Friday, September 11, 2009

EIGHT YEARS LATER

It is eight years after the horrific attacks on New York and the Pentagon, eight years after that bright morning of blue skies and death.

The Twin Towers. The Pentagon. Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The names still evoke the taste of ashes, the sound of screaming.

The Pentagon looks pretty much as it did before the attacks, but lower Manhattan is like a socket where once was a tooth.

It is eight years later, and I wonder if we understand exactly what and whom it is we are fighting.

Political correctness and the desire to be Nice Guys seem to be today’s watchwords in the West. We are fighting wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the former against a shadowy enemy that melts into the hills and mountains, the latter an ill-conceived attempt to extirpate a nasty dictatorship, albeit one that was contained by its neighbors. Meanwhile, militant Islamist influence grows apace in Europe... and, as well, in South America as Hezbollah spreads its tentacles.

We continue to deal with the results of Jimmy Carter’s weak-kneed response to the takeover of the American embassy in Teheran back in 1979. When you have a policy of trying to placate those who would destroy us, you embolden them. History proves it again and again.

I’m not quite sure our Fearless Leader gets it.

You cannot placate terrorists. You can only fight them, destroy them.

Though I do not expect it to happen soon, may the enemies of our civilization evolve past their barbarities so that, one day, they may no longer be our enemies. And until they do so evolve, may we have the vision and fortitude to destroy the ones who do not.

No comments: