As bad as 9-11 was, the worst thing about it may be that it wasn’t bad enough.
Certainly that’s an odd statement, but one that I believe is true. I say that because, here five years after the fact, most people seem to have forgotten about its impact at the time. That’s apparent because the majority of Americans either don’t believe we’re in a real war, or in case they do, think we should get out of it as quickly as possible. The truth of those statements is made evident by the results of the recent elections.
It will probably take something extremely drastic to put many Americans in the mental mood for the war they face, whether or not they realize there is an ongoing conflict that won’t end simply because they refuse to accept its existence. Perhaps 3,000 dead Americans don’t mean much to some folks so long after the fact--unless those Americans died on a battlefield, and then every one counts a hundred fold.
Those who seek to disengage from Iraq and bring the troops home apparently don’t realize that such action will not save America lives, but will, in the long run, cost more American lives. Withdrawal will embolden an enemy that cannot defeat us but for us defeating ourselves. By words and deeds, the Left in America has given the enemy reason to hang on just a little longer; by questioning the honesty of the war, by maligning our troops and their actions, by looking for misdeeds in everything the Bush administration has done.
I suppose the refusal by some to understand the dangers we face comes from the fact that we are in a war unlike any every confronted before by America. Certainly, comparisons to Vietnam are bound to rise because, there too, we fought an enemy in a situation where friend and foe were many times indistinguishable. As many on the Left point out, we fled in the face of that war, left the ground running (flying in helicopters actually at the end) and America still survived.
True, but there are differences. The Viet Cong or North Vietnamese weren’t about to come to America to kill us after we left. They were not fanatics in the sense the current Islamofacists we face are fanatics. They had no real desire to crush our culture or enslave us to a particular religion or philosophy. They just wanted us the hell out of their country, which is, upon reflection, a reasonable position.
Of course, we could have defeated North Vietnam in two days--hell, we could have defeated it in 30 minutes if we’d had the stomach to blow it into oblivion. That we didn’t is probably fortunate, because at that time there was still a strong Soviet Union with its military might and a nuclear capacity of mutually-assured destruction, not to mention dark China lurking in the wings, not yet as capable as today but dangerous nonetheless.
Moreover, that misguided effort to control the political flow in Southeast Asia resulted in the formation of a counterculture that has transmogrified into the clown show of extreme liberalism we are experiencing today. God knows, in my mid-twenties at the time, I became a part of that circus, with my beard and long hair, dope and Trotskyite proclamations. (I was not aware at the time of Churchill’s dictum, which loosely goes "A man who is not a liberal at twenty has no heart; a man who is not a conservative at forty has no mind.")
Perhaps we will have to suffer a monstrous attack before the reality finally sinks in and those who are now confused come to face reality. It’s great to talk about "peace and love" and how we should "negotiate" instead of go to war. But negotiating, like tangoing, takes a least two. You can’t negotiate with people who want nothing more than to see you dead, period.
Sure, the war has been mishandled. The enemy should have been crushed by a force so overwhelming that victory could not be denied. All the politically correct bullshit preferred should have been set aside; if the enemy fired on our troops from cover of mosques, those mosques should have been reduced to rubble. All the rabble and trash in this country who support the enemy by word or deed should be rounded up, charged with treason, and executed forthwith.
I can hear the whining leftist after terrorists manage to touch off a nuclear device in the middle of one of our populated areas and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans--somebody should have done something, somebody should have protected our sorry asses. All the useful idiots will be whimpering then, unable to do anything because of their impotent pacifism and expecting the government to pull their slimy fat out of the fire.
Fuck them. And fuck you if you’re number among this mentality, as I know many of you are. I hope when the big blast comes, it kills you and your family first. No. I hope it doesn’t kill you, because I want you around to suffer, to see what your fucking ignorance has wrought. I want you to whimper about peace when some Islamofacist bastard is taking your head off right under your chin.
Maybe, in your atheist hell, you’ll all gather and talk about "peace and love." I hope you have fun with your big circle-jerk.