The Never-ending Day
Like millions of Americans, I did not sleep much on the night of September 11. I was horrified all day, but by the evening of September 11, 2001, increasingly angry. Horrified because 3,000 innocents had been murdered not just by 7th-century fanatical terrorists, but by cruel Dark-Age murderers who, in the best parasitical fashion, had managed to gnaw at their distracted host from the inside.
That duplicity was eerie and creepy — the premeditated design of Middle Easterners to live among and blend in for months with the very culture they despised and wished to destroy. Their hatred soon translated into sixteen acres of ash in Manhattan and a smoking Pentagon. Most of us could no longer watch the tape of those jumping off the World Trade Center, calibrating in extremis whether it was worse to implode on the concrete or be incinerated in their offices. Those images have never left us.
The entire day was ghoulish, and by evening, like some of you, I was worried that a number of post-modern Western ideologies of the last three decades were not only known to bin Laden’s gang, but comprehensively so to the point they would be used serially against the West in brilliantly sinister fashion. Was 9/11 the beginning of something even worse? No civilization could endure three or four successive attacks such as those on September 11.
Our Problem With “Appeasement”
The word “appeasement” has had a volatile history. In the 1930s it meant purported sobriety and circumspection in preferring reasonable concessions to an aggressor in lieu of risking destructive war. Appeasement grew in response to the horrors of World War I and the theory that relatively minor differences had eventually led to nightmares like the Somme and Verdun. But by the end of World War II, appeasement for the first time evolved into a term of scorn, a near-criminal naiveté that had gotten 50 million killed by failing to confront an ascendant Japan and Germany when they were comparatively still weak.
Although during the Cold War “appeasement” mostly remained a pejorative term, it also reflected poorly, in purportedly McCarthyite fashion, on any who leveled the charge — as if granting a few concessions was the smarter and more reasonable alternative to mindless preparedness and brinkmanship in the nuclear age.
So when the cloud rose over Manhattan, we were in a strange never-never land of having long appeased radical Islam while fearful of confessing just that, as if it were worse to admit to, than to have embraced, appeasement. Under the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations, the U.S. had not reacted strongly to the murder of Americans in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen, or after the first attempt to topple the World Trade Center. We failed to grasp that with each attack, Islamic terrorists were becoming both more sophisticated and bolder. Even though bin Laden lacked the comparative resources of a like-minded Attila the Hun or Hitler, it was going to be hard after 9/11 in any meaningful way to convince al-Qaeda — or for the matter millions in the United States — that such attacks on the United States should be synonymous with the jihadists’ own destruction.
I wouldn’t be so eager to give Obama credit for prolonging Bush’s anti-terror protocols. There would have been a firestorm if he had not done so, particularly among the independents who foolishly rolled the dice on him. A potentially even worse outcome for him would have been to shut-down his prospects to “change” America, if there had been or will be another major terror attack within our borders. If that happens, his reelection prospects approach zero.
As for the rest of the Leftists, they only went quiet for about six months after 9/11, after which they renewed their informal alliance with Islam and Islamic terrorists. The Left and Islam share the same overriding goal, which is to destroy western civilization and implement tyrany with them (Marxists in the case of the Left, and Islam in the case of terrorist) in charge.
Interesting reflections. Thank you.
My own:
how many sleeper cells are here ?
what is their strategy ?
how strong are the terrorists in North Africa after the fall of Egypt and Libya ?
how far is Iran from the bomb ?
The next ten years will be strange too.
The most dangerous sleeper cell in this country is in the oval office.
Even more dangerous sleeper cells are the voting booths.
After all, Obama didn’t elect himself – he had co-conspirators!
While that is true, I must point out that BOTH parties are heavily compromised by Muslim Brotherhood moles.
Obama turned over Egypt and Libya to the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda.
Arab Spring Freedom and Democracy in Egypt? Hardly!
10 years is just a signpost we’re passing. We’ll be at this for a very long time.
This particular war has been going on for well over a thousand years.
I would think a liberal is more dangerous than a conservative military person. The conservative has taken measure of his/her own violence and abilities. The liberal feels innocent and helpless until lashing out with all s/he has- which can be considerable firepower. I would think O is far, far, far more lawless and philosophically unsound in his use of the United State’s military.
You know, on the good side- teachers? High school teachers? are teaching from the leftist playbook, right? Well, rebellion and high spirits and youth is going to look like joining the military, flying awesome jet planes, starting businesses, writing things celebrating love and commitment and privacy, and classical culture. 300 was a mad popular movie to regular people, but not critics. It worked for Top Gun, which was nearly on continuous rotation when I was in high school, in girls’ houses, as well as boys’ houses. Men are coming back, having been in the most exotic places in the world, speaking in rap about it, having really outrageous stories with their buddies– that is loads more interesting to young boys and impressionable teens than high- voiced actors, like from Friends.
I keep hoping that O is the pause where the guy who just got decked at the bar, turns and wipes his face, and then turns around and lays out his attacker. I can’t see understanding going that far. The most bellicose- kill the over there- people I meet are mothers with small children. Submission doesn’t look safe. And, to women trained to sniff out submissive behavior to abusive men- O looks like a doormat wife dealing with her grotesque husband, every time he opens his mouth in public, on the world stage.
Ari, I hope you are right! Enjoyed your post very much, especially the bar analogy. I think the faith in youth is well-placed, too.
And thank you, Dr. Hanson, for another straight-thinking, straight-talking piece. Your writing, as always, is beautiful.
I agree with the first gentleman who said not to give so much credit… to which I would concur
Ari’s response also a gem…
Bu I truly have faith, as you mentioned, in today’s young people…
from Babies to mid twenties and 30′s I guess… there are inspiring doers and tasters of the the world’s cultures… in phenomenal Peace Corps projects that detect vaginal cancer with vinegar and a flashlight… I kid you not… to the many teens and medical students, who give 1 month or 3 or 24 to a village in a part of the world that need help to value their women and their children’s health and education and are taking steps in collaboration with local teens, youth and medical students and NGO’s and foundations…to save the children and create a better world… one heart, one pump, one brick at a time…
Debra, while I don’t denigrate your commendations of the Peace Corps’ young folks, I place much more faith in our all-volunteer armed forces, ALL of whom were in late elem. school/middle & high school/early college, who watched their lives shattered for all time by the horrid events 10 yrs. ago. As they aged, they decided to take the fight to the enemy. I respect each & every one of them. They daily face things none of us can even imagine.
But on the whole, I agree there’s hope to be found in the younger generation.
O is not going to be suddenly energized by a surge of the fighter’s spirit within him, he is too full of himself for that, but in these 10 years, a great many young people enlisted in the US military. They built their character, learning how to make critical decisions in perilous situations. These people are going to be the leaders we desperately need in the next 10 years and beyond, to rebuild the national character, and the national greatness that will surge come from their contributions.
One particularly visible example is given by Rep Allen West of Florida, but there are many more of a lesser profile, but of equally beneficial impact, whether they register a blip or not on the national radar screen of our spent media.
Appeasement continues with purpose.. More than anything else BHO need a 9-11 magnitude crisis to get himself re elected. After all how could we dare change administrations during such a crisis. Appeasement breeds aggression and advances the possibility of crisis. The only misguided salvation for this failed president.
KRC:
I’m still not sure the immediacy of our nation’s problems has been absorbed by far too many people. Oppose Obama and you can “go straight to hell”. Disagree with Obama and Hoffas’s union thugs will take to the streets along with the minions of the Black Caucus, Jessie Jackson’s and Al Sharptons “armies”.
Five million mexicans in the streets from coast to coast and across the hinterlands is not entirely based on fantasy. Joe Biden says those who think that criminal politicians should get their hand out of the publicly own cookie jar are “barbarians at the gate”.
If you’re suggesting that Obama and his cronies are setting the stage for mass violence, I think you’re right. But I think it will backfire on them. They are badly mistaken if they think the unions will rise up and attack Tea Partiers. Or that blacks and latinos will wage war on white people. Isolated incidents yes, massive uprisings, no. Even lifelong liberals aren’t about to be turned into canon foder. They already sense that this administration is losing control, they’re not going to follow him into battle.
The biggest danger is some sort of false-flag incident. This is standard operating procedure for leftists when they feel the need to radically alter dynamics on the ground. Fortunately enough of us (including members of congress) are alert to this possibility and so it is unlikely they would be able to get away with it either.
Frankly, Obama is doomed. We will turn out in legions in Nov. 2012 and blow the Dems out of existence. The hard part will be the mopping up and the setting straight afterwards.
None of this is to minimize the threat of radical Islam; and there is indeed a lot of evidence of collusion and cooperation between the Left and the Jihad.
Mass violence would backfire on them in the sense that many of the people attacking conservatives and libertarians would die, because lots and lots of conservatives and libertarians own firearms and know how to use them. I do.
As for Obama being voted out of office, remember that he was actually elected in the first place. People stupid enough to vote for this guy the first time around are probably so dumb that they would do it twice.
Worked for Clinton.
“Even lifelong liberals aren’t about to be turned into canon foder.”
I think you mean “cannon fodder”. A canon is a special kind of song; Row Row Row Your Boat is one example.
I see Muslims`faces incapable of the real compassion.Roaring mobs draging their dead or even injured in the streets show anything but compassion.
There where many justifications and explanations but no compassion.Are they capable?
Compassion?
Mohammed was without compassion…a sociopath…a murderer…a rapist.
Their “perfect man” was an abomination of human kind.
Their religion is a disgrace to the world.
Say it.
Say it everywhere, without apology or fear.
Their violent response to the truth merely proves us right about what they are.
Say it, and keep on saying it, until its accepted as the common currency for their negative stature,
their non-value, and their ever present threat to the peace of the world.
Say it, and keep saying it, until “mohammad” and ‘islam” are accorded the same kind of “respect”
we reserve for ” Hitler” and “Nazi” and “Death Camp”
Preach it!
I’ve been saying the same thing for YEARS.
Only now are people beginning to listen.
If only Stalin, Mao, Castro, Guevera, Pol Pot, Chavez, and Mugabe had the same “respect” in popular culture.
The more I read, the more I agree. People who come to America, who wish to share in our values and make things better for themselves & their families, fine. Those who come only to stay in their insular little tribes and FORCE THEIR VIEWS ON US need to stay home. Appeasement has gone on so long that the alleged “religion of peace” has taken our freedoms and twisted them beyond belief. They can talk the talk, but NOT walk the walk. Think of a few weeks ago with the so-called ugly incident in an amusement park. The women were told they could not wear scarves on several rides (and yes, they *did* know this ahead of time). Well, that’s because we’re all just a bunch of wrong-headed bigots — the fact that loose scarves represent a legitimate danger meant nothing all; better no-headed than bare-headed!
@ 6 Ben/The Root ’83
Slightly off topic, but would you describe mohammedans as ‘humble’?
Check out ‘onislam’ for scads of anonymous pap and anodynes:
http://www.onislam.net/english/reading-islam/understanding-islam/ethics-and-values/450927-humility.html
I too was filled with anger. And still am. Nothing has changed in the minds of our “ruling elites” with rare exception. That these monsters are still able to arrive on our shores, that our borders are still porous, that we have lost thousands of beautiful young men who have been sacrificed for the Utopian agenda of world wide Marxism, that AMERICANS have been forced to CONFORM to the barbarians and to “tolerate” their barbarity makes the murder of those 3,000 all the most monstrous. The endless wars, the billions upon billions squandered form the public’s treasure and on and on. We should have bombed them a decade ago, reduced the squalid heathens into a pile of rubble, put up a border fence and told anyone who wanted to sneak in from their savage lands, we will kill you. Instead we got George Bush telling us how wonderful it was that women in Iraq voted for the first time! WOW! And that is supposed to comfort the mother of a dead soldier how? There is an old saying in Italian roughly translated means LET THEM HATE. SO LONG AS THEY FEAR. Had we acted like those in other generations who had the will and the ability to strike at their enemies without compunction we would still have those martyrs amongst us. There is not one foreign life worth saving without the saving of our own first and foremost. I am NOT a citizen of the world. I am a citizen of the United States. This is my family. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone else until they are protected and saved first. Old fashioned? That’s now nations survived up until the era of international/globalism/mental illness became fashionable.
You said everything I feel – thank you!
In my view it should have gone down like this: Four planes = four arab cities. One of those cities would be nuked and that would be Medina. Next attack? Mecca.
Well said Betina, I am going to watch “The Falling Man” documentary again on the anniversary. As I watch it, many times the feelings you expressed roll through my mind. The film is agonizing to watch, especially in light of the fact that 10 years on nothing has replaced the World Trade Centre, and talk of the mosque makes me reel with extreme anger.
I don’t care about Muslims, I don’t want to hear about them or their culture, come to these shores and work to support your family, that’s it. Open your restaurant and hey I might drop in to taste your cuisine. If I am curious enough I will ask you about your homeland and what it was like. I don’t need any cultural sensitivity training, I don’t want to see immigrant youth centers paid for by the tax payer and most of all I don’t want to hear the word Sharia.
Who would have thought that 10 years on Barack Hussein Obama is President, a man who marinated in the post modern, moral relativist faculty lounge. He has created the biggest power vacuum anyone in history ever created in the middle east. It is only the beginning.
The Islamist activists in the Universities and throughout political life and their enablers on the left make me ill.
I believe this attitude is what Dr. Hansen refers to as the “more rubble, less trouble” school of thought. Until I foolishly let myself be talked into nation building I was of this mindset with most of the the Middle East- one civilized country in the midst of a continent of barbarians
After ten years of allowing these wars to drag on without resolutionI have found myself right back to my original thinking.
Islam is incompatible not only with the US Constitution and the oath of citizenship, but also with “democracy” (more properly, a republican form of government), and with civilized life of any sort.
Exactly right. To echo another comment, I’ve been saying this for years. It doesn’t take more than a cursory glance through their … um, “religious” texts to find this.
Dr. Hanson:
“Was 9/11 the beginning of something even worse? No civilization could endure three or four successive attacks such as those on September 11.”
The short answer is yes. The beginning gave us Barack Hussein Obama. We have withstood almost three years of his attacks on America but the question now is can we withstand another year and a half or five more years?
I believe the answer is no. Hope is not enough. What now? How? Who? When?
I believe Mitt Romney is the best in the pack. And in my opinion, the train has left the station without Sarah Palin onboard. Enough with her teasing.
And to those inclined to support Rick Perry, then just sign the documents and give what’s left of the country to Mexico if they’ll have it at this point.
Go Mitt!
I remember September 11, 2001 like it was yesterday. I was watching a morning talk show when the news broke through of the first plane. I didn’t stop watching the news for 3 days. Ever since then I have devoured presidential history and concluded that our government is an entity unto itself. I think the planned obsolesence of the American dream was the purpose of 9/11, and I don’t think any of us will ever know who was really behind that terror. I do know that GH Bush pushed for the New World Order and that Clinton brought 400,000 muslims into our nation during his time in office. If we look at all of the facts and study the procedure, we can see the fruits of government. The results of what occurred are plain as day 10 years later. We, the people, must protect ourselves from any future attack.
what has pissed me off for the past 10 years is the muslim enclaves that live in America, many of which receive public assistance often illegally, have failed to denounce what the muslim terrorists did and actually cheered what happened. I have no problem identifying and fighting my enemy and will do everything to preserve my countries way of life while helping my fellow countrymen who are actually american, but to have to watch enemies of our country benefit from and live in our society while they denounce it is worthy of war. Its more then just simple freedom of speech. Just because they live here does not give them immunity from the wrath they should face from real americans who might disagree on issues, but do not support our enemies.
The hispanics and arabs and others who spew such negativity against america while living off of it need to be deported and now. Im glad to fight an asshole living in Iraq who hates me as he can be nationalistic all he wants while living in his medieval craphole of a country, but to have to see it in my own country to such levels is despicable.
They all need to go back to their wonderful homelands where there is no economic opportunity and violence against women and non muslims is encouraged and supported.
9-11 did not unite this country, it just brought out in the open more quickly that there are way too many people who hate us and root for our demise and that we have stopped doing what is necessary to preserve our borders, language, and culture. If we dont correct our look the other way as long as my BMW is shiny mentality, we will be under the thumb of a socialist dictator in ways we have yet to see.
The end result has spiraled out of control so quickly since 9-11 that the population can elect and support an usurper who is not even american and not even eligible to be President. 9-11 did so much more damage then the human loss, but atleast it will force the civil war that is coming sooner then the other side was ready because there are still enough of us left who care. The communists need a reduced white population to perfect their socialist utopia.
We are South Africa/Mexico in 25 years and Zimbabwe in 50 if we are even still a country. I am guessing the american producers will soon form a new nation in the pacific northwest. The non producers who make up all the sewage of human life that live in the big cities will have no one to pay for their lazy and corrupt ways. Then it will get real interesting.
I feel sorry for my kids and grandkids.
I was right with you until the “birther” nonsense. Let go of that, already. The bare fact remains that BHO is *not* an American where it counts; not in his thoughts, actions and esp. understanding. Whether or not he’s “legally” a citizen is just coverup. The Clueless One, with the help of all of us, won’t be pres. much longer. I just hope we can hold on until then.
As I was suffering post 9/11 depression I happened upon a CSPAN interview with an author who has published a book shortly before the attack. The book was a treatise on the strength of Western Culture and took a long view of history and the fate of its enemies. That book gave we hope that we would overcome one more set of enemies. So Carnage and Culture make me a fan of its author and I remain so today. Thank you Dr. Hanson
Well written and well said.
I find it amazing, as Dr. Hanson notes, that the loudest & fiercest critics of Bush-Cheney policies re: terrorism *did* pretty much shut up after Obama kept them in place and in some cases expanded them. For example, candidate Obama found out after he took office that there was no viable option to replace Guantanamo — so almost 3 yrs. after he promised to close it, lo & behold! it’s still open. BUT we don’t have to hear how it’s the “terrorists most valuable recruiting tool” 24/7. As long as it’s “The One” making pronouncements, everything’s groovy.
My only quibble with VDH (and it’s a small one) is that the policies have not necessarily kept us safer — the Christmas Day “underpants” bomber and the Times Square van bomber are only 2 circumstances where WE GOT LUCKY; it had nothing to do with Dept. of Homeland Sec., FBI, NSA, etc. being on the ball or anything like it. To be fair to the above groups, it’s almost impossible to stop one crazy; yet as S. Zangpo questions in these comments, how many sleeper cells are there? Are any of these lone wolves actually part of a larger group that we just haven’t heard chatter from? How creepy is that to contemplate, that the bad guys here in America are just getting sneakier?
Most unsettling to me is that the terrorists efforts seemed to be stepped up after Obama’s election. For sure the ones we’ve heard about (like the 2 described above) came after he began his world-wide “Apology Tour”! He bows one more time, we’re gonna hafta find a surgeon to open him up and install some steel in his spine — hey, maybe not a bad idea anyway …
If you can’t see that terrorist nuclear weapons will soon be used in anger, then you can’t see. And if you’re in the wrong place, poof. A shadow of your existence may be visible to future viewers. Perhaps they will understand what they see.
Islam and Muslims are totally responsible for 9/11 atrocity in our country and almost daily killings and murderous attacks throughout the world everyday. And yet our holiier than thou PC/MC crowd is not willing to call spade a spade and hold them responsible. We keep appeasing them and allow their unrestricted immigration into this country. One would think that after 9/11 this country would have stopped all Muslim immigration into the country. Muslim demands in this countries are increasing daily and every point we are being accused of bigotry and racism by these new comers. It is as if non-Muslims have no rights and we have to accede to all Muslim demands. Where would it end?
Wake up America!! Throw away this PC/MC culture and hold people responsible for their actions without worrying about hurting somebody’s feelings. Spread the truth about Islam far and wide so that even Muslims come to know of it instead of the lies from their imams. We should be able to turn around the rot we are in now!!
Something that I found sad and maddening at the same time over the last 10 years has been the paucity of images, footage and replays of 9/11.
Many who were children at the time, but now could appreciate the gravity of the sight, have been shielded from these important, historic and jarring images.
I’ve always wondered if this was a purposeful media omission — to minimize the prospect of keeping the populace outraged at the attack and lull us into softening our collective memory.
“I’ve always wondered if this was a purposeful media omission — to minimize the prospect of keeping the populace outraged at the attack and lull us into softening our collective memory”
Stop wondering.
Its a complete and overt conspiracy among media elites to minimize what happened, and who did it.
When it was time to reveal loyalties, they chose them, over us.
Period.
Simple Test:
A) How much footage of falling bodies could you easily find on mainstream news sites these past ten years, verses:
B) Widespread proliferation of Abu Ghraieb “abuse” photos.
Call the MSM what they are:
Unidicted co-conspirators, and accesories after the fact.
Its positively Orwellian what they do.
Oh my goodness, I was going to post exactly what you said! But as I scrolled through the comments, yours was the very last…anyway.
On 9/11, I had a three year old, a 1 1/2 year old, and a ten-day old. I have tried so hard to impress upon them (and their younger sister, not yet born) the bravery and heroism of that day, in the face of unspeakable evil. I know that home is the only place they hear it. Why is it disrespectful to watch footage of that day, not to wallow in the agony but to remember? One day I said something about the heroes on Flight 93 (because they were just that), and my daughter asked me what they did. After I told her about it, she said in her awestruck little voice, “That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever heard.” EVERY school child should be able to tell that story!
I also have an enormous problem describing that day as a tragedy. No, a tragedy is a young mom with cancer, or a family killed in a car wreck. This was an attack, an act of war. The loss of life was a tragedy to each individual family, but to our country it was an act of fierce agression. This was no “man-caused disaster!”
Realpolitik had as much to do with the U.S. looking the other way at radical Islam, as appeasement born of fear did.
Just a few days after 9-11, Janes’ Information Systems–they’re the ones who publish “Janes Fighting Ships” and “Defense News” and the like–published a fascinating history of how and why the U.S. acquiesced in the rise of radical Islam.
Basically we did it to fight the U.S.S.R., much as we had jumped into bed with the U.S.S.R. to fight Nazi Germany decades earlier. This policy was the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser. I guess he thought it was cheaper and easier than Carter having to stand up to the Russians himself (as Reagan would do later).
Here are some excerpts. This is dated 14 September 2001:
“The origins of last Tuesday’s attack on the United States arguably have their roots in the 1970s. At this time, during the height of the Cold War, a Washington shamed by defeat in Vietnam embarked on a deep, collaborative enterprise to contain the Soviet Union.
“The genesis of the policy came to a head following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when President Jimmy Carter set up a team headed by National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to employ its ‘death by a thousands cuts’ policy on the tottering Soviet empire, especially the oil- and mineral-rich Central Asian Republics then ruled by Moscow.
“Thus began the US-love affair with Islamists in which short-term profit motivated all parties concerned, but the deadly ramifications of which are haunting the world today and the effects of which were brought home starkly to America earlier this week.
“This ‘marriage of convenience’, consummated in an alliance with Islamic fundamentalists, particularly suited the Pakistani military junta of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, which was looking for greater strategic depth and economic influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia….
“The US-led ‘proxy war’ model was based on the premise that Islamists made good anti-Communist allies. The plan was diabolically simple: to hire, train and control motivated [!!!] Islamic mercenaries. The trainers were mainly from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and Navy SEALS in various US training establishments. Mass training of Afghan mujahideen was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan Army under the supervision of the elite Special Services Group (SSG), specialists in covert action behind enemy lines and the ISI….
“The entire anti-Soviet operation, headed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and held together on the ground by the ISI, was supported by generous donations from the US State Department, Western governments, Saudi Arabia and a handful of commando experts from the UK Special Air Service (SAS), while surveillance training, communication and first aid help came from France.
“Israel [!!!] provided weapons like rifles, tanks and even artillery pieces, captured during its many wars with the Arab states, while Sudan and Algeria contributed committed mujahideen and religious motivation [!!!]. The entire operation was, inexplicably but amusingly, christened the Safari Club.”
http://www.takeoverworld.info/janes_marriage.htm
And so the West–including Israel!–armed and trained Islamic fundamentalists and made sure that they were provided with the proper “religious motivation.”
What the heck were we thinking??? Did we ever think ahead to what might happen after the U.S.S.R. was defeated? Did we really think that all those thousands of jihadists would just go into retirement and write their memoirs, instead of looking around for new “infidel” targets of opportunity?
We should have learned from our alliance with the U.S.S.R. that the notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” doesn’t work when the enemy of your enemy is ideologically implacably opposed to your principles too. In that case, all you’ve done is trade one enemy for another.
I find Janes Information Systems explanation to be childish in the extreme. This “coming back to bite you” thesis is laughable. It shows a profound ignorance of the doctrine and history of Islam, as well as the AQ interpretation of it (which is derived from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahhabi strain of orthodoxy.)
Nonetheless, our involvement on behalf of the mujahideen in Afghanistan was a stupid mistake, and it has indeed come back to bite us.
Julia Gorin explains how fighting on the side of the Muslims in the Balkans has also come back to bite us.
I’d like to see a Constitutional amendment prohibiting any kind of assistance whatsoever to any Muslim nation, military power, organization, company, or individual.
There are some further things to reflect on, I think.
Did the USA react correctly to the 9/11 attacks?
In retrospect (unfair as the 20/20 vision of hindsight is) – I don’t think America did react properly to that event.
Consider:
The Taliban and AQ were kicked out of Afghanistan with high losses to their personnel. Excellent, of course. But when you really think about it – America was not in the slightest bit obliged to stay, defend afghans against the pakistani-supported insurgency, and spend its blood and fortune on trying to turn a feudal, tribal populace into a functional nation-state. It wasn’t even arguably in our national interest to try – after all, if the Taliban and AQ returned after US forces left, nothing on this earth could have stopped America from going back in and turning all of Afghanistan into finely ground dust.
Then, a bloodthirsty mafioso-like dictator was deposed in Iraq, and his fascist state’s NBC programs were dismantled, along with is widespread financial, logistical and training support of jihadist organizations throughout the world. Also, in the subsequent guerilla war, AQ was handed a literally crushing defeat in the heart of the ancient Caliphate at the hands of a skilled counterinsurgency effort by the US Army – an army whose enemies had convinced themselves was too soft and too technically oriented to win a down and dirty war against guerillas. To add icing to the cake, AQ proved itself to be a profoundly evil and sadistic force, as in true Wahhabi fashion they spent most of their energies oppressing, terrorizing and slaughtering fellow muslim civilians, inspiring widespread revulsion across the Islamic Umma. And, on top of it all, a frail fledgling democracy popped up to replace the old regime.
But despite these wonderful achievements, the success has not been 100%, and the cost has been 5000 dead servicemen, several tens of thousands with major or crippling wounds, and a $1T addition to the national debt. Since the WMD’s could only have reached Europe at best on Iraq’s modified Scuds, and the jihadist groups they supported were all involved in their own regional conflicts (Chechnya, Mindanao, Thailand, Lebanon and so forth) was it really America’s responsibility to deal with Saddam and Iraq, or was it really more of a job for Europe and the surrounding Middle Eastern nations? It’s irrelevant that they seem so unprepared – physically or psychologically – to deal with their own problems. Their problems belong to them and no one else.
There is a profound set of lessons to be learned from this last decade. I humbly offer my view as to what some of these lessons are:
1. Nation building does not typically work – in fact, the crushing defeats of Germany and Japan and their subsequent rebirth as law-abiding, peaceful and prosperous nations are exceptions to the rule. Thus, nation-building as a centerpiece of military policy is an error.
2. The Spartans were defeated not only by their long term zenophobia, cultural sterility and blinding orthodoxy in military, commercial, political and social matters, but also by their switch to a more aggressive foreign and military stance that bled their strength over time until it broke. Despite all the limitations they placed on their society as a military slave state, the Spartans could have remained awesomely powerful and feared for quite some time if they had been far more conservative with the deployment of their might, using it sparingly, but with full, unrestricted and devastating effect when they did employ it. I would suggest that America would become stronger by withdrawing its forces from their global deployments – treat the rest of the world’s nations like adults (no matter how undeserving of such respect) and leave them to settle their petty squabbles and intrigues on their own, only intervening when it was vitally important that we do so, and with such brutal and overwhelming effect that states worldwide would live in dread for the next two or three decades that they might do something stupid enough to provoke America to ‘release the kraken’ upon them.
Again, it’s easy to criticize with hindsight. But I humbly think my arguments have merit.
Sorry – didn’t mean to post anonymously, it was an oversite :-)
Isn’t it nice that the Al-Queda jihadists everywhere turned out to be idiots who couldn’t walk and carry a bomb at the same time, and who are more interested in internet porn and fornicating with their donkey than in building their own vibrant society?
I wanted to nuke them in the days after September 11, but as it turns out, we didn’t have to waste the bombs. They are busily tearing it all down and burning it all up all by their little sandal-clad selves.
The United States has freedom of religion incorporated into its constitution. Islam is a “religion” at odds with the constitution, insofar as women are not equal, infidels may be killed and their possesions looted, apostates may be executed, etc. Remove the religion label, declare it an ideology, close the mosques, deport the imams, and demand that the muslims renounce those tenets of their “faith” that are at odds with the constitution. Consciencious Objectors? No problem, go back to the country of origin where your beliefs are mainstream. Take your children as well, they are sure to appreciate your piety.
Islam is a “religion” at odds with the constitution, insofar as women are not equal, infidels may be killed and their possesions looted, apostates may be executed, etc.
In America we have feminism. Works much the same.
LOL
I can’t sort out what I saw live and what I saw taped; there’s a four hour time difference in Alaska. I awakened at my usual 5:30AM and turned on the radio to a local AM station that carried local news and weather early in the morning. It was not the usual announcer but rather Peter Jennings’ voice so I knew something big and probably bad was going on so I turned on the TV. As soon as I saw the smoking buildings, I had no doubt that a large commercial aircraft had struck and also no doubt that we were at war. Some of us had read Tom Clancy’s story of the attack on the US Capitol and it wasn’t even far-fetched to us. I only wonder why it had taken so long for somebody to do it.
I quickly got dressed and went to work because I figured this was going to be an interesting day. We soon learned that all aircraft were grounded which means my air travel dependent state was at a standstill. We had employees scattered all around the Country and no way to get them home. We needed employees to do all sorts of things and had no way to get them where we needed them. We did lots of catch as catch can things and I bluntly told the unions that I’d see them in Hell if they tried to pick our pockets over work rules as we tried to deal with it all. Like most large employers, we had no comprehensive lists of our employees and since we had long ago gone to electronic pay checks and email communications didn’t have accurate physical addresses or home phone numbers on most of them. Fixing that gave us a project but by the time I retired in ’06 little had actually been done other than talking about it. Suspect it is pretty much the same everywhere.
I found time to catch my breath and think and learn about how little we knew about people who wanted to kill us. Our history has a blind spot to the conflict in Eastern Europe between Christian Europe and the Muslim jihadi. It isn’t in our historical canon that 1492 is significant not just as the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue but also as the year that the last Muslim invaders were driven from Spain. Our Eurocentrism and a whole lot of Catholic prejudice against the Eastern Church has blinded us to the fact that before Islam, all of the Eastern Roman Empire was Christian. That Eastern Roman Empire included all the now Muslim states around the Mediterranean. The Muslims swept out of the Arabian desert, conquered Persia and much of what is now Southern Russia, swept south and took Egypt, then what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and, yes, Israel, then on across North Africa taking what had been Rome’s grainary in what is now Libya and Tunesia, finally casting up in Southern Spain. The Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire formed a bulwark in what is now Turkey, some of Iraq and Iran, the Balkans and Greece for over 500 years before losing most of those territories after the European crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204, fatally weakening the Eastern Empire. Even so, The Byzantines held on to Roman and Greek learning and civilization against the barbarous onslaught until finally defeated in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks. As late as 1586 Christian soldiers were repelling Muslim invaders from the gates of Vienna. They don’t teach this in multi-culti diversity celebrating government schools.
This barbarous cult has been the enemy of civilization since it sprang like a plague from the desert in the 8th Century. A unified Christian Europe could and should have extirpated the cult hundreds of years ago buy was too concerned with internecine rivalries and heresies to unite. Even Byzantine persecution of Jews and perceived heresies eased Muslam conquest as dhimmitude was preferable to disposession or execution by the Byzantines. There is much we should and don’t know of these people, but one thing is evident: there really can be no reconcilliation between the order liberty conceived in our Constitution and Islam and if we pretend that we can get along with Islam, we are doomed.
Our Eurocentrism and a whole lot of Catholic prejudice against the Eastern Church has blinded us to the fact that before Islam, all of the Eastern Roman Empire was Christian.
…a whole lot of Protestant prejudice against Catholics…
Fixed it for you.
The reality is that all the Eastern Churches were Catholic for 1000 years, most of the Eastern Churches in the regions you named are Catholic.
You also failed to note the Byzantine Empire’s #1 strategy against the Muslim threat was appeasement and the gradual surrender of a region here, a province there, until the Empire was little more than Constantinople itself.
That’s an exaggeration. Besides, I’d put more of the blame on the Western Christians, who have sold out their Orthodox brethren at nearly every opportunity they had.
No, you didn’t fix anything; you merely demonstrated your ignorance. The Byzantine Empire had ceased to exist, Constantinople was the Ottoman capital, and the Hagia Sophia was a mosque long before there was such a thing as Protestantism in any organized or meaningful sense. Our history of the Ancient World, the Roman World, and the so-called Dark Ages comes almost entirely through Roman Catholic eyes.
Now I’ll admit that Protestants have done little to correct some of the fuzzy view, but the failure of Roman Catholics to unite with the Eastern Church against Islam is all on the Romans as is the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
And, frankly, if appeasement is all you have in your toolkit, it is what you do. For much of its later history the Byzantines faced two hostile forces: the Moslems and the Western Christians.
Posts like this are one of the reasons I visit PJMedia every day. I remember September 11th, all right: I was thirteen, and had just gone into eighth grade. I watched the second tower fall on live TV, and remember sitting there numbed. Numbness turned into sorrow, and sorrow into anger–an anger that, ten years later, still hasn’t dissipated. I was already tending conservative anyway, thanks to a family that knows its history, but that was the final straw.
How dare they? How dare they? I don’t even like people intruding into my personal space, let alone flying planes into a building in my country. I can’t comprehend the viewpoint of someone who looks at the falling towers and the burned corpses, frowns, and says “Well, they deserved it.” That’s–to use one of the left’s favorite terms–blaming the victim, and it’s bull.
What a strange decade, indeed.
Thank you VDH!
You got that right. The twin pillars of post-modern thought:PC and moral relativism.
And thank you Bush and Cheney!
I want to puke everytime the left makes the *false* legal conclusion and assertion that waterboarding was torture. The left could never even correct define torture. I’ll take John Yoo over Michael Moore any day.
Waterboarding isn’t torture. When John McCain was beaten so bad that today he can’t raise his arms above his head, that was torture.
Three terrorists were waterboarded and that information saved thousands of lives and lead to OBL’s killing.
The method worked and lead to great results.
The best thing about Victor and the Veep is clear thinking.
Face it: the left are utopian dopes!
As always, well and thoroughly thought out and composed. That said, Doc, I think you are mistaken in one sentence, which is: “No civilization could endure three or four successive attacks such as those on September 11.”
I think that in order to save our civilization, there needs to be at least one more attack on a grand scale, probably more than one. On 9-11, the American people woke up for a little while, but then went back to sleep. President Bush did us no favors by telling Americans to shop. Then President Obama did worse, going to Cairo and making a speech which was basically one lie after another about Islam and history. Brought to my mind the great line from Bob Dylan’s “The Wicked Messenger,” “His tongue it could not speak but only flatter.” People in the Arab world knew he was lying. Only Americans didn’t know, because we have become an a-historical civilization for the purpose of not having to fight for ourselves, it seems easier to not have to learn, and, as Jung rightly pointed out, indolence is a grand motivator.
The left refuses to realize that peace is not a primary Islamic value, while domination is. The vast middle does not want to know. The right is tied to theocratic ideas. What Darwin, on whose broad shoulders Western civilization rests (along with Newton), said was that those who can best adapt are the ones who will survive and thrive. Not the strongest. Not the smartest. The most adaptive.
Unless we use them, our weapons will never be a match for their wombs. Our young men, who have no idea what we are fighting for, are no match for jihadists who have the passion and inspiration of their messianic movement.
Yep — we need to suffer and endure more and bigger attacks…sad to say.
“To suggest that there were elements within Islam that made it ripe for exploitation by al-Qaeda, or to suggest that tens of millions in the Muslim Arab world were receptive to bin Laden’s message of blaming the West, America, or “the Jews” for the Middle East’s unending misery — rather than self-induced religious intolerance, gender apartheid, tribalism, dictatorship, and unproductive statism…”
Pew just released a survey which reveals that, while 70% of American Muslims are “strongly against” or “largely against” al Qaeda, 5% strongly support al Qaida — another 25% refused to say, or are somewhat supportive of al Qaida. In addition, 1/3 support suicide bombings under some or any circumstance, and 49% of American Muslims identify ten selves as Muslim first, and American second.
Now, it’s reasonable to assume that some portion of the 70% that say they are strongly against al Qaida are simply telling pollsters the appropriate answer, I.e. they are lying… So this means that Muslims in America are probably at least 1/3 supportive of al Qaida and terrorism.
Further, nearly 1/4 of the Muslims now living in America have arrived under the administrations of Bush2 and Obama.
Given their incipient hatred and contempt for America, given their unwillingness to identify as Ameicans first, one is forced to wonder:
Why are Muslkms still being allowed to immigrate to ten US?
Why do Muslims, who hate America and love al Qaida, wishing to emigrate to America? What is their agenda.
What the he’ll are we thinking still repeating nostrums like “the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful”, “Islam is a Religion of Peace”, etc. when at least 30% of American Muslims support al Qaida???
Why are these deeply disturbing statistics being propagandized as “encouraging” and positive by our government and media????
Are we people who suggest that Muslims don’t belong in America marginalized as kooks and bigots???
Has our civilization gone insane?
My dear cyberfriend, VDH…we are a culture that counts in weeks, days, minutes.
We face an enemy who counts in centuries and can carry a grudge for 2000 years. We have not passed a milestone…we have passed a blink of an eye.
Whatever efforts have thwarted attacks, some well designed, some dopey, some dumb luck…from insane savages with bombs in their shoes, their underwear, and assorted nether regions of their person…groping and humiliating diapered octogenarian citizens won’t keep us safe for long.
Eventually a Fort Hood cretin or a Bill Ayers traitor will cause a machine gun or nail bomb to kill and maim. The wagging tongues of our traitorous media will “hide the decline” of our safety, behind words of “police matter”, “isolated incident” and “this is not about one religion”.
By hiding them behind this leftist curtain of protection we are not appeasing terrorists, we are accreting them.
The only person who cannot be profiled, is a male Muslim terrorist. By definition suspecting a member of that group is out of bounds, while everyone else may be profiled as a danger to our society. Nonagenarians beware.
We are so politically correct we are terminally wrong. We aren’t safer, VDH. We just measure time too quickly. As we idiotically draw down to 3,000 in Iraq, a number that is too small to even protect itself, much less anyone else…we can be assured that the Sunni will come out tomorrow.
Bet your bottom dollar.
This isn’t over. Not by a long shot, I’m afraid.
Well cf, at least now we know little lenin’s plan to turn victory into defeat in Iraq.
What we don’t know, proreason…are his plans for the revolution here at home.
I’m a native New Yorker and by the time the north tower collapsed, I was pissed off beyond anything I’d previously experienced. And I get pissed off all over again every time I see a shot of downtown Manhattan (doesn’t matter if it’s an old shot with the towers still standing or post-911 shot with the towers gone). I hadn’t been back to NYC since 911 until last year (to take part in the Ground Zero Mosque protest) and when I spotted downtown from the plane for the first time, I started to cry. It looks so empty without the WTC. Next time I fly in, I want to see 1 WTC standing tall.
Most of us could no longer watch the tape of those jumping off the World Trade Center, calibrating in extremis whether it was worse to implode on the concrete or be incinerated in their offices. Those images have never left us.
No, no they haven’t although I never shy away from looking. I realize it’s hardly a pleasant way to go, but I’ve wondered since that day if maybe going for smoke inhalation would be a better alternative to jumping or burning. Is is true you pass out on your way down?
Wish I thought you passed out on the way down, but I don’t think so. I’ve been in a couple of pretty good accidents and a couple of plane crashes as well as some pretty good falls. I know I was there until I hit something in all of them. If you hit hard enough you just become instantly unconscious. If not hard enough, it just hurts like Hell. That said, in the ones where I hit hard enough to get knocked unconscious, the only way I knew I didn’t die was when I woke up and it hurt like Hell. I don’t think those people actually felt any pain from hitting the ground; it was just so traumatic that unconsciousness would be instant and death a few milliseconds later, but they sure had an awful long time to think about it on the way down.
Good heavens, Art, what do you do for a living (or, perhaps, for “pleasure?”)?
I’ve been afraid from time to time in my life, but never have experienced the abject terror the people hopelessly caught in those infernos must have felt. It’s difficult to even imagine. I’m truly sorry to hear that those who chose the plunge were probably fully conscious that long, long way down.
I will never forget how I felt that day (and for innumerable days after). Never. And I don’t want to.
Grew up a country kid who liked fast cars and racing. You wreck a few. The rest is from a lot of outside and construction work in my younger days and a WHOLE BUNCH of flying around in rural Alaska
This could be repeat, neither recall nor matter: (- in (not just?) policy…)
you can be right or know it,
not both (Qualifying Excemption Disclaimer),,, then,maybe, there is judgement sans mulligans. I for one have faith; in History etc al
The Multi Culturalists Moral Equivalence dream is given lie by FACTS. 1) Not one African country is now more prosperous, peaceful and productive than it was under those wicked Colonialists. 2) Muslim countries, even those with oil, are virtually universally corrupt cesspits and those without oil the poorest in the world and Mohammedan scientific achievements are NON EXISTENT. 3) Putting PC aside it is true that Blacks score the LOWEST on IQ rating of any ethnic group and their performance in Academia and the work place, where it is not DISTORTED by the Racist Affirmative Action nonsense, bears witness to this.Far East Asians the Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese score the highest, Whites are second. 4) Christians, Hindus and Buddhists are by and large tolerant fully integrating peoples whereas Muslims on the other hand cant even coexist with EACH OTHER. No magic wand can change this and pathetic moonbat Moral Equivalence does nothing at all to solve it. Muddle headed Moonbats are part of the problem not the solution.
THANK YOU. I’m so effing tired of the PC drivel that is constantly repeated and treated as the ‘golden’ rule. It’s enough to make me puke.
Importing moral/mental retards into our country [Muzzie and Mexican] is suicidal.
How many canaries in the coal mine do we need to see how STUPID this is? Look at Canada…or Britain…or hell, CALIFORNIA.
HELLO?
You are factually correct in saying that the US expended its blood and treasure in helping Muslims in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Somalia.
The problem is that whenever we help Muslims, we are helping our enemies. It is in Islamic doctrine, as defined in the Qur’an, to require a permanent state of war, with only temporary truces if needed, between the Muslim world and the rest of us.
Our leaders were wrong to help Muslims, both from a practical standpoint and from a moral standpoint. Julia Gorin exposes how this has worked out for the US in Bosnia and Kosovo.
In case you’re wondering, the liberals/progressives in Canada are still in full denial mode about the danger posed to Western civilization by Islam. We finally gave the Conservative Party in this country a majority government this spring after two terms of minority government and our Prime Minister, Steven Harper, did an exclusive interview with the CBC’s lead anchor on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. (The CBC is our public broadcaster and receives over a billion dollars a year in tax money to produce TV and radio programming which is only viewed/heard by a small minority, about 10%, of Canadians). The CBC, not surprisingly, is widely considered left-leaning.
Harper took the politically daring step of describing Islamic terrorism as the biggest security threat to our country since 9/11. I’m sure you won’t be too surprised to hear that he is being slammed hard for this point of view.
Here’s an article from the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2011/09/spotted.html. I find the comments on the stories, more so than the stories themselves, to be widely illustrative of the same reality-challenged perceptions among Canadian liberals that are so universal among American liberals.
I take no comfort whatever from this similarity between Canadians and Americans. In fact, almost the only comfort I find anywhere these days is in reading PJM and seeing that there is a core of rational, sensible, moral people who are able to see reality. Before PJM, I was really starting to wonder if the whole world had gone mad and was living in a fantasy world.
I’m even starting to develop hope that maybe this nightmare is slowly beginning to dissipate. Maybe enough people finally have a grasp on reality that it will be possible for the adults to start running things again. I just hope that doesn’t come too late; there still seem to be a staggering number of people who insist on living in their imaginary land of rainbows and unicorns instead of the real world.
This is OT, Hank, but I’m curious. While there is much to criticize about the BBC, it does produce some fabulous television (when you don’t have to worry about things like market share and advertising rates, you can do limited audience programming to your heart’s content). I’d say BBC productions make up the lion’s share of my Netflix renting/viewing. Does your CBC do anything comparable?
A great question Sukie but I’m afraid the answer isn’t going to make you terribly happy.
While the CBC is comparable to the BBC in the sense that it is a state-owned broadcaster, they have little in common except a pronounced tendency to take a leftist slant in their news reporting.
In terms of other programming, I should point out that the number 1 show on CBC is – and always has been as far as I can tell – Hockey Night in Canada. Year after year, Hockey Night in Canada has been the #1 ranked show in this country. The rest of the top 10 (for the country as a whole, as opposed to the CBC alone) is almost always foreign programming, usually imported American shows.
The CBC used to broadcast lots of foreign shows and would regularly compete with the private networks for the best of the American shows. Then, some years ago now, they went to an all-Canadian format so they don’t broadcast any foreign programs at all. Consequently, few Canadians actually watch CBC any more. I read a statistic the other day that only 10% of Canadians actually watch CBC these days. I don’t know if that is true but it feels right. I haven’t watched their programming – except occasionally CBC Newsworld, their news and documentary channel – for many years. I can’t remember the last time I heard a fellow Canadian raving about a CBC program. Yet our government gives them between 1 and 1.5 billion dollars every year in tax money. And, unlike the BBC, the CBC has just as many commercials as the private networks so we don’t get a break on that.
CBC has had some success stories over the years, including shows that were widely exported. The first few Degrassi series were all on the CBC before CTV snapped it up for the most recent series. The Ann of Green Gables series and the follow-on Wind at My Back series were apparently well-regarded. There were probably a few others over the years. But by and large, if you’re hoping that the CBC is a treasure trove of great programming you’ve never seen, I think you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
Then again, Canadian television programming is really only coming into its own now. After decades of mostly dirt cheap and forgettable domestic shows, I think we’ve finally been getting our act together in the past few years. I see Flashpoint and Combat Hospital particularly as signs that we can do a world-class program that audiences around the world – and right here in Canada! – want to see. But those shows aren’t on CBC, they are done by private broadcasters CTV and Global respectively.
Of course I’m painting this picture with very broad strokes. You can’t really do 50+ years of broadcasting and hundreds of programs justice with a few sentences. But I think that this is a reasonable BRIEF overview of the CBC.
i still think we need to drastically modify our rules of engagement
if we ever want our perceived strength to ever be respected again then we need to actually unleash it once in awhile– sept 12 2001 would have been a great time to do this– 10 years later and i am still waiting
It’s a good thing I wasn’t in charge on that Tuesday morning. If I had been, by the weekend the world would have looked like a partially-eaten apple.
Eleven Muslim “students” are currently on trial in Southern California for disrupting a speech by an Israeli ambassador, shouting him down with epithets about being a murderer and screeching pro-Palestinian BS.
They are, of course, hiding behind American Constitutional freedom of speech, while (interestingly) the prosecution is using exactly the same argument against them, that the invited Israeli speaker should have his own guaranteed freedom of speech protected from interruptions by pro-Palestinian trouble-making lunatics.
I hate it that these yahoos hide behind our Constitution, and I hate it that their parental units never, ever, seem to notice that there’s any dishonor in their offspring’s behavior when they do stuff like this, or hie off to Somalia to shoot at Americans, or disrupt an amusement park ride for asking them to take their ugly scarves off when everyone else is banned from wearing hats, too, for safety reasons.
I guess what I really hate is the on-going demand by all backwards Muslims for special treatment, without recognition on their part that they *are* backwards.
As for the persistence of war, I’ve always appreciated this quote:
At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or
ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the
noblest of kings, nor yet the Church–none of them has been able to
stop it. And don’t succumb to the facile belief that wars will be
stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can
be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of
thousands to whom even such a war eill be senseless and unjustified.
Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the
state’s essential functions. … War is the price we pay for living in
a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all
states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and
evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect
us from evil. …
In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand
foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The
stae is called upon to check these impulses–but it generates others
of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At
times it throws them all in a single direction–and that is war.
–”Father Severyan”, in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s _November
1916_
And ten years later we still have the same security and immigration policy. I have always found it ironic that the 9-11 hijackers used a roach coach that provided fraudulent documents to illegal Latino farm workers in order to get their own drivers license paperwork. In fact, after 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote.
Had such enterpises been cracked down upon to begin with, the hijackers would have had an additional, albeit small, hurdle to jump. However, years of PC feeling sorry for Latinos because they are brown and speak Spanish, delayed guilt for the 1846 war with Mexico, and sympathy for Cesar Chavez (“They only come here to work…Jobs Americans won’t do”) meant that a blind eye was turned to such networks because it might cause affront to Latinos.
Alas, our Republican appetite for cheap lettuce and our Democrat appetite for cheap votes each had a hand in 9-11, and all of Dr. Hanson’s identified pathologies are still busy at work in 2011. In fact it might be worse because who knows how many will receive amnesty?
“No civilization could endure three or four successive attacks such as those on September 11.”
Yes we could have friends. And quite frankly…that… as terrible as it may have been… might have given us the necessary resolve to finally come to our collectives senses as to what a dire threat islam is to this Nation. And I believe we should have acted to destroy it. Or at the very least committed ourselves to the reality that islam must be kept out of the US.
Look at where we are 10 years later. Incredibly, bowing, compromising and capitulating to a barbaric ideology, worse than any fascism of the past, and under the heel of PC madness.
I’ve now read two separate statements from the Obama White House, one just the other day, that describes how Americans – and presumably the Obama Administration – would react to a new successful terrorist attack on the United States. The key word in this week’s announcement was “resilience”. The author of the statement, whoever that that was, talked about how America and Americans would be able to survive such an attack and, eventually, bounce back. But there was not so much as a single word to suggest that America would get any payback on whoever launched a new attack. I’m absolutely appalled by that. In my opinion, anyone thinking of such an attack should know going in that they will suffer an enormous cataclysm as the United States reacts to such an act.
But the Obama White House seems to be focused on simply surviving another attack. You may get your wish and see us endure additional 9/11 style attacks…. Obama clearly has no desire to inflict revenge on his Muslim brothers.
Whenever I need reminding of the existential threat the civlized world faces from Islam (not too often these days), I think of the 9-11 attacks, or poor Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, and others who met a similar fate. Thanks to working in a big-city trauma center, I am familiar with what violence can do to a human body… but nothing prepared me for the horror of seeing the Pearl and Berg executions on the internet. I felt and still feel that we must bear witness to evil – so for that reason, I forced myself to watch their deaths by beheading. In doing so, I felt the chill of pure evil… the same sensation I felt as I watched those poor people plunge to their deaths from the WTC Towers rather than be incinerated. Sooner or later, the civilized world will have to draw a line in the sand, and defend itself from Islam, or face a fate that is horrible to contemplate.