockery of all things sacred, Dave eulogized “the spirit of the United States.” And he said of the hijackers who had flown the planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania: “We’re told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervor. … And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense?”
I also viewed CNN’s live coverage of the attacks. On that September day ten years ago, it was CNN that I had turned on immediately when I happened to read online (on Yahoo News, while performing a Yahoo search: this was before Google) that a plane had just smashed into one of the Twin Towers. Watching the CNN coverage again the other day, I was struck by the staggering obtuseness — or timidity? — of the reporters, compared with the jokemeisters in Stern’s studio. Even after the second plane hit, one of the CNN crew was still solemnly speculating that America’s air-traffic control system had “completely crashed” — as if two passenger jets, on a cloudless, sunny day, could have ended up enmeshed in the steel and glass of New York’s two tallest buildings as a result of an air-traffic malfunction. Nobody shut this person up — she just kept going on with this inane theory. Was it that the idea of a terrorist attack on New York was so alien to her, or that it was simply too politically incorrect to even mention the possibility of Islamic terrorism without absolute proof?
By contrast, even before the second plane hit, Howard Stern’s producer raised the possibility of terrorism. And the moment the second plane did hit, Stern and company knew immediately that this was Islamic terrorism, and said so in no uncertain terms — and made it clear exactly how they felt about it. Their comments were bracingly un-PC. All these years later, to listen to their conversation is still strangely stirring, affecting, liberating. That day, in anger and sorrow, they said things over the radio of a sort that Americans, in the years since then, have been carefully trained not to say. Or think.
Their reactions were healthy — and correct. So were the reactions of Letterman and his first guest on his first post-9/11 show — none other than Dan Rather. Forget everything these two men have said or done since: on that day, their character and their patriotism shone through. “This is for the long haul,” said Rather, apropos of the war that America was now obliged to fight. He said that Americans needed to have — and insisted that we would have — the “staying power” to prosecute the war against our enemies until its completion, even if it lasted ten years. Watching Rather praise George W. Bush’s just-delivered “dead or alive” speech and seeing him break into helpless tears not once but twice (the second time, while reciting an obscure stanza of “America the Beautiful”), one could hardly imagine that this same man, in an act of irrational hostility toward Bush, would later destroy his career by insisting stubbornly on the authenticity of obviously forged documents impugning that president’s record in the National Guard.
Never, EVER, Again!
Years ago, the extremist Jewish Defense League adopted a catchphrase to denote their refusal to ever allow a repetition of the horror of the Nazi Holocaust which claimed the lives of some 6,000,000 Jewish lives : Never again! The JDL may be extreme but that slogan is anything but.
The slogan should be adopted with equivalent vehemence by the government of the United States and, if our government refuses to publicly proclaim the motto, “Never again!” in response to potential future holocausts such as those committed against America on September 11th, 2001, Americans should rise up and demand it be incorporated into our national foreign and domestic policies.
Subsequent attacks on our homeland could make what happened to the Jews seem like a minor blip in the history of humanity’s carnage.
Extreme? In a little-publicized comment, President Barack Hussein Obama concurred with America’s resident Muslim quisling, Fareed Zakaria, that the United States could “bounce back” even from terrorist nuclear attacks on our cities since we are so “resilient.”
There exists a common, mostly Christian, belief that good people should “forgive those who trespass” against them.
“Trespassing” can mean many things from intruding on our property to violating national borders with the intent of doing us harm; forgiving can refer to pardoning those who insult us to sparing the lives of those who murder Americans either on our soil or in a just war.
General Norman Schwarzkopf, retired commander of coalition forces in the first Persian Gulf War, succinctly reflected on the latter by saying, “Forgiveness is up to God. I just hope we hurry up the meeting.”
Allah may forgive Islamists. It’s doubtful a true God would, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5420.)
I am an Orthodox Christian. What we are taught, what we have experienced, and what I myself believe is that our God will indeed forgive anyone who repents, even Muslim terrorists.
We believe that Jesus Christ would have forgiven Judas Iscariot if Judas had been willing to repent. It is a tragedy that he did not. Jesus did indeed forgive the thief Dismas who repented on the cross next to Him. We use the prayer of the repentant thief in our liturgy: “Remember me, O Lord, in thy kingdom.”
Well aren’t you just so holy and special. While you are falling all over yourself forgiving these blood-thirsty savages, have you noticed any of them repenting. No? Didn’t think so. This business of forgiving those who haven’t asked for it is just a cowardly way of refusing to confront them.
I’m confident 1389AD can forgive and make a head-shot on a terrorist at the same time. It’s a Christian thing, willis, something you obviously don’t get.
“He said that Americans needed to have the staying power to prosecute the war … even if it lasted ten years.”
Ten years? What ignorance. History’s wars went on for decades or hundreds of years, when the average lifespan was short.
As the title line on Gates of Vienna reads, “We are a new phase of a very old war.”
Indeed, this war started in the seventh century and it may continue as long as there are people in this world.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
This war you are talking about started when Abram’s name was changed to Abraham. When Abraham told Hagar the Egyptian to take Ishmael the son of Abram and leave. Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the desert until the water ran out. Hagar thought all was lost. God spoke to Hagar, HE said I have heard your prayers, I will bless Ishmael, 12 Princedoms, and a Great Nation will come from Ishmael’s descendants; but He and his descendants will suffer angry blood.(to us this means, crazy)Since this time Ishmael and his descendants have been trying to usurp the blessings of Israel. NOT GONNA HAPPEN.
Fine article, Bruce.
H/T William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
In order to solve the innumerable problems that America faces now you must determine the root cause before you do anything else. Multicultural mentality is not the answer, it is one of the effects stemming from the the base of an enormous mountain of garbage created by one, lone bad decision America made.
In the mid 1950s America threw God out of itself. Whether or not you were a Christian, Jew, atheist, Buddhist or any other religion didn’t matter the fact remained that God, and His Word was the glue that bonded America together from it’s inception and held it that way until the day that America abandoned Him in pursuit of it’s own pleasures and self-gratitude.
In short, God and His Word was the single book, rule and standard that everyone universally accepted, lived by socially and sought out for guidance as to whether or not something, anything by any person or group of people was right or wrong.
Thus, in the mid 1950s America decided that God would no longer get in the way of anything that anyone wanted to do. If it felt good, then do it because no one could successfully criticize it without raising the objections of someone else that believed or felt differently about the matter.
Sex..? Go for it as much as you want!
Abnormal, deviant or perverted sexual behavior go for it. America now says that it is just fine; even teaches it in school.
Want to have some extra fun with the office secretary or next door neighbor’s wife? Go for it! Tough luck if it destroys a couple of marriages, families and the lives of several children. The point is that you wanted to do it; you have the right to do it and there is not a damn thing that anyone can say or do to change it.
Anything goes in America today! Isn’t it great? Isn’t this what freedom really means? No matter who you are, where you are from, what you want, what you are doing, what you believe is right or wrong or how much damage, harm, injury and pain it causes to others and our society it does not matter. God, nor His Word no longer has any authority or power to stop you. Multicultural mentality is just one small effect of America’s new way of life.
So, following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 what kind of reaction or response could President Bush have made about Islam that would have satisfied everyone?
Didn’t Howard Stern joke that he would sell tickets to the next airplane that crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, Washington, DC immediately following the horrible crash of Air Florida Flight 90 on the bitter cold day of January 13, 1982 killing 78 people?
Didn’t Dan Rather try to destroy George W. Bush’s presidency with falsified documents?
Those would be the last two people on Earth that I would look to for any kind of inspiration, much less find indicators about how America feels and thinks about what happened on September 11th, 2001.
Something or some person much greater is needed to explain the anger, fury and almost unbearable rage that still explodes inside the chests of most Americans when they recall what happened on that day.
Do those who attacked our country realize or understand that before it is over they will have destroyed themselves?
The fact is that America will never rest until it evens the 911 score.
But first America must understand that the only way it can do that is to return to God.
Thank you for that imbecilic and completely non-salient assessment in response to a post about 9/11. I particularly enjoyed the attempt to delegitimize the response of two men with a Pharisee-caliber invocation of their status as sinners.
If you’re suggesting that 9/11 was related to declining faith in God, you are suggesting that God was on the side of the terrorists. There are no shades of gray in that proposition. The only other explanation is that you’re a starry-eyed zealot without the capacity to see any moment or thing through any other prism except divinity, which I will charitably assume to be the case.
I don’t think that “We Left Him” is blaming the terror attack on God. He is merely saying that God offers His help and protection to those who ask for it, not to those who openly reject it.
Thank you 1389AD, hitnrun struck out before the first ball was pitched.
Name calling, insults and rush to judgement are the trademarks and tools of a society that no longer knows the spiritual meaning of God, much less have an understanding of what happens to a person or nation that rejects Him.
Perhaps Paul Krugman better expresses what hitnrun considers acceptably profound when it comes to September 11th, 2001. You know, Paul Krugman the New York Times finest; the one who recently said that real atrocity of 911 was the shame America should have for embracing fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush who raced to cash in on the horror.
“…moral clarity, all of it as yet unclouded by the poisonous cynicism, moral relativism,” These words describe exactly what the left does not have and the vile things which fill that spiritual vacuum. They spit on everything and them complain of the stickiness. There is good and evil in the world, and we must choose whom to serve.
Yes, there is good and evil in the world but if, like any good chef, you place them in a sauce-pan, turn the burner on and wait a while, they’ll reduce further into life and death. And these two forces will be going-at-it for quite some time.
For our team (life) we simply cannot afford to mistake what our enemy (death) is continually planning to defeat us with, and why, and what methods they’ll use. Of course, it does no good to engage in our own acts that betray life, because such may be all that is necessary to defeat us. They (death worshipers) could be patient and watch us self-destruct but instead, engage us, as in the Twin Towers, which should trigger a response by us to re-engage in the effort to preserve life by destroying that which blatantly promotes it’s destruction.
One side will ultimately get the upper hand and we will live in lightness or darkness for long periods of time. In this day and age, with the global thirst for oil, I’m glad it’s not me sitting on top of all that “bubblin’ crude”- spewing hatred of all things western. That would be very stoopid.
Bravo, Bruce! It was a brilliant idea to go back to listen to and to view the old programs for renewed perspective on not only the despicable event but the sad change in America since then. You have inspired me to do likewise. But the article would have been more effective if cut by 30%. Always remember: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
The past is not dead. Our president, the president of our country, took the opportunity to read a beautiful passage from the Bible that talked of “The God of Jacob”. The God of Jacob. It is an intentional affront to Christians and, perhaps Jews. Christians refer to The God of Abraham. Yes our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but we would refer to him as the God of Abraham.
Jacob is revered by Muslims.
Is this really the time and place? I am saddened that 10 years later, such an obvious, ham-handed and intentional insult would be made a part of an official ceremony. Our president and his wife just can not help themselves. There is something seriously wrong with these people.
Yes. It’s a disease many catch in university towns when they are not strong enough to resist becoming a product of their environment.
it doesn’t matter. Few will note or care. He probably thought he was clever, or maybe they just googled, “God of Jacob” and picked a fitting passage, so as not to offend Muslims (Christians and Jews matter not).
I’m already okay with it. What people will notice is that he read from the Bible. As in all things Obama, if was intended to be an insult, it backfired.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_of_Islam
there’s no special role here for jacob
Islamic view of JacobFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
“Yacub” redirects here. For the figure in Nation of Islam theology, see Yakub (Nation of Islam).
This article is part of the series:
Islam
Jacob (Arabic: يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb), or Israel (Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل, Isrāʾīl), is a prophet in Islam who is mentioned in the Qur’an.[1] He is acknowledged as a patriarch of Islam.
doesn’t add up to me. muslims rever abraham (ibrahim) who was the father of ishmael, whom the muslims consider their father. i would think god of abraham would speak to them much more than god of jacob. jacob is considered a prophet in islam, but he’s the immediate father of the 12 jewish tribes and i’ve never heard of him playing any major role in islam – surely not as great a role as abraham. anyone who knows more definitely who can weigh in here?
jacob
Ck on my comments above about the Father of Ishmael. A closer study of the names will help. Also how important a name change is to GOD, and Jesus Christ.
unlike the other “abrahamic faiths” – faiths based on belief in the monotheistic “god of abraham” – christianity is not a strict monotheism because of the belief in the trinity and in the divinity of jesus. But the term “god of abraham” refers to concept of god that the three faiths share – the belief in a single creator, who is omnipotent etc – not to the specifically christian trinitarian belief.
The man is a sheer and utter MORON.
I have to wonder if Obama knows that, after Jacob’s nighttime struggle with the angel, his name was changed to … Israel.
the god of jacob is the god of israel, not going to offend jews. please link to some kind of site that explains how the “god of jacob” is an expression that means something special to muslims that it doesn’t mean to Christians and jews.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_of_Islam – there’s no special role here for jacob
Perhaps I am wrong then. I must confess that I was suprised he read from the Bible and may have been looking for a slight where none existed. When he listed the God of Jacob, I googled and found an article discussing how they revered Jacob (can’t find it now) and it fit with something I had heard previously. I am glad to be wrong.
well, abraham is the father of all the monotheistic faiths, equally important to all three religions. but jacob is the direct father of the jewish tribes, the god of jacob is the god of israel. (how many muslims are named ibrahim vs jakob?!) the only place in psalms i find that says the “god of abraham” is psalm 47 and that’s not as relevant to the event. i don’t think he intended insult, but if any was given, i’d assume it was to muslims, not to the judeo-christian heritage. it’s not that i have any love for obama, and i know he’s run down our country countless times. but it’s a shame to find a source of division here if it wasn’t intended.
the expression “god of abraham” is rare in the bible.
jacob
Abram is the father of Ishmael. Sari gave her Egyptian handmaiden to her husband Abram. Abram laid with Hagar
the Egyptian, she gave birth to a son his name Ishmael. Then God spoke to Abram. GOD said, I will no longer call you Abram: Your name is now Abraham. Your wife Sari will no longer be called Sari but, She will be called Sarah. So Abraham is not the Father of all monotheistic faiths, in the world to day. If you will read carefully how/when and the sequence of the name change I think you will see from a better position.
Sarah gave birth to a son Isaac. His Father is Abraham. Later Isaac gave birth to Jacob, and Esau.
Esau was given a mountain for hunting Mt. Ararat,(turkey today). Jacob had his name changed by GOD. ISRAEL was/is his new name.
abraham being the father of all the monotheistic faiths means that abraham is for muslims/ in the koran as well as in the judeo-christian tradition/bible the father of monotheism today and all monotheistic religions trace their roots to him. in the bible and judeo-christian tradition, isaac is the son who inherits the blessings from his father and passes them on to his son, jacob (esau gets his own blessings but is not the inheritor and person who carries on the monotheistic faith). When Becky wrote that the god of abraham is the god of abraham, isaac and jacob, she is referring to the bible, in which the chain of transmission is that abraham’s heritage passes first to his son isaac and then to isaac’s son jacob.
in islam, they trace their heritage from ishmael from abraham. the muslims claim that ishmael was the true inheritor of abraham, and not isaac – Therefore, all the monotheistic faiths trace back to abraham as the father of the monotheistic faiths.
muslims claim that the bible is “corrupted” and that even though the “true” inheritor of abraham was ishmael, the text of the bible was “forged” to make it look like isaac was the favored son. This despite the fact that mohammed showed up long after the bible was written, and only knew of it from jews and christians, but somehow they know that the bible was “corrupted” and muslims possess the “true” story, they have always been conspiracy theorists.
now even though they claim true religion passed from abraham to ishmael, they also claim that all sorts of biblical figures were muslims. thus they claim jacob was really a muslim, even though the main figure they care about is ishmael. (This is why I wrote it would be very strange if “the god of jacob” is somehow a more important expression to muslims than it is to jews and christians. to jews and christians, it’s the god of abraham, isaac, and jacob as becky said, with jacob being israel, his sons being the literal children of israel, i.e. the twelve tribes, and jews descending from them, and for christians, jesus being a jew, i.e. a child of israel. in islam, jacob is not an essential figure in the chaim of transmission the way he is in the judeo-christian tradition.
esau is given mt. se’ir. noah’s ark landed on ararat.
the expression “god of abraham” occurs rarely in the bible.
Becky
This jacob guy is a mohommedist. His slant on Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Prophets are tilted by Mohammed. This happened when Mohammed sat in a cave in South Eastern Saudi Arabia looking for a god to praise and follow. He sifted through many. He was tranced and was told that the vision that he saw was The Arch Angel Gabriel. He thought these visions were Satanic. The Rabbi and Priest agreed, they were Satanic. His wife, who was widowed and quite wealthy,
said this was a vision from god thus Mohammad was blessed. So he sat down and wrote the Quran, however this was done over a long period of time and could not be read without the assistance of the Torah/Bible. In his instructions he was specific that the Torah and/or the Bible must be read. This the Medina. The First Quran. So when Mohammad’s wife proclaims that Mohammed is the last prophet. The Seal of the Prophets is made. Now here is where things really start to go crazy. For martyrs 200 virgins are to be given in heaven. Lie, cheat, steal, whatever it takes to keep the enemy off your back until you are strong enough to kill them. All faiths in the world are to be subjugated to Islam. If not, kill all infidels (that includes Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindu’s and the list goes on, and on). They also changed the Quran in 1948. This version is the Mykkah. The number of virgins dropped to 101, then to 100 finally 72. I guess someone did the math. To be a prophet one must be correct 100% of the time. It seems there was a little boo, boo about the # of virgins. Because in this newly revised version of the Quran, Islam died, and mohommedism was born. These people pray to a rock in a box in Mecca. This box is black onyx on the outside, and white alabaster on the inside. They are to pray five times a day, bowing toward Mecca. There is a guardian inside this box, mohommedists say it is The Arch Angel Gabriel. No. The Arch Angel Gabriel is not going to sit in a desert in a box, when he is at the HOLY GATES OF HEAVEN with a view that wouldn’t quit. I do know the guardian is a Fallen Angel by the name TYROL. The virgins spoken of earlier are also Demons. Not boy, not girls, not women. The Quran never says they are girls or women. Satan has played a trick on the mohommedists. EVIL’S definition: The purposeful destruction of GOD’S creation of love. Love is not mentioned once in the Quran, the verses must always have some one else interpret, because they were never intended to stand alone. This is EVIL at it purest form. All Evil is connected by black power lines, from the people praying to the Guardian in the box, from the Guardian to the rock, the rock to Satan. To control Evil it takes Greater Evil, by default Satan controls all Evil.
Check out other posts I have above on his Abraham quotes, you will see better. Now don’t believe me out and out, read Genesis about the name changes in the KJV of the Bible. Black lines can be seen by many psychics, find and ask. Or go to the Gnostic’s and ask God Almighty, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost.
GODS NAME
ISRAEL —— ELOHIM —— G-D — BEGINNING TO PRESENT
ISLAM ——– ILAH —— GOD —– ISHMAEL TO MOHUMMED
MOHOMMEDISTS —– AL ILAH —- THE GOD – ALLAH– ( MOON GOD)—— FROM MOHUMMED TO PRESENT
JUDEAO/CHRISTIAN —– ELOHIM — G-D —-BEGINNING TO PRESENT, ALSO GOD THE FATHER, GOD ALMIGHTY, GOD THE CREATOR.
QURAN —— UP TO 1948 —– MEDINA
QURAN —– FROM 1948 TO PRESENT —– MAKKAH
for more information on this subject go to barenakedislam.com
“ICE
Becky
This jacob guy is a mohommedist.”
I hope you don’t mean me. May the god of my forefathers, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob protect me from suspicion…
Ah, no, Becky. Muslims do not revere Jacob – quite the opposite. They honor Ishmael. Jacob is rightly seen as the patriarch of the Jews, Ishmael as the patriarch of the Arabs (and, by extension, Muslims). Jews, Christians, & Muslims all honor Abraham as the father of the faith (each of those 3 faith tradition claims him). Saying “God of Abraham” could be taken positively by all three faiths. “God of Jacob” could only be a positive to Jews & Christians, and is offensive to Muslims. Which is perhaps why Bush phrased it that way?
I checked back to this site several times, but am glad I did it once more to find this very interesting discussion. Thank you.
Apparently it is Ishmael who was the patriarch rather than Jacob. I did google before I posted my original post, and I could swear the article I read stated that Jacob was the patriarch and revered. I can’t find it now, so …. (gulping on large bite of crow) I…was…wrong
One last comment to Keith…it was Obama, not Bush who read from the Bible on 9/11/11. That’s why I felt there had to be some alterior motive. Obama …Bible… I’m just lucky that my head did not explode.
I love the internet because of discussions like these. Thanks to all.
Becky, WTF?! You’ve got it 180 degrees backward!
The “God of Jacob” is the God of Israel! (Jacob IS Israel – same person, remember?)
The people offended by Obama’s reading of Ps. 46 were people such as I, for whom Psalm 46 is a personal favorite: I was nauseated by the hypocrisy of the man reading those holy words, when that same man has done so much to try to DESTROY the nation of Israel!
9/11/01 was an act of war and Obama’s “community service and remembrance” can only invite more of that same aggression. What pulled all Americans together was soon to be forgotten in the name of self flagellation. The liberals blame us for everything that happens in the world, even if it happens to us. American Exceptionalism has become a dirty word according to the main stream media and our liberal run government. Being Americans is what made us exceptional and becoming world citizens will be our downfall.
Obama backs the agenda of expansionist Islam every chance he gets.
He is a traitor to the US by the definition in the US Constitution. If there were any integrity in our political and judicial processes, he would already have received the traditional punishment for such. But there are too many like him in DC.
In The Tempest, Shakespeare writes that “the past is prologue” and sadly it is so very true for “us”…and “them”.
There are two types of people in this land of ours. Those who instinctively reacted with a sense of protection, preservation and patriotism for this land of ours…and those who instinctively did not.
In the aftermath of 9/11 there again arose a split between those who held fast to that sense of protection, preservation and patriotism for this land of ours, and those who fabricated a sham for denouncing the former.
In group A above, the instinctive non-patriots are agents of treason. Traitors to the core. Subversives who live in a cesspool of hatred, whose life work is to tear at the fabric of our society for the sheer pleasure of shredding it. Frankly, if we lived in cfbleachers land… I would try them in a court of law and upon the finding of guilt…I would hang their filthy soulless bodies from the highest trees in the land.
Instead, they are lionized in our corrupt media and even more in our dysfunctional academic train wreck of a system and in our degenerate entertainment vox populi.
The “eroding patriotism” fools in B above, are the wallowers at the leftist media troughs, who, incapable of thinking for themselves, are peer-pressured cultists who get their marching orders from leftist rags, alphabet news outlets and their empty talking heads, Hollywood, Soros new media and academic frauds from group A.
These fools didn’t have the instinctive bile rise up immediately as the subversives did, it had to be regurgitated into their throats like little baby birds, so they could chirp back the subversive “message” on cue. So afraid are they of being called jingoistic, for showing a love of country, of pride in us as a nation, lest they be condemned as stupid, racist, lacking nuance, …that they suppressed and then turned their backs on all who shared their original instincts. Before the cock crowed, they denied knowing America at all more than thrice.
Then, the subversives went to work…blameshifting a mass murder onto Republicans, conservatives, Christians, Jews, …all the usual suspects on their blacklist clipboards.
Conveniently leaving out the attacks against Hindu nations, Communist regimes, an array of other Muslims, little children, beheadings of leftist reporters,…the subversives made this about the “sins of America and Israel”.
And, the west in general.
Radical Islam and radical leftism are diseased bedfellows. And the leftist cult groupie fools like to sleep around with those bedfellows. So catching their disease is not merely probable, it is inevitable.
We remember 9/11 not only to honor the innocent and the brave lost on that day, which we must. But also to honor the instincts that preserve and protect this land of ours, because past is prologue. The subversives and their cultish fool groupies are still at war with us. Today, more than ever.
When Bush bowed to political correctness (“Islam is peace,” he said repeatedly), he already conceded much of the argument to the hard-core Left.
In the weeks after 9-11, polls showed that over 90% of Americans were behind our government in its plan to go after the terrorists who had planned and carried out this attack. To get a number like that, it had to include most of the Dems and even a majority of the liberals. (The hard 10% who opposed it were the real far lefties, plus a sprinkling of ultra-right-wing anti-Semites who claimed this was a war for the Jews.)
But that broad base of support started fracturing when Bush started bringing more and more ancillary goals into the plan: We gotta nation-build in Afghanistan. We gotta get rid of Saddam. We gotta turn America into an armed camp, with TSA agents eventually getting the authority to feel up female passengers. Etc.
The professional hard-core Left, which is proud of having opposed every single U.S. military action since World War II, jumped at the possibility of opposing the Iraq War. But they couldn’t have gotten millions of Americans to doubt what we were doing there, if Bush hadn’t created a giant credibility gap himself. Bush’s insistence on trying to fight a war with nation-building, had little credibility and fractured the post 9-11 consensus. (We didn’t win World War II by nation-building in Sicily or the Philippines.)
Jihad Watch, by Robert Spencer, is second to none when it comes to telling the truth about our Islamic enemies. He’s no leftie. But even he couldn’t abide this Bush policy of trying to fight terrorism by nation-building Afghanistan and Iraq into Western democracies. He said that was unnecessary and counter-productive. He was right.
In the end, it was not nation-building in Afghanistan but Navy SEALS skulking through Pakistan and unmanned drone aircraft operating in a number of other countries, that have made the difference.
Sinz54, let me refer back to something I wrote in December,2009.
” Perhaps what is truly taking place, which seems to not traverse well from retina to neural pathway for those of us in the center and rightward…is the makeup of our current government.
We are used to having a government that recoils in a strong and reflexive manner from our countrymen trying to be mass murdered by a declared enemy.
This current administration is made up of a “protest culture” of individuals. If they have a reflex, it is toward not away from, other protest cultures.
So, when a person who exists in the center or rightward on the political spectrum views actions that are incongruous to their nature by our current leadership, it is because they are viewing the action/reaction chain through their own worldview.
Try viewing all manner of things through the eyes of an American protest culture club member and things will crystallize.
Now, to be fully cognizant of the impact of each step in the process, understand that there is an even further left, lefter, leftist spot on the protest culture spectrum. Michael Moore not only views the war on terror to be a ridiculous notion, he considers our sworn enemies to be heroes. And Ward Churchill believes that the innocents who died on 9/11 to be “little Eichmanns”.
Most (not all) of those nominated or selected for positions in this administration don’t go quite that far. The “inner circle” seem to be quite content to water down the “enemy” to merely a “fellow protest culture, that coincidentally, has us…as its main target”.
As with most protests, within a protest culture, according to our own leadership’s worldview…anyone that “gets out of hand” in “expressing themselves” should be handled within the confines of policing and “keeping order”.
PC responses are not just political correctness any longer, but rather, are protest culture guidelines. Protesting sometimes leads to raised emotions, don’t you know…and this is almost always, someone who simply gets so wrapped up in their “fight the establishment” rage, that they get carried away…and commit a violent act. We don’t want to condemn a whole “group”, for the acts of a tiny minority of protest culture participants, so the thinking goes.
Therefore, you don’t prepare in advance, because it is not a war. You react after the fact, like calling the police…to keep order.
And…you search for “root causes”. Like blaming Bush, which is basically the “original sin” of the religion of Protest Culturists. Apply this mindset to every…every…instance, where this administration said or did something that caused you to shake your head in disbelief.
And, in the future, expect more the same. When the reaction by the masses is too strong, expect lip service to what our eyes consider normal. Then, watch every action/reaction revert to precisely the same as before.
You are living under the rule of a leadershp of Protest Culture club members. This is what it looks and feels like. And because you are not a member, YOU…are more the enemy, than those who mean to kill us.”
Muslim terrorist and Western radicals are allies in their war to destroy western culture and sieze the assets of the greatest civilizations of all time.
It’s that simple.
How safe is America? The FBI recruits at mosques, including ones controlled by the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Also, see: Celebrating 9/11 at the FBI
FrontPageMagazine| February 11, 2004
When
linguist Sibel Dinez Edmonds showed up for her first day of work at the
FBI, a week after the 9-11 attacks, she expected to find a somber
atmosphere. Instead, she was offered cookies filled with dates from
party bowls set out in the room where other Middle Eastern linguists
with top-secret security clearance translate terror-related
communications.She knew the dessert is customarily served in the
Middle East at weddings, births and other celebrations, and asked what
the happy occasion was.
To her shock, she was told the Arab linguists
were celebrating the terrorist attacks on America, as if they were some
joyous event. Right in front of her supervisor, one translator cheered:”It’s about time they got a taste of what they’ve been giving the Middle East.”
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=14210
Both parties, not to mention the federal bureaucracies, are compromised by Muslim Brotherhood moles.
Obama, NYC officials and New York Mayor Bloomberg are excessively eager
to honor Islam with a victory mosque at Ground Zero. They DON’T care
that they are sending a very dangerous message to every Muslim terrorist
organization on earth that if they carry out a huge attack on America,
America will honor Islam with a victory mosque at the place where they
mass slaughtered hated infidel Americans.
Muslim terrorists around the world must be lining up to attack America so that they too, can have a victory mosque.
“Perhaps the poison of multiculturalism — the fear of acknowledging that our enemies were, in fact, our enemies — was simply too potent. In the years after 9/11, politicians, journalists, professors, and schoolteachers alike cowed millions of Americans into being scared of even saying, flat out, why those people had piloted those planes into those buildings. In doing so, they crippled our ability to respond in a strong, unified, and self-assured way to a threat that did not end that day but that is ongoing.”
And that’s the whole point. The stupidity of multiculturalism, which has already paralyzed Europe from saying ANYTHING bad about Islam, has more than taken hold here in the United States.
We needed a president, or some political leader, to actually say that all relgions are NOT equal, that multiculturalism is a lie, and that the people who embrace mutliculturalism are liars. There are still headhunters in New Guinea, and anyone who thinks their culture is the same as ours is insane. Any people who use their religion as an excuse to kill Jews, Americans, homosexuals, and anybody else that doesn’t really fit into their view of the world are to be hated and shunned. And there has to be something wrong with a religion that allows women to be used as property, that allows women to be raped and beaten, that allows women to be sold when they are children, and allows women to be sexually mutilated just because the people following that religion think it’s the right thing to do. If we tried to do any of that in this country, the followers of that religion would be put in jail, and rightfully so. And the final evidence is that no other major religion on this planet allows, let alone condones, such atrocities to take place.
If we really are in this fight for the “long haul” as Dan Rather said, we must first admit who our enemy is and what they are. After more than ten years of fighting this war (if you include all of the attacks against us in the 1990s), you would think we would have done that by now. But the vile and wicked embrace of multiculturalism has shown just how badly even Americans can be tainted by a terrible idea.
We have been blogging about exactly that for YEARS. At the beginning we were vilified for saying that, and sometimes we still are, but now people are finally starting to understand that Islam itself is the danger that we all face. The process of educating the public is a long, hard slog, and I do not expect it to be finished during my lifetime.
After a long hiatus away from the multi-culti political correctness of CNN I tuned in the other day for a segment on the WOT, al Qaida and the upcoming 10 year anniversary. I didn’t have to wait too long to hear one “analyst” referring to bin Laden as the “alleged mastermind” behind the attack. That was enough for me. The implications are subtle on the surface but profound underneath.
To the CNN citizens of the post-modern world:
9/11 is a crime, not an obscene act of war illustrating the depravity of Islamic hatred.
Until he can be tried and convicted beyond reasonable doubt, UBL simply is a criminal suspect due all the due process of any typical criminal.
Since, in this approach, bin Laden’s guilt is not proven beyond reasonable doubt in an American courtroom, such mental distance allows the cancerous conspiracy theories to flourish.
It was time to turn that mealy mouthed rubbish off again and leave it off.
A very sick group of people, plus a very sick religion, produced 9/11. Part of this equation—the part about the sick people—has been mitigated by the fact that so many of its ringleaders are dead. Many of their followers, who have come of age in a post 9/11 world, will likely have short lives, too. Predator type drone attacks can’t do the job of sending all of them to Allah, but they can make their lives far more hazardous and uncomfortable—if you can’t kill them outright at least you can settle for this half-loaf. More advanced and much more capable—as in lethal—drones will take to the skies in the near future to do more of the same and off as many of these diseased people as possible. And about that sick religion: I have a feeling its reality chickens will come home to roast pretty soon.
New York City Mayor Bloomberg has revealed his hate for Judaism and Christianity. Mayor Bloomberg has banned Christian and Jewish clergy from speaking
and participating in prayer at the Sept. 11, 2011, memorial ceremony. Even though the overwhelming majority of our beloved 3,000, were Christians and Jews. Bloomberg spits on their graves.
62,000 Americans signed petitions assembled by the Family Research Council pleading with the Mayor to relent.
Ms.Rivera:
Why is Mayor Bloomberg the arbiter of how 9/11 is memorialized?
Screw him.
Memorialize 9/11 how YOU see fit, and if that means that Bloomberg spends his day speaking to TV cameras and a live audience consisting only of his staff and his own invited guests amidst a sea of empty seats, then so much the better.
One suggestion on how to deal with Bloomberg!
My heart breaks over the suffering of our 3,000. What makes it far
worse – a deep wound – is the building of a 9/11 victory mosque at sacred Ground Zero to
honor Islam at the place where our cherished 3,000 were slaughtered
without mercy by the followers of Islam.
We can never forget that in America and countries around the world,
some Muslims celebrated 9/11. And that THOUSANDS of inhuman Palestinian
Authority Muslims celebrated with great joy the murders of our 3,000. PA
Muslims danced in the streets, passed out candies and fired into the
air. The same haters who demand a Muslim state inside tiny Israel. A
Muslim terror state implant and a victory mosque at Ground Zero is the
greatest betrayal of all.
Dear brothers and sisters, we will never forget you. We will continue
protesting against the mosque and holding up protest signs in the
street. It is the least we can do for you. We love you. Rest in eternal peace.
Linda,
I’m guessing that, if that mosque ever actually does get built, it just might have a few structural problems, electrical problems, plumbing problems, etc. Most of the construction workers in NYC have a very dim view of terrorists building an Islamic abomination in their backyard. Also remember that the WTC site is the burial ground for over 2,000 people whose remains were never found.
“Nothing is over about 9/11, but the national consciousness pretends it is so.”
-Bruce Bawer
To an extent, yes. I attended the dedication of the Flight 93 Memorial yesterday, a construction that is obviously being “slow-belled” by the government.
When one considers the hurdles faced at New York’s Ground Zero, acres of debris and evidence piled 30 and 40 feet deep over acres of lower Manhattan, whereas in Pennsylvania, there was nothing at the crash site but an abandoned coal strip-mine,
and yet they have built hardly anything at all.
It becomes obvious that the government is not very keen to celebrate a victory that was won in spite of, rather than because of, its efforts.
This brings me to my next point, and a sobering realization. As a unit of the National Park Service, the Flight 93 Memorial should be open to properly licensed concealed weapons permit-holders bearing arms for self-defense and the defense of others. This is the law of the land, and yet, because of the presence of Presidents and such, there were security checkpoints set up for access to the ceremony area at the memorial wall that they HAVE managed to erect.
It was precisely the government’s infringement on the right to keep and bear arms which ensured that the only people with weapons on Flight 93 were the Muslim terrorists who hijacked it.
They have learned NOTHING.
One may also recall that our week or two of national unity broke apart over the controversy of legislating that airline pilots be allowed to carry guns in the cockpit.
But while it is manifestly evident that where “the rubber meets the road”, the government may still be operating in a 9/10 mindset, we the governed have retained and still exercise our native common sense and good judgement.
You see, the parking and public transportation by shuttle-bus to the Field of Honor ceremony site was a hopeless mess. You could hear over the radio that was in every bus that there were “too many Chiefs” all broadcasting conflicting commands about unloading buses, loading buses…”stop!”…”go!”…”turn left!”…”turn right!”…”back up!”…”there’s a motorcade!”, etcetera.
In the spirit of our heroes of Flight 93, we, the non-VIP schmucks riding in these shuttle buses looked at each other with disgusted smirks, (and so much was communicated in those glances), and decided for ourselves when to exit, when to embark, and direct which way we needed to go.
I can imagine that at least one government-paid flunktionary was reduced to impotent paralysis over how his or her carefully-scripted choreography had so totally come unraveled.
To my mind, this was the most perfectly appropriate way that we could have honored our fallen heroes of Flight 93, and this is what the Flight 93 Memorial is REALLY about.
We the People reserve the Right to make our own decisions and to act upon them rather than sitting quietly in our seats and waiting for some boob’s permission …about anything.
There’s still cause for deep concern, but there is also reason to hope.
Pretty much the same as it has always been.
To see how liberals really feel and think about patriotism, the war against Islamofascism, read the disgusting Paul Krugman’s NYTimes oped today. The fact that liberals love PC baloney to cover differences between the Islamoascists and the USA-Israel-Western civ. is on the stage. Sorry, but I do not trust any leftist to defend this nation when they fear our military, intel-CIA-FBI-DIA-NSA and conservs more than they do Queda, Iran, Hamas, Hez. et al.
“Seek out the Enemy, and Engage”. For the Harvard educated, Non Military types,
Find the Terrorist, and Kill Them.
Watch the so called Arab Spring in Egypt, turn into a Anti Israel and Anti American country. We cannot continue to think of Muslim as a peaceful religion.
This is a very interesting article.
It demonstrates the incredible power of the Make Believe Media. Howard Stern and David Letterman are no closet Reagan conservatives; yet their frank opinions immediately after the attack and prior to their brains being manipulated by the mbm were exactly what ours our still today. They knew the source, they knew the reasons, they knew what to do about it.
Ten years later, after 3650 days of unrelenting mbm propaganda, which began 3649 days ago, vast swaths of otherwise sane people in the northeast and west coast think that Bush and flyover country are the real villains.
That alone is enough to tell you how deeply held values of 80% of the country can be overriden by people who hate everything the country stands for. Owning the media is enough to do it.
In many ways the media is America’s greatest enemy.
Indeed; The significance of that day still lives on in the minds of the adult patriots that witnessed it.
I’m guardedly optimistic America will not have to face a genuine crisis of the same magnitude with the current gang of misfits in power.
This “administration” has already handicapped our military with unconscionable budget cuts, thereby soliciting enemy activity against U.S. interests around the world. They are waving a white flag behind our backs.
How much hypocrisy is enough? What do these career politicians have to do to convince you how deceitful they are, and are only interested in enriching themselves at every citizens expense?
The terrorists beat us a long time ago. There is little more for them to accomplish. We tremble in fear. Not from terrorists, but from our own govt. Our country is bankrupt and the fall of capitalism appears more and more certain with each passing day. We become weaker as a country by the minute while an islamic revolution sweeps across the middle east. Tragic though it was, the 9-11 attack was just one day. One day that set the United States scrambling to destroy herself far more effectively than any terrorist group or any army ever could. In one single day the terrorists struck a blow that won the war against the most advanced military super power in the world and we respond by enslaving our own citizens while squandering our wealth to build their homeland.
The terrorists have won. Their goal was to change America and they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams; they have made America into a “security justified” police state.
America is almost over. Your grandchildren will live as slaves of the state.
Your post #22 is simply rank nonsense.
So, tell us, just what you would’ve had us Americans do otherwise, since 12 September 2001, to fight our Islamic enemy?…given the same resources as at that time?
“What have we done to deserve this?”
It’s a reasonable question with reasonable answers:
we refuse to bow towards Mecca;
we refuse to kill homosexuals;
we refuse to kill Jews;
we refuse to be ruled by divine-right Caliphs and Sheiks;
we refuse to acknowledge Allah and Mohammed as the one true god and prophet.
And that’s why Moslems think we deserve this.
“The tragic fact of the matter is that ten years after 9/11, we are more ignorant, and more vulnerable, than ever.”
For the nation as a whole, I think that is true. Although many of us ended up investing hundreds, if not thousands, of hours studying and discussing the Islamic threat. And, of course, Americans on the front line of the terror war understand who and what they are up against. So there is basis for guarded optimism that we will prevail, despite the scores of traitors & useful idiots who run our schools, universities, government bureaucracies, entertainment industry, and “mainstream” media.
P.S., and in this regard, thanks to PJM for this special 9/11 edition.
…was to return to that day itself and remind myself what it felt like — the shock, the rage, the unashamed patriotism and moral clarity, all of it as yet unclouded by the poisonous cynicism, moral relativism, and multicultural shilly-shallying that would lead to so much national division and self-doubt in the years to come.
I did that myself, watching a retrospective of events as they unfolded, and I didn’t listen to the blather. (first of all, I don’t like hearing those slaughtered on 911 referred to as “victims”…)
They did ALL THAT with box cutters ? hadn’t airplanes been hijacked for decades already ? And didn’t anyone on the ground know those buildings would “pancake”, which collapses happened more than an hour after impact ?
The opposition, that is the orthodox Muslims, have convinced themselves that their total failure to achieve the scientific, economic, technological advances of the West can only be corrected by a return to the strict tenets established by the immutable words of their G_d, Allah as written by their prophet, Mohammad, in Aramaic, in the Qur’an, their holiest of books. The writings in this book are considered immutable and are used to justify all of the cruelty, deception and terror the Jihadists are in the process of unleashing on the hated West all of it encouraged and condoned by the cruel, vengeful G_d of the Muslim faith. Islam’s failures, they increasingly believe, are the result of experiments in secularism that have not succeeded in lifting them out of their 7th century existence as exemplified by what they proved incapable of revising, their blind adherence to Sharia law.
The West for its part is in denial, unable to come to grips with a reality they’ve rendered themselves incapable of acknowledging; this disturbing state of mind the result of the great liberal contributions to world civility based on an overwhelming sense of guilt for the success and prosperity they enjoy, the “Berlin Wall” of political correctness and multiculturalism. Vaunted reputations as the brilliant, enlightened intellectuals and philosophers of the past half century will not allow it to be breached by mere reality.
The West wrings its hands and laments, how can such violence be condoned, encouraged and revered by a religion? And have we not all been inculcated with the “axiomatic truth” that Islam is a religion of peace? The obvious cannot be recognized and any reference or hint of this reality is met with vitriolic scorn and contempt, the machinations of an overactive, sacrilegious minority of Right Wing conspiracy theorists; “Islamophobes.” No, the fault must lie with the West. What did we do to deserve 9/11? The unending intellectual quest to lay all evil at the feet of the “great Satan,” America.
This quest has grown into a global set of blinders applied and assiduously maintained by who else but the Muslim terrorists cloaked in the garb of the peacemaker and the assigner of guilt that’s the root cause of the terror inflicted by their violent compatriots. The West is so stupefyingly duped by this strategy that they see no irony when a member of the so called “religion of peace” regularly threatens violence at the slightest infraction of the West’s as yet unrecognized status of Dhimmitude. That violence is often condoned and justified as a legitimate reaction to the oppression and prejudice that is the “predominant” attitude towards Muslims, arguably the most protected class in America. It makes absolutely no sense but no one dares to question it; fear of accusations of Islamophobia, the replacement for what are often accusations of Racism, probably when the obvious was recognized; Islam is not a race.
But, while the turmoil persists and escalates, despite screams of outrage and accusations of Islamophobia from the majority that remain in a state of denial, the word is getting out even while the Obama administration does its best to squelch it by restricting the vocabulary and filling its ranks with the enemy.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/09/gellers-new-book-explosive-bombshell-tens-of-thousands-docs-between-muslim-brotherhood-tied-groups-a.html
Perhaps, if America doesn’t once again shoot itself in the foot by reelecting Obama, this fog of self deception will begin to lift. As it now stands while our “leaders” eagerly congratulate themselves on the killing of Bin Laden, the ultimate demise of Al Qaeda and the impending victory in the war on terror the stated goal of the “Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] [who] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions,” is coming to fruition, right under their politically correct, multiculturalist noses, snapping victory from the jaws of “defeat.”
Wake up America before it’s too late.
“Nothing is over about 9/11″
Not as far as I’m concerned. As long as there’s one single Muslim terrorist, supporter of terrorists, or state sponsor of terrorism still existing…the war goes on.
If it goes on for a hundred years…I’m willing to pony up.
Once they’re all dead…then we can talk about it being over.
Individual terrorists are irrelevant. We can’t chase them all down, just as we cannot defend against every potential target here in the homeland. Rather, it is the terror *organizations*, and in particular their leadership — the terror dons — that matter. If you want to take down the Mafia, you go after the dons and the capos, not the foot soldiers & bagmen. We cannot kill every Islam-diseased mind out there. Nor would it be healthy for our society to do so. But we can go after the top-down structures, and we have had great success at that. But the work is far from done, especially so long as there are sovereign nation-states directly engaged in fomenting, subsidizing, and enabling terrorist plots against America, Israel, and the Western “Free” World.
According to international polls taken over the post-911 era, we have learned that MANY MILLIONS of Muslims favor the use of terrorism to accomplish Muslim cultural & geopolitical objectives. Yes, the “Arab Street” despises us. But screw them. It is the rouge states and their multinational terrorist organizations offspring that we CAN have success in combating, and eventually, bleeding white. And we could do that sooner rather than later were it not for the multi-culti leftists back home who do everything in their power to embolden our enemies while corroding OUR self-defensive instincts.
“Individual terrorists are irrelevant.”
Yeah…after they’ve been tracked down and burned alive in a hail of napalm, or somebody pops a .556 round through their eye, their relevance is definitely severely curtailed.